# Planning Commission Zoning Public Hearing - May 28, 2009 > Auto-transcribed civic record · May 28, 2009 - **Permalink**: https://meetings.lexingtonky.news/meeting/924 - **Source video**: https://lfucg.granicus.com/player/clip/924?view_id=14&redirect=true - **Date**: 2009-05-28 - **Last revised**: May 28, 2009 - **Length**: 60,951 words > ⚠️ **Auto-generated content.** Audio from the official Granicus video was auto-transcribed with OpenAI's open-source Whisper large-v3-turbo model, run locally by The Lexington Times. Structured facts were extracted with GPT-4o; the narrative summary was written by Anthropic Claude. Verbatim wording may contain errors. See [methodology](https://meetings.lexingtonky.news/about/methodology) or [report a correction](mailto:editor@lexingtonky.news). --- ## Meeting Overview The Urban County Planning Commission met on May 28, 2009, at 1:35 PM in the Council Chamber, 2nd Floor LFUCG Government Center, located at 200 East Main Street in Lexington, Kentucky. Neill Day presided over the meeting, which addressed three agenda items and included one public comment. The Commission took four votes during the session. The meeting resulted in mixed outcomes across the agenda items. The Commission approved the Beaumont Farm, Unit 1, Section 5 (Amended) proposal and also approved the Zoning Ordinance Text Amendment Requests. However, the Commission denied the Todds Road Development Company, LLC Zoning Map Amendment. ## Attendance **Present:** Patrick Brewer, Marie Copeland, Neill Day, Ed Holmes, Mike Owens, Frank Penn, Carolyn Richardson, Lynn Roche-Phillips, and Joan Whitman. **Absent:** Mike Cravens and Randall Vaughn. ## Votes and Decisions **ZOTA 2009-1: Postpone Zoning Ordinance Text Amendment** [timestamp: 0:06:38] A motion to postpone the zoning ordinance text amendment to Article 9 regarding Group Residential Projects was made by Frank Penn and seconded by Joan Whitman. The motion passed unanimously with 9 ayes and 0 nays. All nine members voted in favor: Patrick Brewer, Marie Copeland, Neill Day, Ed Holmes, Mike Owens, Frank Penn, Carolyn Richardson, Lynn Roche-Phillips, and Joan Whitman. **DP 2009-26: Beaumont Farm Development Plan** [timestamp: 0:13:27] A motion to approve the Beaumont Farm, Unit 1, Section 5 amended final development plan with conditions was made by Lynn Roche-Phillips and seconded by Joan Whitman. The motion passed unanimously with 9 ayes and 0 nays. All nine members voted in favor. The approval includes 14 conditions as noted on the staff's revised recommendation. **MAR 2009-6: Todds Road Development Company Zoning Map Amendment** [timestamp: 1:28:40] A motion to disapprove the zoning map amendment for Todds Road Development Company, LLC was made by Ed Holmes and seconded by Carolyn Richardson. The motion failed with 4 ayes and 5 nays on a roll call vote. Voting in favor of disapproval were Ed Holmes, Carolyn Richardson, Joan Whitman, and Frank Penn. Voting against disapproval were Mike Owens, Lynn Roche-Phillips, Marie Copeland, Patrick Brewer, and Neill Day. **Zoning Change for 3097 Old Todds Road** [timestamp: 1:39:35] A motion to approve a zoning change for a portion of 3097 Old Todds Road was made by Lynn Roche-Phillips and seconded by Frank Penn. The motion passed with 6 ayes and 3 nays on a roll call vote. Voting in favor were Ed Holmes, Carolyn Richardson, Joan Whitman, Frank Penn, Mike Owens, and Lynn Roche-Phillips. Voting against were Marie Copeland, Patrick Brewer, and Neill Day. ## Public Comment One member of the public addressed the meeting regarding a proposed zoning change. Abdul Qadir Al-Alami spoke in opposition to the zoning change [timestamp: 1:05:42]. Mr. Al-Alami expressed concerns about the potential impacts of the proposed change, specifically citing: * Increased traffic resulting from the zoning change * Loss of residential character in the affected area ## Contested Items **Todds Road Development Company, LLC Zoning Map Amendment** The commission was divided on a zoning map amendment proposed by Todds Road Development Company, LLC. The primary concerns raised during discussion centered on traffic impacts and potential effects on the residential character of the area. The disagreement resulted in two separate motions. An initial motion to disapprove the zoning amendment failed to pass, indicating the commission could not reach consensus on rejecting the proposal outright. Following this failed motion, the commission considered an alternative approach with a subsequent motion to approve only a partial zoning change rather than the full amendment as originally proposed. This split decision reflects the commission's attempt to balance competing interests—addressing the concerns about traffic and neighborhood character while still allowing some form of development to proceed. The outcome of approving only part of the zoning change represents a compromise position between full approval and complete rejection of the amendment. ## Beaumont Farm, Unit 1, Section 5 (Amended) The commission discussed an amended final development plan for Beaumont Farm during this agenda item [timestamp: 00:07:51]. **Key Participants** Chris Taylor and Dick Murphy were the primary speakers on this matter. **Proposal Details** The amended plan for Beaumont Farm, Unit 1, Section 5 included two significant modifications: - Addition of a drive-through facility - Revision of the lot layout **Outcome** The commission approved the amended final development plan for Beaumont Farm, Unit 1, Section 5. ## Todds Road Development Company, LLC Zoning Map Amendment The commission considered a zoning map amendment for Todds Road Development Company, LLC [timestamp: 0:14:16]. The proposal sought to rezone the property from Single Family Residential to Neighborhood Business. **Key Speakers** Traci Wade and Rena Wiseman presented information and participated in the discussion regarding this zoning amendment request. **Outcome** The commission denied the zoning map amendment for Todds Road Development Company, LLC. ## Zoning Ordinance Text Amendment Requests The commission discussed zoning ordinance text amendments related to infill and redevelopment during this agenda item. The amendments proposed changes to multiple articles of the zoning ordinance, including Articles 1, 3, 4, 7, 8, 9, 12, 15, 16, 18, 22, 26, 28, and 29. Key speakers on this item included Jimmy Emmons and Bill Sallee, who presented and discussed the proposed amendments with the commission. The commission approved the zoning ordinance text amendment requests. [timestamp: 1:57:15] --- ## Decisions - **ZOTA 2009-1** — postponed (9-0): Postpone the zoning ordinance text amendment to Article 9 regarding Group Residential Projects - **DP 2009-26** — passed (9-0): Approve Beaumont Farm, Unit 1, Section 5 amended final development plan with conditions - **MAR 2009-6** — failed (4-5): Disapprove zoning map amendment for Todds Road Development Company, LLC - **Motion** — passed (6-3): Approve zoning change for a portion of 3097 Old Todds Road --- ## Full transcript Music Thank you. We will convene this Planning Commission meeting on May the 28th, 2009. Call to order and ask for postponements or withdrawals. And withdrawals. Mr. Chairman, if there are none from the audience, the staff has one item we would ask the Commission to consider for postponement. It appears on the bottom of page three of your agenda. This is ZOTA 2009-1, a proposed text amendment to Article 9 of our Zoning Ordinance for Group Residential Projects. As you know from some of your recent work sessions, the staff has continued working on this text amendment. We would ask for another one-month postponement to your June 25th meeting, and hopefully we'll be able to give you updates at your zoning committee meeting and, if necessary, at your work session in June. Okay. Thank you, Bill. The staff has asked for a one-month postponement on ZOTA 2009-1 Amending Group Residential Project. Mr. Chairman, I move for a one-month postponement to ZOTA 2009-1 to the June 25th meeting. All right, we have a motion and a second. All in favor, please signify by saying aye. Opposed by a like sign? Okay. Thank you. All right. If there are no other postponements or withdrawals, we'll get into the agenda. And I guess turn it over to Bill. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. There are no items that qualify for abbreviated hearings today, so we'll be glad to proceed as they appear in order on your agenda. We'll set up and be ready to begin in just a few minutes. Thank you. Mr. Chairman, I did fail to say that there is one land subdivision item on your agenda, and we can proceed with that first, if you wish. Good afternoon. The first item on our agenda is a subdivision item. It's on page 1, item A. It is DP 2009-26 Beaumont Farm Unit 1, Section 5. This is an amended final development plan for property located at 3194 Beaumont Center Circle. The subject property is located at the corner of Beaumont Center Circle and Governor's Lane across the street from the Kroger Shopping Center that was recently built. This proposal is to add a drive-through and to revise the lot layout. They are adding a drive-through in this location, and this revised plan is adding an access point at this location. The building is a three-story, 30,000 square foot building. It provides 122 parking spaces. The access point shown on that plan is provided as roughly 250 feet from the intersection or from the center line of Beaumont Center Circle. At its last meeting, the subdivision committee recommended postponement primarily due to concerns related to the layout and access changes related on Lot 4. This plan, what you see on this revision is Lot 3. The information on Lot 4 and this revision has been dropped off for the purposes of just addressing what we see here. The previous plan on the overhead, as you can see, this is the certified plan that we currently have. Both lots had continuous circulation throughout, and it was open through here, shared parking in this location. Staff had concerns about closing that circulation throughout, and there were two owners for both properties. So in an effort to maintain the circulation on this lot that you see, the other lot owner was dropped off, and this is what this property is remaining. The access point is there because the lot has to have access, and that is the furthest point from the intersection that it can go. With this submission, staff is handing out a revised recommendation sheet recommending approval subject to the 14 conditions you see before you. If you have any questions, I'd be happy to try to answer them. Anybody have? I'm sorry? Well, there's nothing there currently. There's an approved and certified development plan for that building with that layout. The revision that came in that you saw that was shown in subdivision committee showed a revised layout that discontinued the internal circulation and the shared access point. The access point that you see here has been proposed from the beginning. This revision when they were all together, the only access point was off of Monarch. So we have that information has been taken off in an effort to keep the existing plan that governs this lot and to keep the circulation pattern that is on this one. It is unusual for us to ask for information to be removed but in the interest of keeping a better plan on both lots, that was the intent. I'm sorry? Any questions or any comment from the audience please? Mr. Chairman, I'm Dick Murphy. I represent the owners of Lot 3 which is before you today, which is Ball and Wright Company. company, capital holding company. Jimmy Ball is with me today. Jimmy is one of the two owners along with Steve Wright and our designer Matt Carter of Vision Engineering is here along with Chas Hyder, our planner. We do not have authority to speak for lot four. That's why we couldn't show it on this plan. We can only show what my client owns. So we've taken the information on Lot 3 and put it up there for you on it. And we worked with the staff on this and we do agree with the staff proposed conditions for approval. So I can go and we'd be happy to answer any questions you all may have on that. Mr. Murphy was the applicant. I'm sorry I just said public but it's fine. All right, is there anybody in the audience that would like to address this? Commission members, anybody have any questions for the applicant or for Chris? Mr. Chairman, I move approval of DP 2009-26, Beaumont Farm Unit 1, Section 5, amended, with the 14 conditions as noted on the blue sheet in our agenda packet. All right, there's been a motion for approval. All in favor, please signify by saying aye. Aye. Opposed by a like sign. Motion passes. Thank you. Good afternoon, Chairman Day, members of the Commission. The next item on our Planning Commission agenda today is found on page 2, and it can be found in your notebooks behind tab 3. It is MAR2009-6, a request by Todd's Road Development, LLC, to rezone property at 2981 Cadentown Road and 3097 Old Todd's Road. The subject property is located at the intersection of Liberty Road, and it's been realigned in this area to come and bisect one of the subject parcels, 2981, and then connect with what used to be Todd's Road but is now considered Old Todd's Road. Old Todd's Road also lines the southern portion of the other parcel, 3097. The subject property or the area proposed for rezoning only encompasses a portion of 2981 and a portion of 3097. It's the northern portion of 3097, which is about 50 feet. That parcel is split zoned. The southern half, or three-fourths probably, is already B1, a neighborhood business zone, and the northern 50 feet is an R1D, single-family residential. And the rest of the property proposed for rezoning is the 2981 parcel, and shown here on the overhead, which was bisected by the new Liberty Road. The other portion of the property is on the eastern side. and that is also currently zoned R1D, which is single-family residential. Other zoning in the area are, let me go through some photos of the property first, just adding a dash line for where Liberty Road currently is built now. Our aerial photography is a few years old, so it doesn't include that new construction yet. Existing zoning in the vicinity, the subject property R1D, and then the Cadentown Historic District across Cadentown Road, which was the old Liberty Road, is also zoned R1D with an historic overlay. R3, R1T are also in the vicinity for a townhouse development to the southwest, townhouses to the north, and a multifamily development to the northeast. The property just across the new Liberty Road is also zoned R1D, although that property has not been further densified. There's one single-family residential building on the larger of those two lots. Also in the vicinity is the B1 zoning that fronts onto Manowar Boulevard. There's two small shopping centers, the Todd's Road Center, which is on the west side of Liberty Road, including a small B3 area and then the Brighton Shops which is on the eastern side of Liberty Road in this area. And the applicant again is proposing to expand the B1 zoning in this vicinity. Just a few aerial photographs of the property. You can see the property in the bottom portion of this photo. We're looking north and you can see the multifamily development, the summit and also townhouses that have been constructed over the past five to ten years including there's also the commercial to the south on this photograph a gas station, the existing CVS pharmacy that resides at 3097 Old Todd's Road which is on a portion of the property also included in the zone change. This photograph is looking east. Again, you can see with the dashed line where Liberty Road is now constructed. And this photo is looking south with Man of War at the upper portion of the property and Liberty Road again. These are some on-the-ground photos that do show where Liberty Road has now been constructed. This one is looking towards where Starshoot and New Liberty Elementary School are, so to the east. North, sorry. The opposite direction towards Manowar. Again, this is the new Liberty Road. This photo is looking across Liberty Road towards the subject property, and the building in this photo is the CVS Pharmacy. So this property, again, is vacant. A little bit closer of the CVS Pharmacy, and you can see there's a grade separation between Liberty Road and where CVS Pharmacy sits, probably six to eight feet. This is a photo of Old Todd's Road, and you can see Todd's Center on the left side and the access point for the CVS on the right side of the photo there. And then last, I would just show you what the comprehensive plan recommends for the subject property. A portion of the property, again, is we have two different lots here. The lot that is 2981 is recommended as medium density residential, which is 5 to 10 dwelling units per net acre. And the drive aisle included on the CVS parcel is recommended for retail trade. And in the vicinity, you have the rest of the commercial area already built out, recommended for retail trade. and the rest of this general vicinity recommended for residential land use. The applicant is proposing a B1 zone in order to construct a 7,500 square foot building for primarily a veterinarian. We would just note that a veterinarian's office does require a conditional use permit, and they would need to go to the Board of Adjustment for that particular use. With the comp plan recommendation of primarily residential, the staff would have to say that for the most part this request does not agree with the comprehensive plan and that the Planning Commission should consider whether there's been any unanticipated change in this vicinity or whether there's a case for the subject or the existing zoning being inappropriate and the proposed zoning being appropriate at this location. The applicant is contending that R1D zoning is inappropriate and B1 zoning is appropriate for several reasons. First, they cite the irregular shape of the property, the orientation of it to Liberty Road rather than to the other Cadentown location, and that the property is no longer adequate or usable for 6,000 square foot lots, which are permitted with the R1D zoning. They cite that single-family homes would not be appropriate at this location. And lastly, that the CVS Pharmacy's drive aisle is already a commercial use, so that would make the B1 zoning appropriate for that area. The staff's review primarily looked at the appropriateness because the applicant provided that justification. justification. And we found that the existing R1D zone could accommodate the proposed density that the comp plan recommends. The staff would acknowledge that single family residential next to a commercial area may not be the most appropriate fit, but that residential certainly could be appropriated this area. Since there is other residential zoning in the area, specifically R3, that a density of 5 to 10 dwelling units per acre for the vacant portion, which would come to a recommendation of between 4 and 9 dwelling units in this parcel, seems reasonable for development there. We would also note that that parcel is similarly shaped to the parcel just to the north that did accommodate medium density residential in the form of townhomes. The staff does acknowledge that this site is at the edge of a commercial area, but there doesn't seem to be a justification to expand the commercial along Liberty Road. The applicants provided several justifications for why single-family would not be appropriate here, but really no reason why commercial is appropriate. And KRS 100 and Article 6 of our zoning ordinance both require a two-fold finding that the existing zoning is inappropriate, but also that the proposed zoning would be appropriate at this location. In regard to the already constructed dry vile on CVS's property, the staff knows that the Board of Adjustment has allowed that use to expand 50 feet into the R1D zone, and that's already been granted. so the staff doesn't feel like there's a need to rezone that property to the B1 zone at this time. Also of concern is the existing historic district in Cadentown and the impact that expanding the commercial zoning in this area would have for that historic area, as well as the existing residential parcel just to the east along Cadentown Road, which would be directly adjacent to this commercial development. And finally, we would note that there have been no unanticipated changes in this area to specifically the physical, social, or economic nature, and that is those that were unanticipated by the Comprehensive Plan. We know that Liberty Road has been constructed and expanded or widened in this area. However, that is a change that's been anticipated by the Comp Plan for several years. The staff is recommending disapproval of this requested zone change. And the findings for that are listed on your application but are on your agenda as well as on our staff report. And I'm happy to answer any specific questions. Thank you, Ms. Wayne. Anybody from the commission have questions? Yeah. Tracy, is the access for that piece of property going to come out on Old Todd's Road or Cadentown Road? Well, the. What's proposed access for it? I want to steal Tom's thunder or Chris's thunder here. Well, we can wait for them. That's all right. They're proposing one access point on the Liberty for this parcel and sharing access with the CVS. That's fine. This may be better for the development plan, but I'll go ahead and I'll ask it. You said there are two lots, basically. There's the sliver. Yeah, there's the sliver, which is the back side of CVS where the drive aisle is located. Okay, that's a separate lot. It's a portion of this square lot that has Liberty Road, Old Todd's Road, and Cadentown frontage. So it's a split zone parcel. Their property line runs here, and then the zone line runs through it. This is a very, I would say, dates back to the 50s or 60s, county-level B-1 zoning. So it's not been changed since then. My question is, I've wondered about that, how we wound up with split zoning, if it was, in fact, two different lots or one lot with split zoning on it. But what about the sliver on the other side of the new Liberty Road? That's kind of a remnant parcel that I'd like to know more information about that. its lot depth, the widths along Liberty Road. Is that also proposed in the rezoning? No, it's not. So there's a portion of 3097, which is the section of the CVS property, which is already developed, basically. And then there's the portion of 2981, which is vacant, but was bisected by Liberty Road. And so the other side, obviously here, also remains vacant, but it must have been large enough that the transportation cabinet chose not to purchase it as a remnant tract, so they felt it could accommodate at least one single-family residence there. That remnant sliver, as I'm calling it, is zoned residential? It is R1D, and the applicant does own it, but they aren't proposing to rezone that property. Is it 6,000 square feet? I don't know. They didn't provide a size for that. It looks like it could be. Any other questions from the Commission? Are we ready then for the development plan? Okay. Thank you. Thank you, Tracy. The development plan for this zone change is on page two. Item B is ZDP 2009-28, Caudill Property Lot 2, and Todd's Road Development. This is a preliminary development plan, and you will see this property again on a final development plan. As Tracy pointed out, the property is located at 2981 Cadentown Lane and also has frontage on Liberty Road. The proposal, she said, is to build a 7,500-square-foot office and retail building, as well as the 38 required parking spaces with access via Liberty Road, and it is served internally via access to the adjacent CVS drugstore. At this last meeting, the subdivision committee recommended postponement due to the fact that the entire property proposed for rezoning was not clearly indicated on the development plan. What we had previously seen didn't make clear that this strip down through here was a part of the rezoning and subject to this development plan's controls. The final development plan may come, and you may see just the area in this area. But given that this is part of the zone change, it had to be denoted. And it was the technical reason for postponement at our subdivision committee. This revised submission that came the day of our subdivision committee, we reviewed it and feel that the technical reason for postponement has been met. The staff feels that this plan can be approved subject to the 11 conditions on your agenda, possibly deleting condition number 9 related to showing us the entire property proposed for rezoning. If you have any questions, I'd be happy to try to answer them. Okay. Thank you, Chris. So we'll delete number nine off the... You could. Okay. Okay. Petitioner? Ms. Chairman, members of Commission, I'm Rena Wiseman of Stahl, Keenan, Ogden, and I'm here this afternoon for Todd's Road Development LLC. Gary Joy is the principal of that company. He's the owner and applicant. And Kevin Phillips of Indris Engineer has worked on the site plan that we've submitted with this. I'm going to talk about this is, you may have this in your packet. This was the notification map submitted with the zone change, and I'm going to use that because I think it might help answer some of the questions in terms of where the various properties are located. Again, this is a request to zone these two properties, all of 2891 Cadentown and a portion of 3097 Old Todd's Road to Neighborhood Business B1. And since we were at the committees, we have, and as we indicated at the committees, we would propose conditional zoning restrictions so that this is a conditional B1 zone. And what we have done is attempted to eliminate most of the intense uses because it's our position and our legal justification is that this is not appropriate for single-family residential R1D. And it is appropriate for a restricted neighborhood business. The legal standard that we're basing our application on is the one under the statute where you demonstrate first that the existing zoning is inappropriate and improper. We do not demonstrate that the comprehensive plan recommendation is inappropriate. We have to demonstrate that the single-family R1D zoning is inappropriate for this property. And as Tracy says, there's a second part of that test. We have to demonstrate to you that the restricted B1 zoning that we are requesting is appropriate and proper. And we believe that it is. I'll go through it. But in summary, this property is dominated by a couple of features. One, it has over 300 feet of frontage on Liberty Road, which is now four-lane. it is part of a parcel that was severed by the construction of Liberty Road. So the balance of the property is across the street. That was not created by the applicant. That was created by the acquisition of the right-of-way from the owner by the Commonwealth of Kentucky. That property is not part of this application. Our client owns that, has no immediate plans for it. His expectation is that logically at some point that would probably redevelop with the property behind it, which is also R1D and contains almost two acres. So that property is in a different situation because it's larger, it's more regularly shaped, and it doesn't have the other influences we have, which is the proximity of the CVS. And the CVS drugstore joins our southern boundary for over 200 feet, and that's their drive lane out to Cadentown Road. So we're dominated by that. Extensive frontage, the location of the CVS. On the Cadentown Road side, and you may be able to see this from this aerial, but the property that is the 2981 Cadentown Road, that little finger that you see coming out in the darker shading there, we only have 18 feet of frontage on Cadentown Road. So that's not wide enough to do a street of any kind. So virtually, in effect, there's no access to this property, to Cadentown Road, no possibility for any vehicular access. And certainly if it were residential, there would not be a proposal to share access with the drugstore, as I'll talk about in a moment. So the other thing I want you to keep in mind, especially as we go through the photos, is that this property is really cut off from Cadentown. We don't have access on Cadentown. We have 18 feet of frontage. And we have a significant tree line that separates us from the property behind us. The townhouses to the north back up to us. There's no opportunity to incorporate this property into that townhouse development. And Liberty Road has cut this property off from other residential property across the road. So we think the location of the property, those dominating features, Liberty Road frontage, proximity of the CVS and the drive lane, the irregular shape and the small size, makes it very difficult to do four single-family residential lots fronting on Liberty Road that would, I think, be considered appropriate in this area. What we propose to do is to build a single building, 7,500-square-foot, one-story office building. As was mentioned, it is our anticipation that our one tenant that we have been working with will be an animal veterinarian. This is not a kennel that was asked at the zoning committee. This is a typical vet clinic. Now, the dogs or the cats or gerbils or whatever might have to stay overnight in the case of serious surgery, but they will not be boarding pets. They would only take up no more than half of this building. The rest of it could be a small office. It could be a sandwich shop like a Subway, florist, barber shop, because we have suggested and we've given these to the staff, restricted uses by conditional zoning that we would ask you to adopt if you're inclined to recommend approval of this zone change. And I will put these up on the – I'll pass these out. And also, if I could – I won't go through all of them, but cognizant of where we are, we certainly would agree that an intense fast food restaurant with a drive-thru window would not be appropriate. We view this as a transitional piece of property that can provide a transition and buffer from the commercial uses to the south and the residential uses to the west and to the north. The uses that would be prohibited on this list, shoe repair, self-service laundry, automobile service stations, that's a very high traffic generator. Keep in mind that the property next door is B1 without restrictions. So if you keep this as is, assuming that CVS changes uses, which they don't intend on doing, I'm sure, but it could become a fast food restaurant. It could become a Speedway-type facility because there are no restrictions on that property. Parking lots, in terms of principal parking lots, it couldn't be used for that. drive-through facilities, number 12. That's a critical restriction. That would mean not only no fast food restaurants with drive-through facilities. It would also mean no banks with drive-through facilities, which would also be permitted in this zone. It would also mean no dry cleaners with drive-through facilities. So with these restricted uses, we believe that the concern about intense uses adjacent to residential and the impact on the traffic is minimized. One of the things that we discussed as part of the development plan discussion was the location of the Liberty Road entrance, which is here on this. it's 468 feet I believe from the center line of the Old Tods Road and Liberty Road intersection that has, I have a photo that I'll put up where early on since this is a state road this has to be this entrance has to be approved by the state I don't think you can see it. You can barely see the stake. Kevin went out on site with the stake to stake out the optimal location for the entrance. This is, I think, a high point on the property in order to provide adequate site distance. And this entrance, that's the center line. It's 468 feet from the intersection of Todd's Road and Liberty Road. That is significant because there's a formula that I can't do, but it's in your subdivision regulations, and it's a formula where, through mathematic calculations, They determine what is the optimal distance for an intersection between another intersection for a non-residential use on a minor arterial. A non-residential use can have access to a minor arterial. But if I need help, there is artillery outside. So what I've highlighted is the three that I think are relevant to this discussion. The way this was calculated is that Wilbur Smith assumed that this entrance would be used by 50% of the trips from the CVS because we will have a, again, if this plan is approved in conjunction with this zoning, there will be a cross-access where this property will provide a cut that would allow persons wishing to come into CVS to come in from Liberty Road. They currently have no access to Liberty Road, and likewise would allow those folks to go out onto Liberty Road, and likewise would allow this property to use the existing driveway. This will not change in this area. I'll show that in the photos. There's some trees here. All that's going to happen in terms of development is the sewer, sanitary sewer line. Otherwise, this is pretty much going to stay the same, which we think is another important component in terms of the buffer to Caden Town. So the assumption is that this use will use 50% of its traffic would use the Liberty Road entrance. So that's consistent throughout all the numbers on this chart. And then he's assumed, for example, if this building was developed entirely as general office, 75% would use this access point, and that would mandate or the optimal distance would be no less than 420 feet. We have 468, so we exceed that. If this were all fast food, it's dark, you can't see that, but that would be 481 feet, so our access point wouldn't work. If it were half fast food, half a bank with a drive-through, that would be 473 feet. Again, that would be more than the 468 feet, which is where you saw the orange steak in the photo. So if you assume that this building is developed 100% as a vet clinic, which is not our assumption, then the distance is 426 feet. And so we're 40 feet to the good of what would be recommended for that. If you combine this vet clinic with, say, office, medical, dental, that one is 424, we're 424, so it would be about the same. So with the bottom uses, fast food, fast food, none of those would be permitted under our restricted uses. The gas station would not be permitted. So with these restricted uses, then the access meets the subdivision regulations, and I think that was a reason that there was no longer a discussion item on the development plan about the access. I want to talk about the legal justification. Again, the appropriateness, inappropriateness, And again, I think the best way to do it is through going through some photos, which are somewhat similar to Tracy's. I'll just kind of hand these to you. And again, what I would ask you to focus on is how this property is situated with respect to Liberty Road. It is not oriented towards any residential property. It has no connection to Cadentown. It has no connection to the townhomes to the north. It's cut off from the residential across the road, and it has a CVS on the other side. So this has no residential orientation whatsoever. If you lived here, I think people would say, where do you live? Well, I live next to CVS. I don't think you'd say, I live on the other side of Cadentown or I live next to those townhomes that back up to me. You'd say, I live next to CVS. And I think if you had a single-family home here, that would not be a positive factor. Tracy acknowledges that. The other thing to remember is that this is a principal arterial, and single-family homes cannot have direct access onto a road like this. So these homes, these three or four lots, would not have their own driveway. They would have to have a common drive that they would have to maintain together. That would not be ideal for someone who wants to buy their own home with their own garage, with their own driveway. Again, that is trying to put a square peg in a round hole if you try to make this stay single-family residential. Again, the test is, is R1D appropriate for this property? The first slide is looking across Liberty Road to the property. You can see the zoning sign, the for sale or lease sign, and the CVS in the background to the left. You can see the edge of that stone retaining wall, and the next photo shows you the balance of that property as it continues down to Todd's Road. To the other direction, which is the north, again, notice the extensive frontage that we have on Liberty Road. It's difficult to see, but to the far right, there's the roof of one of the townhomes that back up to this property. Also notice the trees. There are significant fence rows on the north, west, and south of this property. I'm sorry, to the north, to the Cadentown side, and up the driveway that provide a significant buffer to the residential uses on the other side. Those will be retained, and that's denoted on the development plan that we've submitted. Again, looking down Liberty Road, and you can see the frontage that this property has. It is definitely oriented towards Liberty Road. And there are homes, townhomes along this new section of Liberty Road, but they all back up to Liberty Road, and there's no new single-family homes that have been built that face Liberty Road. One other slide, again, to show those townhomes. The exception on the single family, this is the house across the street that the staff mentioned. This is property, again, this is old property. It's been zoned R1D for many years, such as ours is. That's the property that adjoins what Ms. Phillips referred to as the sliver that's across from the property that's zoned single family R1D. Next photo is if you're standing on the northeast corner of our property, you are looking across Liberty Road and you can't see it from the lighting, but Speedway is off to the left and the parking lot, the front parking lot for the CVS is there on the right. The next photo, a couple of photos, shows you the driveway. This is from our southern end of our property looking across at CVS. That driveway is within the 50-foot strip where by Board of Adjustment Action, CVS was permitted to extend the B-1 uses 50 feet over because that property was split zoned. So that driveway in fact is zoned single-family residential R1D, but it's permitted to be used as a driveway parking area for a pharmacy. And so that's our immediate neighbor. And here's another photo of that driveway looking back from Cadentown Road. And I'm sorry these are so dark, but this one is an attempt to show the narrow frontage that our property has on Cadentown. Again, there's the drive, part of the low grass is CVS, and then to the left is a heavy tree stand, and there's a chain-link fence in there. Again, that area will not be developed except for extending the sewer, so there will be no change to the frontage of this property as it presents itself to Cadentown Road. And the construction traffic will be via that Liberty Road entrance, so there won't be construction traffic as well. A couple other photos. This is the property immediately behind us that fronts on Cadentown Road, and that's to show the tree stand. Again, it's difficult to see. Just one other photo. That's real dark. Yeah. Okay. Then the last photo is just looking across from the CVS driveway to a single-family home on Haydentown Road. Again, I apologize for those photos, but maybe if we could go back to the very first aerial that we showed. are little. Again, if you go back and look at that and you recall, you know now that Liberty Road is there. Again, the emphasis of this property is towards Liberty Road. It's dominated by that orientation by the CVS driveway and parking area and it has no connection to any residential area. So we think that those reasons dictate that it's inappropriate to have this for single family and appropriate for neighborhood business. I'm going to wrap up quickly. I want to go through just a couple of points. I don't want to miss making a point because I do want to try to make the case to you because I think there was the staff felt that we didn't make the case about the appropriateness of the business. So I want to read quickly through these to make sure I don't miss anything. And I have funding that I'll hand out in a moment and that's going to be the best way. These all are things that we've talked about. Why is this inappropriate for single family residential? I really think that's been established. I don't think anybody is going to suggest, at least I don't believe most people would suggest that an appropriate use of this property is single-family residential homes. They can't have their own driveway. They'll be facing an arterial. They're basically cut off from any other residential use. So they're sort of an isolated area that has no opportunity to be part of any neighborhood. I think that's a negative to being an appropriate single-family desirable place to live. So the size, the shape, limited frontage on Cadentown Road prevents any sort of incorporation into that neighborhood. And we also believe that you cannot overlook the fact that it's right next door to a commercial use of the driveway and parking lot for a drive-thru pharmacy. Why is commercial appropriate? Well, some of the things that are negatives for this being residential are positives for it to be commercial. Is it a positive for commercial use to be on arterial. Yes, that's where the traffic is, it's visible, that is appropriate for residential. The size and the shape, that's a negative if you're going to try to do four single family homes. But if you only want to do a small, one story office building with parking that only needs one entrance, that is certainly doable. It It can be done. It's appropriate. So the things that would be negatives for residential are positives for it to be commercial. What are we asking for? We're not asking for full-blown commercial. We're asking for restricted commercial. No drive-thru windows, no fast-food restaurants, No gas stations. The big traffic generators in the B-1 zone will not be here. But there will be the opportunity for the small business like a barber shop who only needs 2,000 square feet and maybe doesn't want to or can't be or can't afford to be in Hamburg or Brighton Place shops but might want to have a neighborhood business in the area. This is someplace where that person can actually lease some space for a neighborhood use. this can be a true neighborhood center that could be affordable to many small business people that we sometimes lose in the talk about commercial because we focus so much on the anchor. So this is a little different approach to what we're trying to do. Access, if this is commercial, then we can have a reciprocal access arrangement, which is a positive. It will allow half of the traffic from CVS to use another entrance, keep it out of the intersection of Todd's and Liberty, and keep maybe more traffic off of Cadentown Road. That's a positive. Last but not least, this is consistent with your land use principles in your comprehensive plan. Things such as to cluster-like intensity land uses, this is consistent with that. Relate the intensity of the land use to the street functional classification. We put the more intense uses next to the more intense roads. and more importantly in my view in this case is to transition effectively or buffer between different intensities of adjacent land uses. If this property develops as a restricted B1 in the fashion we propose this one-story building with the existing screening and the additional buffering that will be required to install, there will be a step down from the CVS and the other commercial uses, the Todd Center, the other heavy uses at the intersection of Todd's and Manwhore, to the residential uses behind us and to the north of us, a good buffer to the Cadentown area. Now, if this stays R1D and someone, for whatever reason, decides they want to do single-family homes, then they will have to buffer themselves significantly from the CVS. because we've already heard it's not good to put single family next to a commercial. And this is not just next to it. It's their driveway. We're basically sort of part of that operation, if you think about it that way. But this would have to be heavily buffered, again, just cutting this property off from any other residential use. So it's really an unusual situation created by old zoning, road improvements that were needed, and what is around us in the area. So we think that based on the facts unique to this property, that the commercial zoning with restrictions we proposed is appropriate and that the single family is inappropriate. And I have findings that I think I have summarized for you, and I will distribute those. We're here to answer any questions, ask questions if we have them, when you ask us a question. and we appreciate your attention and hope that you'll support this. Thank you, Ms. West. Any questions from the commission? One question. Maybe we need... Yes, sir. When you talk about your access point, Has there been any discussion on a right in and right turn only for that access because difficulty of making a left turn when you're headed back, I guess, north? I don't know. There's no median in that section of Liberty Road. I do know it creates a lot of traffic backup now. Doing peak hour and trying to make a left turn is difficult. Then you have the intensity of that commercial use. I'd be a little bit concerned about that. Hello, Kevin Phillips with Endurance Engineering. There is a turn lane. There's a middle turn lane there that will allow for some stacking, obviously, to occur for left-hand turns into the site. If you're going sort of inbound Liberty Road, there is a turn lane there available. The backup that you see now is terrible, but there is a plan to improve, and I think the utilities are being relocated right now. Now, it's at the intersection of Man of War and Liberty Road that backs all the way up past this site in the evenings. It's predominantly, it's because there's a, the right-hand lane is a straight and a right turn, so anybody going toward Andover, or toward Andover, anybody that, they sort of clog the intersection. They stop and they have to wait for the lights to turn. But that's being remedied in this, basically this section. that existed in front of this site is going to be extended all the way to the intersection. So there's a right-hand turn, a straight lane, and two left-hand turns, I believe, going on to Man of War. So with that construction, I think that what you see now will, in fact, go away. And to answer directly your question, there is a turn lane to access this site right now. Let me follow up on that. Thank you. I didn't see any turn lane on those photos. All I saw was a bike lane and a double yellow line. There's a middle lane. I don't know if I have a photo. Yeah. Here's the arrows. Yeah. It's a five-lane road in that section. It's two lanes each direction in this middle lane. Yeah. It's a little... Sorry? Well, the width of the road stays the same all the way to the intersection. The length of the turn lane, well, there obviously isn't a turn lane here. I mean, there's no arrows for a turn lane here now. It's on up because it's a left-hand turn into the Cadentown connector, I guess I'd call it, that's a little bit north of this site. But the lane is there. It would just have to be re-striped. I mean, I guess that answers the question. There's no reason for it to be striped as such as a turn lane. Now there's no entrance there. But that striped middle lane extends all the way to the intersection. The five lanes extend all the way to the intersection. So there would be that 460 feet, theoretically, of stacking distance, you know, from here to the intersection. It wouldn't be that far because they have to share, obviously. let's say half that. Some people have to turn, some of that lane would be used to turn left into the Super America side of that. The other half of it would be available for us to use in our site. Any other questions from Commissioner for the applicant? I just want, I don't know if this is best directed towards Ms. Wiseman or to staff. You have a list of prohibited uses, but has someone compiled a list of permitted uses with the conditional use zoning? I would like to see what would be allowed, excepting and recognizing that the prohibited uses would not be allowed. Staff can prepare that. I have a copy of the zone in here. If you like I could just try to read through it or do you want to wait until the staff marks one up? Okay, we can just, I'll let them do it. I'm sorry. Marie. Marie. Ms. Wiseman, working on your argument of step-down zoning, which I understand, if I were living in one of the townhomes at 2947 area or the area to the left of the red building there, I would like to be on the veterinarian end of that building and not the subway end of that building. Is there any way that we have an assurance that the less busy traffic side is on that end of the building? Do you have any control over your tenant? In other words, put the higher intensity use next to CVS and just step down within your building. At the same time, if we do agree to this zone change, we're creating a domino effect for 2963 Liberty Road. And is there any provisions for buffering between the backside of your red building and 2963 so that those potential residences are buffered? Since we are thinking about or considering changing the comprehensive plan and its intent, all of a sudden we've got more issues. That's 2963 Cadentown Road. Yes, yes. Because they were under the assumption that they would have residential use behind them. There, as I mentioned, there is an extensive tree fence line that extends on those. You mean fence row trees. There's fence row trees here that you could see in the photos. There is also required a 15-foot landscape buffer along that property line and along that property line, zone-to-zone screening, that we have to screen as well pursuant to the ordinance. So this area, as I say, there's not going to be, it's not going to change much from what it is now. The 15-foot? Yes. Yeah, I'm sorry. That's awfully small. Correct. I think this would probably be the area where we would do, I'm sure we would consider doing more significant buffering in this area to enhance the trees that are there. But we already are required to do a 15-foot buffer, and I don't know what the contents of that is for zone-to-zone screening. Because? We appreciate that, yes. Now, what about the intensity of use within the red building? Okay. I'll have to talk to Mr. Joy. I don't have an answer for you. If I could speak with you. Okay, go ahead. Hi, Gary Joy, Joy and Associates, Argus, Hydro Development LLC. The veterinarian at this point wants that end of the building, the one you're talking about, the one closest to the residential. Good. But that deal's not done, so if it didn't happen, I'm not sure how we could define less. Intense uses. I've never done that before. But open to it, yes. But you understand. Yes, I understand. Yes. Alright, are there any other questions from the Commission to, for the applicant? If not, we'll do, we're going to do public comment first. People in favor of the zone change? People opposed to the loan change? Yes, sir. Can I tell a show? My name is Abdul Qadir Al-Alami, and I own the 2963 Haydentown Road now. From Liberty to every other week, we have a different address. Years back, I come over here and spoke that whatever CVS done, whatever you approved of them to do as a road that was a conditional use, that property is still RD1. And I wanted to stay that way. When they talk about their neighbor's CVS, they forgot about me, and I got the biggest portion of the whole area. Whatever they use in CVS in their driveway coming on Cadentown Road, they go cut through my yard and go. If there is two cars over there, they don't want to wait until they go through the grass. Why should I put up with all that? When they built the townhouses before, they were supposed to put us a sidewalk. Never happened. Now they're coming up with this. The property is still for sale, so we might approve the rezoning now. And this client don't get it. Somebody else get it, and we'll come up with another different situation. I was living over there by myself in a big area get up in the morning with the cows beside me they developed all this stuff it's gone away, I've been over there for the past 20 years I loved it over there now I can't breathe because if I open my window somebody from the top window will be looking at my bedroom so the windows have to be shut all the time they're telling me they want 15 foot zoning 15 foot for what? the tree is more than 15 foot the fence roll I like for them to see them cleaning whatever on their side so I can see the other side of the road from my property I can't, why? because the weeds is taller than me so before you approve or disapprove, please just pay a little bit attention I like to stay over there the way I am, I don't want nobody closer to me and I don't want no businesses closer to me it's as bad as I want to say it. I was in the country. I'm not in the country anymore. They surrounded me all over the place. I like to stay at least with that little portion of my place by myself. I don't want business today. And a dog runs tomorrow and comes into my yard. My dog ran. I was overseas. They sold it. Why? Because I couldn't come and get it. It have a chip, it have everything. Now these people comes in with dogs and everything. Their client comes in to buy my place to start with. I don't want to say my place. I want to leave it as it is. I want to leave it residential. Maybe later on I'll build me a mansion on it when I hear it rich. But I like what I got now. so please just see what it is I understood at the time that 50 foot buffer zone between me and the business now they're saying 15 and 25 foot, that means that means on the other side it's going to be on my windows I mean I'm not going to be able to go out in my backyard that's a little bit a little bit too much and the road where we talk and we have a turning road no we don't have a turning lane The turning lane end wherever it comes into Caden Town Road, where they have the cut in the road to get us separate. After that, there is no turning lane. If they're going to restruct that road, maybe. But you need to go over there in the evening and see how rough it is. Sometimes we sit over there for 30 minutes for the traffic to go, because that light stops over there and that's it. city can't put no more lights I've already talked to the city about that intersection coming in Todd's Road to join Liberty Road if you are going right Tower of Manowar it's fine you go if you go left sometimes you wait 15-20 minutes so if they're going to open another section in the road God knows whether we're going to be able to get to our homes or not we might have to take a different route to come into the house. Please just take that in consideration. And thanks a lot. Thank you very much. Is there anyone else in the audience who would like to speak to or against this project? If not, we'll close the public part of it and then we'll have a rebuttal. Okay, petitioners, comments? I just want to make three points in response. With regard to people cutting through, getting on his lawn, again, with the new entrance on Liberty Road and the opportunity to connect the CVS, again, Wilbur Smith says at least half of the traffic that's at CVS now will use Liberty Road. So there's going to be some percentage of any cars that are leaving or entering CVS on Cadentown Road now that will have Liberty Road, and they won't be back there. The intrusion of taller buildings, people looking down at him, those are townhouses. If this were a single family or townhouse, we would have two stories as well, and it might have the same issue. This, of course, is going to be a one-story office building. There will be no windows in the back, only emergency access. Offices of these kinds of businesses are pretty much, once people leave as offices, they're gone for the day. There may be a sandwich shop that could be open longer, but they won't be in the backyard, as you would if you had children and dogs in the backyard. I've heard that argument before. people don't want to back up to kids and dogs. So I think there will be less activity throughout the week in the back if this is this type of office use and it won't have the obtrusion of the tall buildings that are the problem now from the townhouses on the other side. That's all. Thank you, Ms. Wiseman. Is there any public rebuttal to that? If not, we'll have staff. Ms. Phillips, to answer your question, I've gone through both the P1 and the B1 zones And all of the uses are allowed until you get to number five on the P1 list, which starts with beauty shops, barbershops. And Ms. Wiseman has suggested for her applicant to delete the rest of that line, which includes the shoe repair, self-service laundry, et cetera. The first four uses in the P1. This started with P1. I need to show you P1. Excuse me, Tracy. Yeah. What page is that on? This is 8-43 of your zoning ordinance. This is the P1 zone, I'm sorry. The first use proposed to be prohibited is funeral parlors, which is number six. Banks, general offices, research and development, schools, libraries, museums, art galleries would all be allowed. Then funeral parlors would be excluded. Medical dental offices would be allowed in clinics. Telephone exchanges would be allowed. Studios for work and teaching of fine arts. Community centers and private clubs, churches and Sunday schools would be allowed. Again, hospitals and nursing homes would be a deletion per the proposed conditional zoning restrictions, allowing ticket and travel agencies, computer and data processing centers, kindergartens, removing cable television system signal distribution centers, allowing dwelling units with the appropriate location. Athletic club facilities, they're proposing to limit to just 4,000 square feet. We move up to number 20 at the top of the next column, deleting assisted living facilities. And then the applicant has proposed deleting several of the conditional uses in the P1, which are the drive-throughs, parking lots, mining. And if we flip to the next page, again, assisted living facilities. In the B1 zone, this property would still be able to accommodate establishments for retail, sale of food, items, as well as other general merchandise, and allow restaurants. And then I'm sorry, we get to the deletion of the shoe repair, laundry services, automobile service stations, parking lots, and repair of household appliances. Then again, allowing retail of nursery products, allowing quick copy services, but deleting outdoor miniature golf courses, deleting circuses and carnivals and indoor theaters, but still allowing rental of equipment. Dwelling units again, deleting arcades, pawn shops, and banquet facilities, but again, leaving athletic club facilities. And the accessory or conditional uses that we're deleting are somewhat similar to P1, but you would also add in there self-service car washes as a deletion and restaurants with live entertainment. I believe that's it. Drive-thrus would be a deletion as well. So that would include for banks, restaurants, any type of service with the drive-through part would not be allowed. Does that help? Okay. The staff just wanted to point out a few rebuttal remarks. In terms of transitional land use, the comprehensive plan does not dictate what that transition would be when you have a commercial and a residential zone very near each other, there's a range of uses that could be transitional. It wouldn't need to be a commercial. It could be a higher density residential. It could be just a professional office zone that could be more appropriate as a transition there. The staff just does not feel that the commercial, expanding that commercial zone, is appropriate at this location. And then the shared access with the pharmacy is a concern. The applicant has proposed to restrict uses on the property via conditional zoning restrictions, but they also acknowledge that the adjacent parcel, the CVS parcel, could at any time redevelop with a more intense use, and that would allow for higher traffic counts to travel through this parcel onto Liberty Road and could significantly change the development pattern and the traffic traffic pattern in this location without the Planning Commission's approval because anyone could go to building inspection and receive a building permit for that existing B1 property. So there would be no need for the Commission to review or approve any change on this existing CVS parcel. That's it for the staff. Thank you, Tracy. Thank you. At this time, we'll close the hearing part and I'll turn this over to the Commission. I guess the first thing that I'm always very reluctant to support changing a residential to a commercial, but having been in this area, it does not look or feel residential in the least. It's commercial as it can be, and with all due respect to the landowner behind there, I sympathize for you, but I can't see how the parcel that they're discussing here could be used residential. I don't think there's any way that you could do that feasibly. I certainly wouldn't want to have a single-family home there with a driveway onto Liberty. There's not room to back up to Cadentown through there, whether it's single-family or multifamily. So for me, I think the case has been made that the existing zoning is inappropriate and the proposed zoning is appropriate. And with the idea that this is, with the conditions placed, a stepping stone, a transitional from the CVS commercial situation and the others in the area to buffer and then go to the residential. So it's not a perfect scenario. And once again, to the citizen that spoke, I sympathize with your situation. But I don't see this as a residential area anymore. This, to me, is a commercial area. Okay, thank you. Mr. Day. I agree with Mr. Brewer, and I think I'd like to add that if, in fact, as Tracy pointed out, the CVS changed hands in any way and it became more intense, that is a reason, in my opinion, for there not to be residential directly behind there because it would be a more difficult situation for those who live there if in fact it did happen. Now there's no reason to think it's going to, but the possibility I think is always there. Frank? If you look at the R1D that the man in the audience owns and the R1D that you're wanting to change to a B1, you would have access out on Old Liberty Road or Caden Town Road, whatever you want to call it. That changes the whole picture of the thing. But we're not doing that today. We're just doing the one piece of property. My concern is opposite from what the applicant has presented here. I think if you let traffic come out on Liberty Road, the new Liberty Road, try to make a left-hand turn or a right-hand turn, and you're going to take half of CVS's out there, you're going to take a bad situation and make it worse. Maybe they can stripe it. Maybe they can make a turn lane. Maybe they can. Maybe they can't. But if you go out there at 5 o'clock in the afternoon, you don't go any which way up and down that road. And to bring that traffic through and turn it loose out there, whether it wants to go left, whether it wants to go right, and I agree with you, it'll be a cut-through. It has to be. But the only way I could see you could do that R1D is if both those pieces of property were developed, that changes the whole picture because it comes out on Caden Tant Lane. So to answer you, Patrick, you know, they are both R1D right now. So that's why I have a concern about doing the business part of it. Today? I guess I would follow up on that. I just have some concerns about traffic, regardless of what it is, commercial or R1, accessing onto Liberty Road. I think it's a problem, and regardless of whether you have a permit to do it or not, I think it creates a big problem. I'd rather see it eventually develop on Cadentown Road if we're going to do this. I am concerned about the intense use of commercial. I mean, if you have to buffer it to the extent to keep it from the neighborhood, then obviously it's not that best of a use for the neighborhood to begin with. So I'd rather see something keeping more in line with what would be suitable to the neighborhood. But traffic's my biggest concern about doing anything out here now until we get it off of Liberty Road. Any other comments? All right, again, thank you, Mr. Chairman. It's been on all this time. Oh, my goodness. That's good. Maybe that's a good thing. I'm going to agree with the traffic situation coming out on Liberty Road for one. Also, in what Patrick was saying, he mentioned it's not a perfect scenario. I don't think it is a perfect scenario, but right now I think changing it would make the area possibly worse. would provide, I think someone mentioned, a domino-type effect and change the whole area from residential to commercial. And for that reason, I'm going to be voting to keep it as is. Any other comments? I've got a question for Jeff, and this is going to be one maybe he can answer or not. Could you? We shall see. Okay. And I know this is a state road, and I don't know if you were in on any of the preliminary or when they redesigned this, but I guess my observation is that there isn't any access off of the new Liberty Road until you get down to where they turn into the residential, where the school is. Is that right? Or Cadentown Road. There's a little street called Mickey Lane that connects over to the Cadentown and old Liberty Road, and that's what people use back in that area. Okay. Okay. But as I've come from Manowar, I know you have to get on Old Todd's Road to get any of that development, like where the Shell Station is. And if you're going to go to Super America, you also have to get on, like, a little service road to get down there. There's no direct thing. I didn't know if that was done for a purpose or this. That's the way it just all worked out. To my knowledge, that is just the way it all worked out. When Manowar was put in, I guess it was called Bryant Road at that time, was already there. and I don't know if you look at the map, the spacing between Manowar and Old Todd Road is probably not, it doesn't meet the 465 feet that they're recommending for their entrance to be. So it's already a tough situation and so compared to what else is going on there, we really didn't think too much about the additional access point. As far as it being a problem, it could potentially take some of the heat off of the intersection that is giving us a problem now. Thank you. Anybody else have any questions? Okay, thank you. I just wanted to weigh in. I don't necessarily agree that this is a change to the region that was anticipated. We knew that Liberty Road was going to be expanded, but until you actually physically make that infrastructure improvement, there's really no way through computer generation or otherwise to get a true sense as to what the final product will be. So this improvement was completed in 2008. We approved the comprehensive plan in 2007. I would say that we did not anticipate the changed sense of place that exists in this region. So that's point number one. Point number two is I have real problems with the fact that the Board of Adjustment allowed the access easement or access, rather, for CVS Pharmacy on a separate piece of property. And I feel that it's almost a situation of creep, of maybe domino effect, where we've got a commercial land use that's just slowly encroaching onto this piece of property. And I would have no problems rezoning the CVS access easement, or that piece of property that serves as the access easement for a CVS pharmacy. And I haven't even thought far enough ahead to anticipate what the traffic impacts would be on Liberty Road. I'm not as familiar with that section of the county as you all are, so I'll just rely on your judgment. Any other comments, questions, Jen? I would have to agree that I do not think that this is a good piece of property for residential housing. This is kind of a piece of property that got stuck and which dropped on us. And I guess I like to look at residential housing as a good place to live, and I'm not sure that this particular parcel would provide that. But it does seem to me that it does fit in with the B1 better than the R1D. And if you talk about it creeping, it doesn't have far to creep because it's all developed around it except for one piece of property that we hear is going to stay as R1D. So I would be in favor of the zone change. Any other comments or questions? Is somebody ready for motion or? Mr. Chairman? Thank you. I move that we accept the staff recommendation and move this for disapproval. Is there a second? All right. Does everyone understand the motion? All right. All in favor, please signify by saying aye. Aye. All opposed by a like sign? No. I guess we better do a roll call. Mr. Holmes? Aye. Ms. Richardson? Ms. Whitman? Mr. Penn? Mr. Owens? Yes. Ms. Rush Phillips? Ms. Copeland? No. Mr. Brewer? No. Mr. Day? It's four yes, five no. Thank you. What does that motion need to say? Just approve the zone change. It's complicated. Commission would need, if you do, if there was a motion to approve it, the commission would need to entertain findings. I will boldly try to make a motion. I would like to move that we approve the rezoning for, is it 2981? Is that the CVS access? That we approve that rezoning from R1D to B1. and I'm intentionally not including that other parcel in my motion. Ms. Phillips, that's actually 3097 is the CVS property that has the currently built drive access. 3097 Old Todd's Road. Okay, I'm going by Ms. Wiseman's. For the Board of Adjustment approved the commercial access drive is a portion of 3097 Old Todd's Road. Okay. 2981 is the vacant parcel. Okay. It is my intent to include the access, the CVS 50-foot lot for the rezoning. And the reasons for this rezoning is that there has been an unanticipated change of a physical, social, or economic nature within the immediate area since the comprehensive was adopted in the early 2007 and I also believe that the existing zoning is inappropriate and the proposed rezoning is more in agreement with the comprehensive plan. Now does that include the list of the things that we can and can't do there, is that part of the, okay. Are you asking for zoning only for part of this? Or just this portion. Is that your motion? The drive aisle. Does everybody understand that? Thank you. The way that I understand it, the Board of Adjustment allowed CVS to build that access on property that was zoned residential. I'm trying to make that right and rezone that so that the access for CVS, which is a commercial use, has a commercially zoned access. All right. I mean, I don't know. We didn't pass the first, I mean, since the original motion didn't pass, I was assuming that everything was included. But if you want to break that out, then we'll have to. Lynn, would your motion be for approval of this drive access but disapproval of the remainder? Well, I'm just saying I'm not trying to figure it out. We've already disapproved the motion to. I guess you are right. We didn't approve anything. We just disapproved it. So now we can go forward. Okay. I got you. All right. Lynn has a motion. Is there a second? I'll second. Now we'll have discussion. The gentleman who just spoke, his property is owned residential, and all of the property that is to the northwest of this parcel is owned residential, as is the property across Liberty Road. The CVS is the only commercially zoned property there. Alright, everybody understand what the motion was? I'm not talking about intent or anything like that. I'm talking about do you understand what the motion is? All right. The motion is to approve the small parcel where the drive-thru is out to Cadentown Road as B1. There's a motion and a second. All in favor, please signify by saying. That is the question. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. Just to clarify, the majority of the property in question right now would remain residential? Yes. Okay. Okay. I have a procedural question. If the intent of your motion is to rezone the strip to B1 and leave the other one as R1D, I think the motion needs to say that because we have an application. I think you have to approve part and disapprove part, and there has to be findings that support both of those results. I assume we do this through two motions. And, I mean, as far as the two parties. And it's not the intent of her motion. Well, I mean, her motion was to do one. If we're going to do the other, it would have to come from another motion, I assume. Again, this to me is confusing because the people who are petitioning us to make this change are doing it for a reason. People who are opposing it are opposing it for a reason. This, to me, does not address either one of those. I understand your intent now. I don't think that's the right way to go about it. If the intent is to redress the mistake that the Board of Adjustment made, it would be to rezone it or to take away the conditions that allow them to do that. But I think what's on the table right now does not address either of the parties involved to their satisfaction. So I would oppose it. Okay. I'm just going under the thing that the original motion was defeated. So that puts us back to square one. So Lynn has made a motion. It's been seconded. If there's any further discussion on that motion. I'd just like to know what the motion is. The motion is to rezone. I don't know what the address is because I have a couple of different addresses. And 3097 Old Todd's Road, a portion of 3097 Old Todd's Road, the property that has been built as the access for the CVS pharmacy, which is on the adjoining property, and to leave the balance of the property, the other address, 2981 Cadentown Lane, in the R1D zoning classification. And the reasons are provided, the reasons I already stated. All right. So we'll be able to do this with one motion, I assume. All right, everyone, Mr. Penn seconded the motion. I think Mr. Owen seconded the motion. Any other questions? If not, I'll call the question all in favor. Please signify by saying aye. Aye. All opposed by a like sign? We'll poll the, please. Mr. Holmes? Ms. Richardson? Ms. Whitman? Mr. Penn? Mr. Owens? Yes. Ms. Phillips? Ms. Copeland? Mr. Brewer? Mr. Day? Six yes, three no. All right, the motion passes. Thank you. motion was to approve a portion and disapprove a portion. There could be a motion to reconsider by someone from the prevailing side. No. Thank you. No, somebody from the prevailing, if you voted yes on the last motion, you could move to reconsider. Whoever voted yes could. Who could? Well, on the procedure rules, if there was a motion, one motion, and the yeses prevailed, someone from the yeses can move to reconsider that motion and then put another motion. You don't have to, but you do have to write it. All right, I'm going to do this. I'm going to roll. I ask everybody here, do we understand the motion? We made the motion. We vote on the motion. We'll take it up some other time. Do that. Motion stands. Next item. Now you need to have a motion on the development. Are you going to say something? All right. Is there a motion on? Mr. King had to comment. I was just going to say, I want to be clear on one point. The commission has taken an action on all the property that was submitted before you. If you're going to reconsider, I think you'd better do that today and now. Otherwise, we are going to forward this recommendation, which was a final action by this body, to the full urban county council for their action. That's what we are duty bound to do. So I think, again, if there's any idea that you want to reconsider any part of what you just did, someone from the prevailing side has to make a motion to put that before the commission. that motion would have to be seconded, and the commission would have to first vote to reconsider before the floor would be open for a different motion on that property. I voted yes on the last time because I wanted to clean it up, and now I want to clean up this property. I think that there are enough yes votes here, and we would be negligent to not handle this and not send this on to the council. Well, I mean, we're going to send it on to the council one way or the other. I know, but let's not send a mess. So I make a motion that we take the red box piece of property. The remaining property. The remaining property which is probably 2981 Catantown Road. Marie, first we've got it. You need to make a motion that we reconsider. Okay. I make a motion that we reconsider. Then if that motion is seconded and passed, then we'll go this. Does it have to be seconded by someone, anybody or just somebody? Seconded. All right. The motion has been made and seconded. Okay. All right. Now we're going to reconsider the motion we just did. We need to vote on the reconsideration. Okay, excuse me. All right. All in favor that we reconsider the motion, please signify by saying aye. Aye. Opposed by like, sir? No. Okay. Poll the committee. Mr. Holmes? Ms. Richardson? Ms. Whitman? Mr. Penn? Mr. Owens? No. Ms. Rose Phillips? Ms. Copeland? Yes. Mr. Brewer? Yes. Mr. Day? Ms. 5-no, 4-yes. Okay, so we do not reconsider the motion. We move on. Motion for reconsideration failed. We will report the original action of the commission to the council for their action. We go on to the subdivision part of the development plan. You'll need a motion for the development plan. Someone moved that we approve the development plan or disprove it. The commission recommended postponement. I don't know what to process since we didn't do the zone change. Do we go for postponement? All right. I'm going to wait. Chris? May I suggest this might be a way out of this predicament. Since a portion of the zone change was recommended for approval and is reflected on the development plan, that you take action on the development plan to approve it with a condition that the area that you recommended this approval of would be subject to further review if the Council rezoned it. But that the portion that you did recommend would be approved subject to the conditions on the development plan. Go ahead, Mark. Just make a motion. Or you could postpone it pending final council action. Mr. Chairman, I move that we postpone the development plan at this time. Is there a second? All in favor, please signify by saying aye. Opposed by a like sign? Okay. Thank you. What's next on our agenda here? Sure. Yes, let's take a five-minute break. It's probably time for that. Thank you. Okay, I hope we're ready for Jimmy. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. We're going to make this the easy part of the meeting, right? No contingency. We hope so. Next item on your agenda appears at the top of page three. This is Zota 2007-5. These are text amendments related to infill and redevelopment that affect a number of chapters of our zoning ordinance. Myself, Mr. Emmons, and Ms. Wade all have presentations for you on this topic this afternoon. At this point, I'll introduce Jimmy to kick it out for us. Thank you. I believe, as Bill mentioned, this is in your notebooks behind tab one. I would like to enter before I start entering anything for the record I do want to say on a personal note although the entire staff participated in writing these zoning ordinance text amendments and there are many other people and staff in other divisions I would like to personally thank Rachel Phillips, Barbara Rackers and Tracy Wade for helping us all do the heavy lifting and closing ourselves inside a room and trying to work out all of these text amendments that we're bringing for you today. They are much improved because of the work of those three individuals, and I wanted to thank them. Now for the record, I do want to go ahead and submit for the record a copy of the In-Film Redevelopment Steering Committee's final report. And even though we didn't say it in particular in any of our findings in this staff report, Just on goal eight of our comprehensive plan, which is related to infilm redevelopment, one of our objectives is to continue to review and revise the existing zoning and subdivision regulations on an ongoing basis to ensure that they are conducive to infilm redevelopment, including streamlining the development review process. And that's what we're doing today. I just kind of wanted to keep that in mind as we were looking at these overall zoning ordinance text amendments. We have broke our staff presentation up. As Bill mentioned, there will be Tracy, Bill, and I will all be presenting different parts to you. First, I'm going to do an introduction and kind of set the stage for that. Then we're going to break up the zoning ordinance text amendment into topics. at the end of each topic will allow the time for the Planning Commission for any questions, answers, if there's any comments. In case somebody walks in behind me, I don't think we have any audience members here for this today. And also this would allow the Planning Commission to make motions on the topics that were just discussed. That way you can kind of break down this complicated series of text amendments as it goes on. First, oh, there's why I'm going backwards. What we're doing, we are proposing regulatory changes. The focus is to use a wiser and more efficient use of our urban service area, but still provide appropriate guidance for infill and redevelopment of those new uses. It's really a balancing act, and we believe that we have achieved that. I'm not going to read this one to you, but the five topics that we are generally talking about, first we'll talk about mixed use, then changes we're making in parking regulations. We're going to talk about some minor changes and clarifications right in the middle of the presentation. We're going to talk about changes to our ND1 where we're increasing the flexibility of that and also allowing the new use of accessory dwelling units. Why are we doing it now? Because as I mentioned in our comprehensive plan, we are committed to periodically review the ordinances. Since 2000, this is the third round of major infillum redevelopment text amendments that has come before this body. And each time I believe that our zoning ordinance has improved and got us infillum redevelopment that we consider more desirable. This is the culmination of two years' worth of work. Although there are many things that we looked at, we looked at the management partner recommendations, we looked at the 2040 Commission Report, the three major things that were looked at for this was the recommendations of the infill and redevelopment steering committee, the recently completed non-residential infill and redevelopment study, and several of the smart growth planning principles. Because I don't think that we've ever really talked about the smart growth planning principles, I wanted to spend just a little bit of time talking about that. It's a group of public, private, and non-governmental agencies. It's a really great website. You can just Google search smart growth. Just a couple of their partners, just some names that you probably recognize, the American Farmland Trust, the American Planning Association, the Congress for New Urbanism, Fannie Mae, the National Association of Realtors, Rails to Trails Conservancy, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. It is quite an extensive list. And they have taken what is smart growth and put it into ten principles. And I'm going to very quickly go through Smart Growth's ten principles, and we're not going to do this each time, but just encourage everybody to kind of keep these ten things in mind as you're thinking about the principles. Yes. These are nationally recognized Smart Growth principles. I've got them from the Smart Growth Network. I put the source smartgrowth.org online. I don't think that we have officially adopted these as any of our principles, but as we go through all ten of these principles, Lexington is a shining example of smart growth. Mixed land uses, compact building design, range of housing, opportunities and choices, You know, walkable neighborhoods, distinctive communities, preserve open space and farmland. Our urban service area boundary is the first urban service area boundary and a shining example of that. Strengthen development towards existing communities. Once again, our urban service area boundary is the prime example of that. Provide a variety of transportation choices. Make development decisions predictable, fair, and cost effective. That's what we're doing today with these text amendments, and encourage community and stakeholder collaboration. That's what we've been doing for the past two years as we've gone through the numerous meetings with stakeholders to bring you these text amendments that we're bringing today. The first one of those that they have is mixed uses, and that's going to be our first topic today. I'm going to turn the microphone over to Mr. Salee to talk about the proposed changes that we have for our mixed uses in Fayette County. The IR Steering Committee is an ad hoc committee of the Urban County Council. It was created, I think, in 1998. Mr. King's not here. He was one of the original members, but it has persisted. It actually was the driving force that got us our first residential infill and redevelopment study in 2000. And then in 2001, we adopted the first, probably the biggest change that we had in our zoning ordinance that we'd had in 20, 25 years. And that all came out of that. The IR Steering Committee has, as time goes on, it has always been there as both a sounding board for policy changes and also recommendations to the Planning Commission and to the Council. Since it's an ad hoc committee, there was a resurgence of interest in that after 2007 with the Planning Commission's decision not to expand the urban service area boundary. And with the new council members coming on, there was a surgence. The standing members of the IR Steering Committee went from about 8 to about 40 in 2007. And, of course, it's dwindled back down as we finish our task forces and everything like that. But the IR Steering Committee, and I presented this to you last time, made recommendations for, I believe, 110. It's over 100 different action items. And these text amendments fulfill several of those recommendations towards moving towards better infill and redevelopment. It's not mayor appointed. I don't remember, I don't know exactly how the ad hoc committee was originally created, but it has morphed over time, but it has served its purpose of making sure that changes get implemented and steering policy decisions. I think it's a council ad hoc committee, but I don't, ad hoc, you know, it's as needed, and we've needed it for the past eight years. Yeah, council members have basically invited, there's not a motion, there's not a council motion that creates specific members, if that makes any sense. It's more than that. We've looked at, we've had planning commission members on there, we've had council members, we've had people from the development community, people from neighborhood associations. We've had some of our members that are still faithfully come to the meetings on a regular basis have been on there since its inception. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. It's my privilege to bring you the staff report on the mixed-use zone changes that are a significant portion of this text amendment that's before you this afternoon. The changes that in this section deal with mixed uses are primarily to Article 28 of the Zoning Ordinance, where our three mixed-use zones are. They also have components in the Definitions section in the P1 and B1 sections, in Article 12, which is B6P, and also in Article 26, which is the tree canopy standards. One of the most significant changes in this text amendment is to broaden the locational criteria where mixed use zones may be requested here in the urban county. They would significantly change that by expanding them beyond New Circle Road, which is the current limit for these zones. And also the categories, the locational criteria of our mixed use zones under this text amendment would include medium density residential areas and high density residential areas as well. It's significant though in reviewing the latter change where medium and high density land uses are going to be eligible for consideration as mixed use, another portion of this text amendment will further limit those, if they were to be mixed use, to where no more than 50 percent of their floor area could be commercial, which is a change from the current mixed use standards, and also that they would only be eligible if the minimum density recommended by the comprehensive plan is being proposed. So it is a caveat to adding medium and high density into the mix of where mixed use can be considered beyond New Circle Road. There are also some other locational changes proposed to our mixed use zone. One of the significant ones is to expand the roadway locations where these are eligible. three of the roadways that will become eligible under the 6th Amendment, Georgetown Road, Citation Boulevard, and Manowar Boulevard. Many of the other arterials in the community currently are eligible for mixed use. And, of course, most of those areas are beyond New Circle Road, with the exception of the small portion of Georgetown Road that also is being expanded under this text amendment. Another change to the MU1, the smallest zone available for mixed use, which is for lots less than a half acre in size, has to expand its locational criteria to also include collector streets, whereas today they're only eligible for arterial roadways. Another significant change proposed to the mixed use standards deals with third story setback, which is also called the bulk plane and has been for a number of years. Currently, all the MU zones require the third floor of a structure to be set back from the right of way. One of the hallmarks of the MU zone is to have a zero-foot setback. However, the third floor and above must be at least 15 feet back from the right-of-way. Under this proposal, that would still be applicable in two cases. One, if the street is narrow, meaning 50 feet or less of right-of-way, or secondly, if it's directly across the street from a residential use. Otherwise, under this text amendment, there would be the ability for a mixed-use building not to have to follow that setback for the third and above floors, be if it were adjacent to a wide street or across from a non-residential land use. This primarily, I believe, has to do with the fact we've had many variance requests for the third floor and above, I believe in all but one mixed-use zone application that we have seen. Another related change, as I mentioned, to the hallmark of mixed-use is that it has to have a zero-foot setback for a significant portion of the building. Under this text amendment, the Planning Commission, if the commission requires additional sidewalk width adjacent to the right-of-way, may allow that building then to begin its setback rather than forcing it to be at the right-of-way. Another significant change with this text amendment proposal that's before you today. I think we've used up the batteries. There we go. The height requirements are proposed to change in the mixed use three zone. This is our most intensive mixed use zone, only eligible for properties three acres or larger in size. It would allow buildings at the intersection of arterials with another arterial or an arterial street with a collector to go an additional ten feet in height, up to 80 feet in height by right. Currently that is listed at 70 feet. 70 feet would remain in locational criteria other than that circumstance. There are other changes throughout the ordinance that's before you dealing with mixed use. One is to reduce the minimum lot size in MU1. We have had some interest in properties less than 7,500 square feet in size, prohibiting drive-through windows in MU1 zones, inserting tree canopy requirements for mixed-use zones into Article 26 of the ordinance and providing a definition in Article 1-11 that mixed-use is defined as MU1, 2, or 3 zones. Other changes that are proposed to promote mixed-use in P1 and B1 would be to lessen the open space requirement in those zones, to have it from 20 percent to 10 percent in those circumstances. and also for the first time to allow residential use in our planned shopping center B6P zone and to establish an off-street parking requirement that will encourage the use of shared parking in those particular zones. I believe that summarizes the extent of the changes in this text that relate to promoting additional mixed uses. finding number nine on your staff report and as it is listed on your agenda is provided for the adoption of these changes as part of this text amendment. That is, it will increase the potential number of properties that could request a mixed-use zone, slightly increasing the density available within those zones, and also to reduce the number and type of variances that have been consistently requested in mixed-use zones. With that, before we move on to the next section of this text amendment, I would be glad to answer any questions from the commission about the text amendments related to mixed use. Marie? When you have residential and commercial uses today, Yes. The question you've asked has been debated a time or two in front of the Planning Commission over the years. In our mixed-use zones, we addressed that question early on in the adoption of those zones. And how the mixed-use zones are established is, provided that there is at least one building that has a mixture of uses within the building, generally you would consider retail or office low, residential above. Then there is not an automatic requirement that the remainder of the buildings also be mixed-use. At 80 feet, potentially it could even be eight. I think seven is probably more likely, personally. It could, yes. I think that's a six-story building, if memory serves me. Bill, kind of as a follow-up, as far as the buildings are concerned, you're talking about some commercial, some retail, some whatever, and residential above. Did you say just for one building, not necessarily another building on the lot or in the area? The mixed-use zone requires at least one building, and generally it is considered the largest building on, let's say, a development plan, to be mixed within that building. Beyond that, then an applicant at least has the ability to request segregated-use buildings in addition to that. Is there any requirement percentage-wise so much as far as floor space? Yes. So much residential in a mixed use, so much residential, so much other? Yes. Except for the 50-50 change that I mentioned earlier, there has always been a limitation of 80-20. Currently it's 85-15 on the spectrum, where mixed use has to be within that spectrum of at least 15 percent one use, 85 percent the other. The exception was made for large projects and commercial use years ago, where if you have a minimum amount of commercial, generally 10,000 square feet or 15,000 square feet, the percentages no longer apply. That's considered a minimum amount of mix. Any other questions for Bill? Just so I'm clear, I'm trying to think of some examples that are contemporary and appropriate to this. The distillery district, for instance, there are several different buildings that may not have a vertical integration, but a horizontal integration. this amendment would allow separate structures to have separate uses, separate and distinctive uses or does each building have to have the mixture of uses? Mr. Most of the buildings in the distillery district are zoned industrial and would fall either under the provisions of industrial mixed use in I-1 or adaptive reuse that the Commission I believe just adopted in the last six months. None of the changes that I've described will affect those restrictions. There still will be development plan requirements for those. I believe the concept is also that as long as one building is mixed, other buildings may be segregated, but I would need to have Jimmy describe to you in more detail that particular answer. That's my understanding. Exclude the, never mind the distillery district because I forgot that it was industrial zoning, but this does allow a horizontal mixture. No? As Mr. Silly was saying, then you would still have to meet your minimum, President, you would have to meet your minimum mix and then you could have a horizontal. 50 in a principal building and then you could mix it up on separate structures? 50-50 if the land you're interested in that is before you for rezoning is recommended for medium or high density residential. If it's recommended for mixed use or non-residential can go to 8515. Yes. Okay. Commission may wish to consider whether or not to adopt this portion of the change at this time or move along to the next topic. Either one's. I think while we've done this, why don't we just deal with these as they come up. So if there are any questions, let's get them taken care of before we move to the next one. If not, we'll entertain a motion to approve the section. I think the way that we've done this and the way that we've got our record keeping going, I don't think the Commission needs to specifically say exactly which articles. I think since we're doing this topically, I think if the Planning Commission wants to approve the changes presented to them thus far, with the findings that the staff is proposing, I believe that would be an appropriate motion, and we can keep that in our record. Okay. Eric, is that understood? Somebody make a motion with you? I make a motion that we accept the infill and redevelopment zoning ordinance tax amendments that staff's done through Draft 5, presented to us on 5-2809, in accordance with staff's findings. Second? All in favor, please signify by saying aye. Aye. Opposed by the likes of? Pass this. Let's go to the next one. All right, our next section where we've divided up the IR text amendment deals with parking reductions. And these changes can be found in several sections of the ordinance, Article 7, 8, 16, and 28. The first change, I would say that the changes dealing with parking are kind of divided into five general areas, the first of which deals with restaurant parking. Currently, restaurant parking is set at one parking space per four seats. Okay, one space for every four seats in a restaurant. That often creates some confusion or difficulty for developments if they decide to provide outdoor seating for their development, either a fast food restaurant, a cafe, downtown, whatnot. If you have to provide the parking required at the normal rate, it becomes a little bit excessive. and we've found that with the outdoor or with the new smoking ban that there's been more requests for outdoor seating to accommodate that particular desire to smoke. So outdoor seating has increased over the last two years and we've found that there doesn't need to be as much parking for outdoor seating as for the indoor seating. And so the staff is recommending a change to P1, B1, B3, B6P, which incorporates our CC in the expansion area, to reduce outdoor seating parking required for outdoor seating to one-half of the normal requirement. This also applies to bars and cocktail lounges and restaurants with live entertainment and to adaptive reuse projects. In terms of the mixed-use zones, the staff felt that no parking should be required for outdoor seating, that that should just be eliminated to simplify and just make restaurants more, just to accommodate restaurants more easily in the mixed-use zones. The second primary change for parking reductions involves the mixed-use zones. And in the mixed-use one zone, currently you cannot, there's not a provision for shared parking like there is in the mixed-use two and three zones. So the staff has proposed a reduction in the requirement for parking for residential units. Currently, it's set at one parking space per residential unit, and the staff is proposing in the MU1 zone to change that to one-half of the space per dwelling unit. and that would allow, in effect, allow for a shared parking type situation by reducing the requirement for residential. In the mixed-use two and three zones, the original proposal that the staff had involved changing the requirement, which is rather complicated and difficult for developers to utilize. It's a mathematical formula where you count so many spaces for the first 10,000 square feet of retail, and then after that it changes to a different ratio. And then you have to also factor in restaurants. So to simplify that, the staff suggested a one space per 300 square feet calculation, and also still included, our recommendation was to still include parking for any restaurant over 2,000 square feet. At the Zoning Committee, the Division of Building Inspection suggested further simplifying that requirement, and the Zoning Committee was agreeable to that change. So on the gray sheet, one change that we've proposed since Draft 5 involves the Zoning Committee's recommendation to simplify further the parking requirements in the mixed use two and three zones for the retail and restaurant uses and office uses to just one per 300 square feet to eliminate any requirements for special seat counting for restaurants and so forth. And that is on the gray sheet. So I would encourage the Commission to consider that when they make their motion, when you make your motion regarding the text changes for parking. Other two changes in terms of mixed-use zoning includes an allowance to count on-street parking at one space per 22 linear feet of frontage. And lastly, in the case of where a mixed-use development is including mixed income units, which Jimmy will address further on in our presentation today, there would be no parking required for those units, sort of like a free. Yes? The on-street parking, is there a radius or is it just within that zone? It would be the frontage of your development. Just the frontage of the development? If there's already parking along your frontage, metered parking or just parallel parking, you would be able to count those spaces. And if there's none existing, you'd be able to count one space per 22 linear feet. That's good. Other parking reductions that are proposed by this text amendment fall within Article 16. and Article 16 is more of the overall article that deals with parking and vehicular use areas. Formally, you could, on a project, suggest that for every bicycle space that you provided on your development, there would be a reduction in a parking space up to 5%. There was a 5% limit. These text amendments propose moving that to a separate section so that you can still take a bicycle parking reduction on a one-to-one basis up to 5%, but also allowing a reduction in your parking for adjacency or nearness for 300 linear feet from a transit stop. you would be able to get another 5% reduction for that. If there happens to be a shelter on your property or within that 300 feet, not just a stop, there would be a 10% reduction. So collectively, between bicycle parking and transit adjacency, you could take a maximum reduction of 15% on your development plan. And that would be through a development plan that the Planning Commission would review and see. That would be restricted to only certain uses, townhouses, multifamily uses, as well as P1 and B1 zones inside the IR area. The third major change for the parking reductions involves adjusting or increasing our flexibility for joint parking areas. Currently, to take advantage of the provisions for joint parking, there has to be no overlap in time, and no residential zones or uses are allowed to take advantage of that. The staff has suggested that that be relaxed, and joint parking can be utilized by some residential developments and up to an hour of overlap in the times allowed. And one other small change would be to change parking maximums so that they only apply to surface parking. That would allow developments to utilize either underground parking or structure parking that not count against their maximum parking. And the last fifth major change in terms of parking reductions involves giving the Board of Adjustment the ability to vary parking. This is something the Board previously was able to do until 1983, and since then the IR text amendments have given the Board back some ability to vary maximums of parking, but this would be the first time that they would be able to vary a parking minimum. And this would only be allowed inside the IR area, and it would be a cap of 50%. And you would have to factor in any other reduction, such as the bicycle parking reduction or the transit stop. So if someone were required 100 spaces, the minimum they'd ever be able to bill, the very, very minimum with Board of Adjustment approval would still be 50. The two examples where the staff felt this might come into play or be important, two areas that are fairly pedestrian-oriented, near the University on South Limestone and also on North Limestone, where there's several commercial structures and businesses, but very limited parking currently. To allow those to continue or grow, possibly a parking variance could be accommodated in those areas. And just to go over some of the benefits of parking reductions, the staff felt it was important to highlight just how important parking can be in our community. There's a general idea that 50% or more of a development is often dedicated, especially in commercial areas, to a parking lot or parking layout. And if we can reduce the parking requirements, you would end up with less impervious surface and therefore a reduction in stormwater runoff. We could utilize our land more efficiently, and that would in turn support our growth management concepts and goals of the comp plan, but also the smart growth principles that Mr. Emmons mentioned earlier. We want to encourage shared parking, and the changes proposed here would accommodate the joint parking to be more flexible. We also want to promote the reuse of existing neighborhood business areas, allow for more walkable and pedestrian-friendly environments, hopefully prevent some demolition of buildings that people in the past have thought were necessary to accommodate surface parking to meet requirements, and then also to just utilize the existing on-street parking to let developments count those. That's definitely a benefit to our community, again, less impervious surface. The staff report for parking addresses a one finding, finding number two concerning parking. And the staff and zoning committee are recommending approval of this portion of the text amendment because the amendments related to parking reductions are necessary and appropriate because they will permit a decrease in imperviable surface and decreased stormwater runoff, shared parking, all of those benefits that I mentioned earlier would be accommodated and the finding for that is found on your staff report and in the agenda. I would be happy to answer any questions about parking. Thank you, Tracy. We'll take this part right now so we have questions on parking. I just want a clarification. You did say in Article 16 that the transit stop also had to have a shelter. It can't be just. If it's a transit stop. You could have a 5% reduction. Okay. If it's a transit stop with a shelter, you could have a 10% reduction in your parking. You're right. Motion to approve parking. Tax capacity. Changes with signing for approval of the number two on staff report. And would you be including the gray sheet? Simplifying. There's been a motion that we approve the parking part of this plan with the gray sheet. For the MU Center, for the whole. Is everybody in agreement? Please signify by saying aye. Opposed by a like sign? Thank you. Thank you. Boy, what a change that's been in eight years. When I first came on here, we were holding everybody's feet on parking. And now, which is good that we are actually doing this is to me good stuff. We can get the PowerPoint back up. No. It's over there. As we're getting the PowerPoint back up, before our next section, I wanted to present a letter that we did receive today, late today, from Mr. Bill Lear. And I'll pass it around for the committee, but I want to point out that he gives us glowing recommendations for most of the changes that we're making. In particular, he likes the changes to townhouses, but he would also like to request in the R2 zone that we increase height. Those will be some of the topics that I'll talk about in my presentation next. Here we go. I'll just skip to I'll get it. Other mix use changes. There we go. If it will come up. There we go. The first change that I want to talk about are driveways for single-family and two-family dwellings. These are changes that will need to be made to Article 1 in the definitions and Article 16. In the infill and redevelopment area, the driveway widths were reduced from the amount of widths that you can have in the rest of the urban service area. Most of the urban service area, the width of your driveway is limited to 50% of your lot width. In the infill and redevelopment area, we had reduced that to 25% of your lot width or 10 feet, whichever is greater. And for most of your lots that were mid-block lots, that was not a problem. But what we found were lots that were corner lots had a whole lot of frontage, and 25% of that frontage still allowed large driveways that we felt were inappropriate for the use. So what we are proposing to do is to change that so that inside the infill and redevelopment area, a driveway width is limited to 10 feet. And so this corner lot essentially would have to be designed with a driveway that came back to a parking area rather than extending the parking area out to the street. Calculation of floor area ratio. We're doing a minor change to this. I've presented this one to you several times. I'll go through the graphic very quickly. but essentially the way we calculate floor area ratio right now, there is a disincentive for developers to provide public streets, and that's why you see a lot of access easements so that they can keep that land and count it towards their overall floor area. What we are proposing to do is a pre-development net acreage to calculate your floor area so that in the instance, say, like you were on Tates Creek Road. Tates Creek Road was an existing roadway. You don't get to count that right away, but the new roads that you built on your property would be able to count towards your floor area. You wouldn't have to subtract out the new roads that you're building. Mixed income housing, this goes through several articles of our – it is one of the things that we're doing for affordable housing. I did want to point out that it is not our entire affordable housing strategy. It's just one small part of that. Our target audience are for those people who can afford the people that fall in between the people who qualify for federal assistance and the people that can afford the market rate. And how we've done that is generally it's based off of the median income for our area. And if you're 80% or below of the median income, then you as a person buying or renting a home can qualify for some federal assistance. What we have done is we're trying to target an incentive for developers to provide housing for those people that are in between the 80% and the median income. And how we are doing that is that we are providing a new definition, regulations on how we will do that. It will be very similar to affordable housing regulations. We are providing the incentives either in the form of parking reductions or possibly greater floor area, depending on how that benefit would apply in different zones. The occupancy would be restricted to five years. I did want to point that out. Most of your affordable housing things, whenever you go through a typical affordable housing, it's restricted to a 10-year period. This is a hybrid. We are trying to incentivize developers to do this. We did want to put that restriction to a five-year restriction for the mixed income housing. How those bonuses will work is that we've tied it also with open space and mixed income density bonuses. Essentially, if you provide additional open space, you're allowed 10% more floor area. If you provide just income housing, you're allowed 10% more floor area. But if you combine additional open space with mixed income units, then you're allowed up to 25% more. So you get a little push and a little bonus if you provide both additional open space and that. Our P1 and B1 zones right now. Mixed income housing, it's written in a way so that it can either qualify on who can qualify the income of the resident that's moving in or buying the unit and or based off of an established price of a unit for someone, a family of four at 80% median income. So we're giving multiple options on how we can get our mixed income units in. And a couple of the clarifications clarify our townhouse definitions. We currently, the zoning ordinance defines a townhouse as three or more attached units. And in the R1T zone, we felt that it was appropriate to allow two attached townhouses side by side. The reason why we went to the defining townhouses as three attached units was because of our R3 and our R4 zones, which allow both duplexes and townhouses. Our duplex regulations are much stricter than our townhouse regulations, and we found that what many people were doing, they were coming in and building giant duplexes, calling them two-unit townhouses, and getting around those regulations. So we have figured out a way, and it goes throughout Article 8, Article 1 in our definitions, and everything like that that would allow two-unit townhouses in an R1T zone. But if you're in an R3 or an R4 zone, if you're building townhouses, you would still have to do three units, and if you were building duplexes, you would have to comply with duplex regulations. That's important. That would also solve some of our problems that we have outside of the infill and redevelopment area where our R1T zones actually were sometimes utilized. As you may or may not remember, you had a development plan come in where a two-unit townhouse in an R1T zone had burned down. And then they came back and they were asking for three units. And they said, your ordinance requires us to put three units back, even though the rest of the neighborhood was built out at two-unit townhouses. This would also solve that problem outside of the infill and redevelopment area. And I'm going backwards. Oh, it's because I've got it down in the corner. Sidewalks, we're also, we have the new downtown streetscape master plan, and in our downtown zones and in mixed uses that are in downtown areas, we've made provisions that if you're in the area of the downtown streetscape master plan and you're doing some sort of redevelopment that you have to follow the recommendations of the downtown streetscape master plan. Nonconformities in Article 4, we are just simply clarifying about our nonconforming and uses and structures that they do have to adhere to the infill and redevelopment standards if they're being redeveloped. And non-conforming lots, it will be clarified that if a building has ever been constructed over a property line, then that would be considered a consolidation of that property line. We also have fence height. Fences along an alley were originally restricted to six feet because an alleyway is a public street and therefore created a front yard, so to speak. We are proposing to change that if the classification of the street is an alley, you can put an eight-foot tall fence as if you could in any other rear yard if it didn't have an alley. And before I go on to this one, I also want to mention I do not have a specific slide for it, but the R2 zone, we are proposing a change to the R2 zone for subdivision of a duplex. And that's something that's come in front of this planning commission before. The current regulations say that an R2 zone, you have to have 60 feet of frontage, and it would allow it to be subdivided along the common wall as long as you had 30 feet and 30 feet. well, inside the infill and redevelopment area where we have lots of R2 zoning with 50-foot lots. You can build a duplex, a side-by-side duplex in an R2 zone, but since you only had 25 feet and 25 feet, you could never come in and subdivide it. We are proposing a change to that so that you can subdivide a duplex along the common wall as long as that meets the fire separation codes. And that's something that's come in front of this Planning Commission over the past two, three years, an issue that's come up. We feel that this is a good change for the R2 zone in particular. It will help out not just infillum redevelopment, but it will help out everywhere. Commercial setbacks inside the infillum redevelopment area. Once again, using our North Limestone Street. What we're proposing here is that the B1 and the P1 zones have 20-foot setbacks. the suburban model on that. If you are doing an infill or a redevelopment of a B1 or a P1 site inside the infill and redevelopment area, what you're going to have to do is you're going to have to meet the setback of the existing properties on either side. And so that's what as you're looking at that, it's It's going to have – I'll get it out in a minute. But basically you're going to have to line up your development along with the properties on either side of you. Kind of like that. And on the south limestone, I showed you this at your work session, looking at the McDonald's. And that site would have to be at that. But there was some talk about where the church was tore down on Upper Street across from Center Point. Since it has parking lots on either side of it, it would default back to the 20-foot setback requirement of the B-1 zone because it doesn't have any buildings that it would have to match with. That concludes the section on our clarification, what we've deemed minor amendments and clarifications to the zoning ordinance. There are two things on your staff report, condition number one and eight. One in particular is a general recommendation that these are timely tax amendments and that they will improve our zoning ordinance for infill and redevelopment. And finding number eight, which deals specifically with mixed income housing bonuses, which will give the developers an incentive to provide this affordable housing option in their development. That concludes my presentation on this section of the Texas amendments. If you have any questions, I would be happy to answer them. Anybody have questions? Go ahead, Jen. Have you ever thought that some of the lots might not just be 2525? They could be 27. I mean, it could be an odd number. It could be an odd number, and that's where we're changing the R2, that it would be along the – another thing that would help out, even if you did have 60 feet, sometimes it was a development option. Instead of putting exactly symmetrical development in a driveway on either side of the duplex, They would put one driveway with the parking in the back and scoot the building over to the center. This would also solve that, whether it's 60 feet, 50 feet. It would just be able to subdivide it along the common wall and allow fee simple ownership of your side of the duplex and the land. I do want to, since I did pass it out, I do want to talk about Mr. Lear's letter. What he requests specifically that the Planning Commission do is in the R2 zone that it has a, for infillum redevelopment. It has a height limit of 28 feet inside the infillum redevelopment area. He requests that that 28 feet be raised to 35 feet in height for that. The staff did look at the heights in there and the 28 feet was originally put in with the 2001 text amendments and it's a compatibility standard. Because if you look at the majority of the single family developments that are inside the infill and redevelopment area, if you think of the central sector area, the majority of those you have a lot of one story and occasionally two, maybe two and a half story developments. You don't have a whole lot of 35 foot buildings. Certainly there are 35 foot tall buildings inside the infill redevelopment area, but most of the properties are smaller in height and that's where that came into play. As we looked at infillum redevelopment and we're trying to encourage more in dense use for townhouses in particular, there is very little existing R1T zoning inside the infillum redevelopment area. We felt that as those new townhouses are being proposed that a 35 feet height for townhouses would be appropriate and that is part of the text that's recommended for you today. For the single family zones, we would not recommend that we change the heights from what they are and they're not part of this text amendment. The R2 zone, that's kind of where the gray area between what we're looking at. The compatibility is still a major issue. We have a lot of R2 zone inside the infilm redevelopment area. I don't have a specific map prepared for you today of that area. But on one hand, as we look at it, I still feel pretty strongly about the compatibility standards that we have for that. If it is an area that it would be appropriate to go a little bit higher in an R2 zone, there's always the option of going to the Board of Adjustment and asking for a height variance. On the other hand, since those restrictions were put into place, I do recognize that we've had two comprehensive plans, the 2001, the 2007 comprehensive plans with a greater focus on infill and redevelopment. And so with the R2 zone, it does fall between the gray area where we're comfortable recommending increasing the height for townhouses and not increasing the height for single-family homes for the reasons that I provided. It'll be up to the Planning Commission. If you wanted to increase the height as recommended, we could certainly help you with that. That's all in my presentation. I'm open for questions. Jimmy, are you a little concerned about the pushback of existing neighborhoods downtown on that height, that 28 to 35 feet? Is that where you think you'd get pushback on single-family dwellings? Yes, and it's not proposed by Mr. Lear in the single-family zones to change the height just in the R2 zone. I understand that. But, yes, I'm afraid of pushback. I'm afraid that we haven't really looked at that in particular. And it is scattered, but it's scattered with a lot of areas that are zoned R2. Thank you. How developers are keeping that same amount of building is getting around building anything but a public street. So rather than seeing it as an increase in density, I think it would be a slight increase in density in how we've traditionally calculated density. But the real advantage that I see of that change is that there would no longer be a disincentive to provide a public street instead of an access. Did I say that correct? Sometimes I get my words mixed up and say the exact opposite of what I meant to say. Also, one, I applaud you as far as recommendations, incentives, when I'm going to say incentives for increasing density. Clarify for me, you're going to provide an incentive if they provide open space, allow for more density. How does you give more open space, but how is the density going to increase? Simply by going up? Smaller units? You could go up with smaller units. In the case of a B1 and a P1 zone, where a mixed income housing unit would not require any parking spaces, it would be possible to put more building on a piece of land, because you wouldn't have to necessarily provide a parking space for that particular unit. And but in coupled with that, and this is a little nuance of our, but it's a nuance by design, is that we are proposing to take the open space requirements in the P1 and the B1 zones from a 20 percent, if you provide residential from a 20 percent open space down to a 10 percent. But the bonus density that you get starts at the 20 percent and above. So if you provide 25%, that's whenever you start getting that. So we're really trying to incentivize people to voluntarily provide more open space in order to get more density. And it can be designed. Open space is one of the things that you can actually create. It doesn't have to be grass on the ground. It can be courtyard areas. It can be balconies. It can be rooftop gardens. It's one of the things that you can actually create open space on top of. Did you have a party room? Didn't you have a party room as open space too? Not indoor with this one. I think what you're thinking about is with our Article 9 text amendment, which was postponed, we had proposed that. We've gone a little different route on that text amendment now. One last thing. When you were looking at incentives, did you look at any incentives, given any incentives to help with stormwater as far as permeable asphalt, permeable paving, rain gardens, anything like that? No, we didn't attempt that with this text amendment. As we've talked about with the Planning Commission before, we are definitely looking into stormwater and changes to our regulations to promote more infiltration and everything like that. But that was not a part of what we're proposing in these text amendments. Do you have a reason for not going up to 35 feet? In the R2 zone? As Bill was reminding me, the 28 feet that's recommended in the R2 zone was a part of the original IR study for residential. At this point in time, it's just hard for me to tell. It's not something that we have specifically studied. I don't know what the prevailing heights of the developments that are zoned R2 out there are. Yes, a variance in a single family or an R2 zone, since height doesn't mean more density, the Board of Adjustment does have the ability to vary those height dimensions. have on an existing neighborhood, if you're going to come in with 30 foot versus a neighborhood that might be 20 feet or 25 feet, how that fits into it. So I probably see where it goes to the Board of Adjustments. I thought there was a comment in the letter that it was in being consistent with the neighborhood. Is that not part of what Mr. Lear was proposing? That is 35 feet. What his comment was is that the 35 feet would be consistent with the zoning outside of the infill and redevelopment area. I think that's what he said in his letter. At least 35 feet as it is in other areas of the community. So outside of the infill and redevelopment area, you're allowed to go 35 feet. My sense on that, though, is if we're trying to incent people to infill and redevelop, Why would you put a restriction on it that's not existing elsewhere? So I would say that that would make a good change. And the staff is willing to help. Yeah, I mean, and I think part of the day is to get suggestions like this, and we can let them come back, and we can, I think we can approve part of these and not maybe that specific part, and let Jimmy work on it and come back and give us maybe another recommendation. And the new street up around Gratz Park, those new townhouses up there, aren't they three stories? I think they are with garages. I mean with elevators. In behind Gaines House. Can we not just change it now? Do we need to wait for redress? Certainly you can. No, we can. You can change it now. You can choose not to change it now. if it's something that you would like to for the staff to look at at a later date, you can do that also. Whatever the commission's pleasure is, if you want to make the change, we can do it now? I would say just change it now. Because if the developer doesn't want to build it, he's not going to take it that high. But we shouldn't put a cap on it. I think you should provide as many incentives as possible. That seems to me like an incentive. Whenever you get to that point, I'll make that proposal. Okay. Are we at that point? You want to do that? Yes, sir. If there are no other questions about what's being proposed and you did want to increase the height as Mr. Lehrer, then you could accept the changes that have been proposed. And since it's not in the text right now, including increasing the height in the R2 zone inside the infill and redevelopment area to 35 feet. Why not the R3, too? I still, I most, a lot of, there is a lot of single family development in the R3 and the R4 zones inside the infirmary development area. And once again, I do feel strongly in the single family neighborhoods that the 28 foot is a compatibility standard and I believe that it should remain. That's where I feel comfortable with the R1C. I'm talking about scale of the buildings, and that's the reason why we had it. Mm-hmm. And you've got a lot of one-story houses and a 35-foot building right next to those is pretty incompatible. If we get to my guidelines, that's addressed. All right. I thought this was the whole purpose of infill and redevelopment, was to be able to do these things. And we knew when we talked about this from the very beginning that we have some of the small shotgun-type houses, and I know there's a lot of R2 out there that are in some of these neighborhoods, But I thought we were going to loosen up some of these restrictions so that other things could be done. We have not made many text amendments in this set for duplex and single family on the height. Thinking back to the original infill and redevelopment study that was done that kind of started all the text amendments, A lot of recommendations were made to affect the side yard setbacks, the front yard setbacks, the lot size restrictions, but they were done with the idea that there would be a reduced height in the infill and redevelopment. So it was the package of reducing many of the other setback, floor area, and other requirements with the additional height restriction from 35 feet, which it was at that time, down to 28. That was the rationale for why it was created in the first place. I would just like to add to that. We were balancing two desires when we really tackled this infill and redevelopment stuff. One thing is, yes, to allow more development, have more density. At the same time, we knew our target area were existing neighborhoods with a character of their own. So we were trying to do standards in some cases that would basically help ensure that kind of compatibility. Whether seven feet in the R2 compromises that in any great shakes is just something you will have to decide. But it was based upon the recommendation made by Norrie Winter as part of that original residential infill and redevelopment recommendation that that part be brought down while other things were being brought up and intensified. Are we ready for both? Are we going to vote on the whole package or do we want to change anything in the package? I don't see a reason to wait. I would say go ahead and make the change to 35 feet. If that's going to endanger the whole package, then we can do it separately. In the R2. That's in the R2? Yeah. Okay. Everybody understand the motion? All right. Is everybody okay? And I guess my only question is, I mean, I think I know some of these dudes, but are we shooting our, you know, we did this ND1 out in Chevy Chase or whatever it is, and we came up with all these high stands and everything. are we shooting ourselves in the foot by doing this downtown? I don't think that affects the Chevy Chase ND1. No, it won't, but we put their height limitations. What's the height limitations on the ND1s? I don't remember exactly. I know we talked a lot about it in terms of accessory structures, and there were one or two changes that we made through the two months of the planning commission. I just remember we talked about compatibility, and that's why I'm saying if we're going to do it in this for the right hand, do we want to do the same thing for both areas even though there might be, this may be downtown infill and redevelopment but it's still, people live there and they're single family houses and do we owe them at least that consideration that's just what comes, I mean it's just off the top of my head but I don't know, I realize some of this stuff is done to accommodate I guess 10 foot ceilings that we didn't used to have in houses which I wouldn't have a problem doing that. It's going to be two-story, but if they're going to try to squeeze in a three-story in that area, then I don't know whether that's... We have this now. We have the single, and then we have the large, very large home right next to it. So I don't think we're talking about doing, we're just giving an option, and it would be up to whoever is doing the construction as to whether or not they would want to exercise that. but I think it might open up some areas. But I think all you have to do is drive out to North Broadway and you see the small house and the huge house. I mean, when we talk about character of the neighborhood, it's there. It's, you know. All right, then if everybody's comfortable, we'll vote on the, including the 35-foot limit. in the R2 with this article. You could take it all as one motion or you could We'll do it all as one motion. We're just going to change it to 35 feet and include that in the whole package. Is that all right? All in favor, please signify I'm saying aye. Aye. Opposed? All right. Thank you. Okay. Next topic, the ND1 zone, which is Article 29. I have two letters that actually date back to 2007 when Rachel and Jimmy presented the original package to the Neighborhood Council. We had a few responses that were concerned about the ND1 changes. Article 29 is our ND1 neighborhood character design overlay zone. And currently that overlay zone is allowed to regulate only residential character. And there's been a recent study for the, Jimmy and Bill mentioned just recently, the residential infill study, and there's a new non-residential infill study, and to implement some of the design character overlay suggestions that are involved with that, we the staff felt that expanding the ND1 to include non-residential overlays would accommodate the study and allow for some regulatory means to implement that study. So the major change to the ND1 zone is to incorporate a non-residential design character overlay, which would be implemented similar to the residential areas. But for non-residential, you would have the opportunity to suggest, either a neighborhood could suggest that the Planning Commission could try to implement this to define a new character or to put in the overlay to retain the existing character. So there would be two options available for non-residential overlays. Other changes to the ND1 zone include just a few clarifications or changes. One is to clarify that the neighborhood with our residential ND1s, we've seen neighborhoods suggest that they have an ND1 overlay for their neighborhood. They're not technically the applicant. We want to clarify that in Article 29. They're the requesting party. The applicant would typically be the Planning Commission or the Council. We also want the staff also wants to suggest deleting a requirement for significant neighborhood support. One reason would be there's a bylaws amendment that the Planning Commission has reviewed to provide neighborhood, any neighborhood requesting initiation of an overlay zone, either H1 or ND1, to the staff would mail out postcards and a letter and then have those postcards mailed back to indicate support. And so that would sort of take the place of or be in addition to petitions and that sort of thing. So the staff felt that including or keeping this significant neighborhood support wasn't necessary. It would be redundancy if we're implementing this postcard response system. Also, what would be the point of that response by postcards that are significant or a go no go decision? Well, that would technically be up to the Planning Commission or the Council, whoever would be asked to initiate it. Typically our staff has suggested to neighborhoods that at least 50% should be attempted to receive that much support because if you only have 40% saying yes, we're for this, typically the Planning Commission has said, well, that's not enough support for us to initiate this and try to impose it on a neighborhood. If it's 50, 60, 70%, typically the Planning Commission has said yes, we'll be the applicant, we'll bring that forward and let it go to a public hearing. And that's another reason for kind of deleting significant. It is a little bit vague, and that gives the Planning Commission or the Council the ability to interpret whether it's for a residential area that really needs that, and there's only 40% support that gives you all the ability to say, well, this is really necessary here. Maybe it's not a residential area. Maybe it's a commercial area. We want to establish for the Chevy Chase this character. And maybe those commercial owners don't really want to, too, but it's important for some reason. Second, or the third major change in the ND1 is to add a few new design standards. Currently, there's a list of 15 design standards in the ND1 package, and the staff felt it important to add three new ones. The first one would be whether a neighborhood could restrict accessory dwelling units, which Jimmy will address in a few minutes. Second would be the ability to restrict floor area ratios, like the inside the infill and redevelopment area. Currently, there's some restrictions on floor area ratios for residential areas. And then third, this one came up in terms of a non-residential area, perhaps restricting signage, either by height or mass, something along those lines. And in the findings for approval in our staff report and in the agenda, there were three findings related to the ND1 changes. and those involved expanding the ND1 to include the non-residential will provide design regulatory tools to coincide with the non-residential infill study. The three proposed design standards will help to maintain consistency with other proposed changes and allow for neighborhoods to regulate and provide a certain measure of control in their own neighborhood. And then the other two minor changes to Article 29 are to simplify the ND1 zoning process and make it more understandable for those interested in pursuing it, but also those implementing the ND1. I'd be happy to answer any questions related to the ND1 changes. This won't impact any of the existing ND1 overlays that are in place. Questions or comments? As far as the initiating these, the N1, the overlays, it would still come back to the Commission to be the initiator of this. Absolutely. And actually we have one on the zoning committee's agenda for June for the Westmoreland neighborhood. And so if the bylaws amendment passes today, the zoning committee would consider whether or not the commission should initiate that overlay zone. And if the zoning committee decides that it should move forward, they may have significant enough support, then the staff would initiate the mailing to everyone that would be impacted within that overlay zone, receive the notice back within 14 days and then that would be on your following agenda whether you would want to initiate. So between zoning committee and an actual date of the planning commission hearing we'd have the ability to mail out those requests to the neighborhood find out if they are willing to be supportive of it and then put it on your agenda. That gives notice to everyone. Okay, I think that's good. Any other questions? If not, I'll entertain a motion that we approve this section. All in favor, please signify by saying aye. Opposed by like sign? Okay. And accessory dwelling units is our final topic for today. As I start, I'm going to pass out just the last Sunday's Home Seller magazine that was in last, their major article was on guest houses. And I'll go ahead and pass that out. As I was reading the article on guest houses, they were saying that they're very hard to find in Lexington, and that's because, for the most part, they are illegal in Lexington. Now, I say that, and I do want to point out something. I've mentioned it to you before, but I wanted to point out that there are provisions in our single-family zones that you can have essentially a guest house as long as it does not have a kitchen and it's not rented out. So that part is allowable. I do not know about the three guest houses that are mentioned in the article. I did want to point out that the article is very nice, and they were very for the guest houses that they were doing. At least two of the three would actually be larger than what we are recommending as a part of these text amendments and would not be allowed to be built under the proposed text amendments. The third one that they mentioned just simply didn't have enough information for me to figure out whether it did or didn't have that. Much of our presentation I've got from the Smart Growth Network and the Smart Energy Toolkit for that, so I wanted to give them some credit for that. The accessory dwelling unit, what is an accessory dwelling unit? It's a secondary housing unit on the same property as the main residence. It is only being proposed for single-family homes. It could be a single-family home in an R3 zone, but it would still be an accessory dwelling unit for that single-family home. Does that make sense? We're doing it for the use of the single-family homes, not necessarily the zone that it's in. Accessory dwelling units, they're also called accessory apartments, in-law apartments, family apartments, secondary units. I didn't put it on here, but granny flats is not a very politically correct way to talk about them. Accessory dwelling units are not duplexes. We are proposing in this that the size of the accessory dwelling unit would be clearly subsidiary to the principal unit. And we are doing that by proposing that it be no greater than 30% of the principal dwelling unit's square footage or 750 square feet, whichever is less. So if your square 30% would get you more than 750, you would still be restricted to 750. We are also providing that the owner of the property with the accessory dwelling unit on it will be required to live on the property. We don't specify whether they live in the accessory dwelling unit or if they live on the principal property. And I started off with talking about how accessory dwelling units differ from guest houses because of the kitchen. They would have a kitchen and they would be able to be rented. Why consider accessory dwelling units in the zoning ordinance? Because of several things. Shrinking household size, rising real estate costs, aging population, neighborhood stability. And that one I wanted to kind of talk about because there I have read many, many studies that actually the ability to put in accessory dwelling units has in several neighborhoods actually stabilized the principal building stock there. because people are able to put those accessory dwelling units on, generate the income, generate the place for someone to live, and you see a lot less of teardowns of existing houses and building back of much larger structures for that. Environmental benefits, of course, they are good for the environment because larger, big, larger houses and everything of that nature, essentially if you look at the amount of energy that it takes to heat a house as your population goes down and you have less people living per household, then your energy uses go up. What are the specific benefits to the Lexington Fayette-Urban County government that we could see? Increases in tax revenue. I have had the opportunity to meet with representatives from our property valuation. And they would certainly be able to take into account that somebody had a legal accessory dwelling unit and factor that into the value of the property. It can minimize subsidies requiring for affordable units. As I mentioned earlier, with 750 square feet, we're also limiting it to a one-bedroom, a limit of one-bedroom. So really what we are talking about are either efficiency apartments or one-bedroom apartments. You can keep your aging families together. On that, who benefits? The homeowners can benefit from rental income, mental income. People will be able to have simply more options available to them as they go for that. You create an increase in the rental stock in the community. You create jobs for people who are doing remodeling. Lending institutions are able to give out more home improvement loans to increase the value of the property. How and where can an accessory dwelling unit be built? Since we don't have a whole lot of accessory dwelling units in Fayette County, utilizing some of the representations from the Smart Growth Toolkit, you can have an apartment inside the single-family home. You can put in new, which is essentially a conversion of, say, basement space into an accessory dwelling unit. You can do an addition onto the home or a conversion of accessory structures, create a freestanding cottage in the rear, or you could just design the accessory dwelling unit into new construction. As we talk about it from a regulatory sense, even though there are all of these little nuances on whether you convert existing space or you put an addition on, it's really kind of, from a regulatory sense, we really need to talk about them as either attached accessory dwelling units or detached. because if you only allowed the conversion of the accessory space, somebody could easily put an addition on their house and then convert it. So there's really no way to regulate the differences in those nuances. But I did want to talk about it and get thinking about those types of things. They've got examples of apartments within the single-family homes. In this particular instance, it's a little bit dark, but you can see in this particular instance it was a basement. that was converted to the accessory dwelling unit. I know that my aunt, who lived in the Washington, D.C. area, her basement of her single-family home was an accessory dwelling unit. Additions to single-family homes, that's pretty much exactly what you would think. Conversion of outbuildings, garages, barns. Typically what you think of there is an apartment above the parking area. Construction of new outbuildings, what we're really talking about there are freestanding cottages that wouldn't have the parking spaces and designed into new construction, which is just exactly what it means. Some of the provisions in our local provisions that we're providing, we are recommending that in order to have an accessory dwelling unit that it would be owner-occupied. We are recommending the size limitations, the limit of one bedroom, 750 square feet or 30%. It would only work for single-family detached units. Whenever I say access controls, and that's limitations on where you can put your front door for an accessory dwelling unit, you would have to put it either to the side or the rear of the house. And if it was a front-facing door, say on an accessory building, then it would have to be set back at least 60 feet from the right-of-way. And that's important so that you don't have a house with an addition with the front door right up next to the in line with the front building point. We do have provisions in the regulations of accessory dwelling units that for a new accessory dwelling unit, you would have to get a building permit, work through our Division of Building Inspection. For those accessory dwelling units that are existing, we would give them an opportunity to become a legal use with the adoption of this regulation. Since in order to – it wouldn't be the Division of Building Inspection that would be inspecting those. What it would be is our Division of Code Enforcement, and there would be slightly different – rather than trying to make sure that it's up to the building code, they would have a different level. Our code enforcement officers would be able to go in and make sure that it's livable. That would be the standard there and in code compliance. And essentially it's important for that because by getting them in, that's also whether it went through building inspection or went through code enforcement review, the government would be able to go in and make sure that these accessory dwelling units are livable and up to code. It would also give the opportunity for us to get on file in the Division of Building Inspection the owner-occupied form that we would develop if this passes. and it would also allow for us to get a conduit to get this information to our PVA department as new and existing ones are brought through the system. Basements would be allowed. Yes, there wouldn't be any prohibition towards a basement accessory dwelling unit. Oh, the single family detached, that's just to signify, that's my shorthand for townhouses are not allowed to have an accessory dwelling unit. If you're going to be a townhouse or an apartment building or a triplex or something like that, those units need to be counted as a full unit. Oh, yes. I've talked about before, and I've got a little graphic here. I have looked at many, many different accessory dwelling unit regulations throughout the country. I've looked at them on the East Coast and the West Coast and the Mid Coast. and essentially there is a whole range of regulations out there to look at, and some of them are from very liberal and very conservative. With the first draft of the accessory dwelling units proposal that I had brought to you, we're shooting right for the center of those regulations, one that would not be too liberal and one that would not be too conservative. Based off of the conversations that I've had with you in the past at your work sessions, we have made some minor amendments to this and moved slightly more towards the conservative end of the spectrum as far as regulations go. One of the things that I didn't particularly elaborate on, but it is a part of that proposal, is the parking for an accessory dwelling unit. There's actually either, you can either go liberal or conservative on that one. and we went as liberal as we can. If there is a maximum parking required, like there is in the infill and redevelopment area, if you put in an accessory dwelling unit and you want to provide a parking space, then it doesn't count against your maximum. We're going to allow it. But if you don't want to put in a parking space, then it's not required. So it's going to be up to the individual property owner on a case-by-case basis to decide on whether or not to provide a parking space for their accessory dwelling unit. I believe that concludes my findings. Just a sampling, I did not prepare a list, but off the top of my head, some of the areas that we've looked at, there are certain states that have required state laws have been passed. One of the things that really interested me whenever I started looking into this is that almost every major city since 2007 has adopted some sort of accessory dwelling unit proposal. It is the way that things are going. The AARP is a major proponent for accessory dwelling units to assist in aging in place. Aging in place, you like that? And other types of the Smart Growth Network, it's one of the major proposals that they have. The states of California and Vermont have passed state laws saying that all of their municipalities have to allow or pass their own accessory dwelling unit. There are several cities in Washington state, several cities in Maryland state. I'm not sure if those states have statewide accessory dwelling unit regulations or not. We've looked at Arlington, Virginia, Seattle, Washington, Linwood, Washington, Santa Cruz, California. I just saw an indication from Chapel Hill, North Carolina, that apparently they allow some accessory dwelling units. It is definitely the way of the future. It's a smart growth principle. It helps out with affordable housing. It helps out with so many different things. But at the same time, we've got to work on trying to make sure that we allow them to be compatible, and that is what we have proposed for you. I also forgot one other major point about the accessory and dwelling units as it's proposed is where would they be accessory allowed by you just go down to building inspection and get your permit, and where would they be conditional? And you would have to go in front of the Board of Adjustment, have a public hearing to decide on whether it would. Part of, we decided that the minimum lot size that you should have in order to be allowed an accessory dwelling unit is a 4,000 square foot lot. There are zones that we have that would allow less than a 4,000 square foot lot for a single family home. But traditionally, it has been many, many years since this planning commission has created a lot less than 4,000 square feet. And as you look at that, we looked at doubling that in an 8,000 square foot lot. And that's really where we were. As it was originally proposed, we were saying inside the infillum redevelopment area, it would be an accessory use. And outside of the infillum redevelopment area, it would be a conditional use. And then we flipped that so that inside the infillum redevelopment area, it would be a conditional use and have to go in front of the Board of Adjustment. And outside the IR area is where it would be allowed by right. And we got discussing this amongst the staff. And the real reason for saying it should be conditional inside the infill and redevelopment area is because traditionally that's where we have our smaller lots. It's more dense to begin with. That's where the extra review needs to occur. And that's whenever we realize that really the dividing line between where the Board of Adjustment should be looking at an accessory dwelling unit and where it should be allowed by right is really based on the lot size of the use. So I did want to point out that findings three and four on your staff report and on the agenda, that it is one of the recommendations of our infill and redevelopment steering committee task force in particular to promote affordable housing for that. And it is a, and it's based upon nationwide as a source of affordable housing. And the, and number four is that providing accessory dwelling units as part of the infill and redevelopment regulations will be a benefit to both property owners and potential tenants, as it will be a source of additional income to the property owner and a source of affordable housing for our community. So for those reasons, the staff is recommending approval of our accessory dwelling unit provisions as presented. If you have any questions, I'll be happy to try and answer them. I guess my question is, are we just dealing with the infill and redevelopment area of what we're doing today? No. Accessory dwelling units would be allowed throughout the community and on a single family. Thank you. There was not a formula. Just looking at typical square footages of one-bedroom apartments and efficiency apartments. It's not a, I don't have a formula. It was just the number that we came up with as an appropriate livable space that would not overpower the principal unit. Jimmy? Are there any still, are there any required open space for a lot? Depends on the zone. Now that I think about it, since an accessory dwelling unit would be only applicable to single-family zones, I don't think that we have any open space requirements for our single-family developments. Just the regular yard setbacks. Bill confirmed that. Okay. But this accessory house would still have to follow along the guidelines of those setbacks? Yes. If it's an accessory structure, if it's detached accessory structure, it would have to follow the recommendations, not recommendations, the requirements of 15 that deal with accessory structures. If it's an attached structure, it would have to fall under the minimum yard setbacks of the base zoning that it's in. I've got to agree, I think affordable housing, this is a little bit of a stretch. With what you put up as far as guest housing, what came out in the newspaper over the weekend, I see it more as that or more just additional living space for the principal. There's going to be a few situations, whether you put a caregiver or somebody like that in that or my mother or somebody like that. but as far as affordable housing, I think that's a little bit of a stretch. Let me ask you one other thing. Where's the neighborhood associations on this? I don't know specifically, but I highly suspect that most of them would be concerned about it. Should we find some way to take it to them? We certainly could. If this is something that the Planning Commission is not comfortable with today, we could certainly take this part of the IR ZOTA packet and even recommend it for its own ZOTA and deal with that issue independently. You know, what I'm wondering is, you know, we prove this now, how many ND1 overlays are we going to be seeing come in from neighborhood associations trying to restrict this? And my response to that would be is that if a neighborhood was coming in and the only thing that they wanted to restrict on their ND1 was not to allow accessory dwelling units, I would question whether that was an appropriate ND1 to pass or not. it would really not be going with the intent of what the neighborhood design character overlay was intended to do. It would be a decision up to either the council or the planning commission on whether to initiate it or not. But if an ND1 application is coming in and it's a holistic approach where they're wanting to look at multiple things for theirs and accessory dwelling units would be one of those, then we felt that it was appropriate to add that to the Article 29. I guess I've got kind of a two-part question is, how do we handle these or control them at the present, or do we? They are only allowed as what I clarified as what I call the guest houses where no kitchen is provided and the unit is not rental. That's allowed as an accessory use today without any size restrictions or vocational criteria or any of the proposals that I talked about today. And we are not proposing to take that away out of the ordinance. We are just proposing to add to the ordinance this new product, if you will. Well, that's what I'm wondering. Are we trying to promote these or are we trying to limit these? What would you say where it's our? We are trying to find the balance between allowing them and regulating the control. And I guess the only reason I say it, I don't know whether we're sitting here realizing or underestimating how many of these things are out there. I mean, I can sit here on two or three meetings we've had here where people have come in and told on their neighbor, I can think the one out on North Limestone out there across from the Kroger where the guy wanted to get his zoning changed, and he sat out there and had the camera because the guy had a garage over next door to him. And, you know, the guy that had the garage didn't want him to change the zoning. and this guy goes, well, he rents over top of his garage out and the steps are coming down. So, I mean, I just think there's tons of those in a rural, Lexington's still rural in history or whatever you want to call it. And I'm not for sure that it's a can of worms. I don't know. I'm not for sure that we're going to be able to do anything. we might cause more trouble. And if we want to continue to promote them or make them work, that this may end up giving limited. I don't know if that makes sense. But what can I tell you where there's three within the four or five blocks that I walk around my house? And you would never know them. I mean, they're either garages converted, and it doesn't have to be a luxury. Those ones you saw on the paper are real neat, but I'm just telling you there's garages and tops-over garages in any neighborhood in Lexington. In our Division of Building Inspection, typically, since we've got GTV3 here, there's a lot of people out in the public think that the Lexington-Fader Urban County government just has tons of building inspectors just riding around town looking for violations, and it doesn't work that way. Typically they do work on a complaint basis, and if they do see violations and if they do see they do appropriately go after those. But for the most part they are busy dealing with new permits and complaints. And, I mean, I applaud them for that. I don't think they ought to be out doing that anyway. But I just wonder when we get to a group like ourselves and we start talking about it and we start putting stuff down on paper, Or are we going to? The proposed ordinances try to achieve that balance. Jimmy, I guess it begs the question, are you comfortable going with this now, or do you think we'd be better off to vet this and see what kind of pushback we get? I mean, I'm assuming that you're comfortable going forward with this, but I really wanted to ask that question before we voted on that. We are recommending approval of these changes. However, if the commission is uncomfortable at this time, it is still your application. If it's important enough to consider you considering it, then it might be easiest for you to just withdraw this portion of the ordinance and then initiate it as its own zoning ordinance text amendment if you felt that it was deserving of more discussion and review. I kind of agree that we ought to maybe pull that out, agree with everything else, and then let this be out on its own so that we can get more feedback. I mean, obviously we don't have anybody here to give us any feedback. And rather than us trying to make this decision, let's put it out there and see what people think. One more ask. Bill, one quick question. Based off my consultation, I don't have anything else to say. Well, will you counsel with him frequently? Mr. Creas, I'm sorry. I might suggest that instead of withdrawal, I don't know if we can do this legally, but that we take these provisions, if it's the Commission's will that you're not comfortable with this yet, to postpone indefinitely these sections, the consideration of these sections, that would keep the application alive. And we could discuss it perhaps even with the council's planning committee as an issue. We could discuss it with Council Member Gorton, what her thoughts might be. It might be something for the joint commission and council, because this is a major and very important community issue. I mean, this has been talked about for 25 years, and there's going to be a day of reckoning sometime on this issue. Chris, just to follow up on that, I'm not concerned about the ultimate outcome of this. I'm concerned about how we sell it. And it's a whole lot better to get it out front and see what the pushback would be on it than to pass the tax amendment and then try to defend it. I mean, if you haven't talked with the neighborhood councils on some of this, and we haven't, And, you know, I'm like you. If this is all the triggers in ND1, it's the wrong reason to do it. There's just no doubt about that. The question becomes is a perception of what it's going to be. Is it going to turn a residential community into a rental community, which is a perception that will be out there. I haven't been to any meetings. I haven't heard that thing discussed, but that's not a very far stretch for me for the naysayers to say, this is what you're going to do to my community. So I'm not sure you aren't better off to take the heat up front with this thing, tweak it to where the community will buy into it, than just to pass it and then have to defend it on all areas. And whether this was postponed as part of the overall package, my only suggestion for pulling it out and initiating it on its own would be it would start up the re-notice requirements. Why don't we just postpone it? I mean, I like Chris's idea that we just postpone this part of it. And any notice, we can do re-notice if we choose. It's your application. We can engage folks. I mean, everyone did get notifications that these were being considered. And so far we haven't got a lot of pushback, and I'm kind of like you. I wonder why. I mean, any kind of change, as you know, anymore, you're going to get some kind of pushback. And this has been almost quiet to the point that you wonder if people realize what is being discussed. And I agree it's fair. It should be discussed and should be understood what's being talked about. All right. Then are we comfortable then that we approve this? If it's the Planning Commission's desire, I would recommend to postpone it. I would recommend a motion to postpone the items in this section that I was presented. We're just going to postpone the accessory dwelling and everything else we're going to approve. You've already approved everything else up to this point. I'm sorry. That works. Okay. I did some research after our work session, and I found that the neighborhood conservation design guidelines for Chapel Hill spoke very much to the problems and the benefits that come with accessory dwellings, many of which are not addressed in our proposed amendments today. But there's one other thing, and that is already we have an unresolved definition of what a single family is. And northern Kentucky is able to come up with a definition for what a single family is. And this is a problem for all the area that surrounds the university as to what is a single family in a single family house. And when we put this kind of definition on top of single family, is it duplex, is it not, it really muddies the water. So I think we need to go really slow on this and get it right or we could make a complicated situation much worse, particularly around the university with the old neighborhoods. Mr. Chairman, I move to postpone indefinitely the section on accessory dwelling units. Second. All right. Every way to understand the motion. All in favor, please signify by saying aye. Aye. Opposed by Alexa. I just wanted to say this concludes our staff presentation. Thank you so very much for all of your hard work that you've put in on this. And if there are any just overarching questions that you had for us, of course, we'll be available. Thank you, Jimmy. I think you made it very understandable. Everybody here today could, number one, appreciate each of the steps, and I think you've done a great job. Thank you. I very much appreciate the entire division, and especially Bill and Tracy that got up and helped present this complicated. It's a lot of work, and it's a lot for us to comprehend, and I think you put it in just an excellent format. Thank you very much. I would echo that very much. I think we have one more item we need to approve the zoning tax amendment, or initiate the zoning tax amendment. We're going to pass out a handout to you all. This is on page four of your agenda. And what we are asking you to do is officially initiate a text amendment. And I guess the best way to describe this is that this particular text amendment arises from some of the outfall regarding the Centerpoint Project and the question of appeals from the Courthouse Area Design Review Board. As you may recall, the Courthouse Area Design Review Board approved the Centerpoint Project. Objectors appealed that to the Planning Commission. And there was a question whether the fact that appeal had been filed basically stopped the demolition of those structures. And that went to court. And the local court ruled that But since the ordinance did not specifically say that demolition was stopped, they were allowed to go ahead and commence the demolition of those buildings. Well, it was clear to staff and others that certainly we felt the legislative intent was if you had an appeal process to the Planning Commission, there's no point in allowing that appeal to become moot through the demolition. So we knew that as we addressed issues related to that decision, one of the things that we would suggest is that a text amendment be considered to make that clear that if there is an appeal filed during that appeal period, you could not proceed with the action that gave cause to the appeal. And this was also the council took an action to request a similar text amendment. I don't know that they officially initiated it, but since I think there's widespread consensus at least that this should be considered, we are requesting that the Planning Commission go ahead and officially initiate it. We went ahead and drafted text that we felt would address the issue, and this text would then be the out there subject of a public hearing back before you and then on to the Council for final action. And again, we think we can do that very quickly. It's not a very complicated text and the issue that it addresses is not a very complicated issue. So we are recommending that you initiate it and our expectation is that we would put it on for public hearing at your zoning meeting next month. Thank you. Somebody make a motion to that. Mr. Chairman, I move that we initiate a text amendment to approve the Court House Area Design Overlay Zone for the appeal process. Second. All in favor? in favor, please signify by saying aye. Opposed, like, thank you. Chris, do you have anything else that we need to? I think that's it. Anything else? There is one other commission item on your addendum. Oh, that's related to your bylaws. We distributed a little over four hours ago copies of your bylaws that we've given you previously. There are two major changes proposed to your bylaws. The first is to allow some items to appear on your consent decree. Those are re-approval and extensions that have been approved by the Commission within the last three years. Those would not have to have a full presentation at your hearing, although individual Commission members could ask for that, of course, under your normal consent agenda procedures. The other item is the one that Tracy mentioned to you earlier in your past hearing about the notification for overlay zones, that's an item that's been before the Commission now for about two years. This would formalize that and put in your bylaws and set in place the procedure in the event that a neighborhood asks for an overlay zone of any type. So we would ask you to consider adopting these changes to your bylaws at this time along with the corollary changes to your table of contents on that. I'd be glad to answer any questions about these bylaw changes for you. Anybody have any questions, Bill? Is there a motion? I move for, Mr. Chairman, I move for approval of the bylaw changes as presented. Second. All in favor, please signify by saying aye. Aye. Opposed, like so. Thank you. We're done, I guess. Thank you all. Thank you. and a lively, family-friendly atmosphere. The fun runs from 4.30 to 8 p.m. every Thursday through October 15th, and admission is free. Food and drink are available for cash purchase. So if you are looking for a great place to relax and enjoy live music, come down to Central Bank Thursday Night Live at Chiefside beside the Lexington History Museum. But I wrote this, forgive me if it goes astray. But when I woke up this morning, but this morning was a different day. The sky was all purple, there were people running everywhere. Trying to run from the destruction, you know I didn't even care. There is only one place in Lexington where you can enjoy a newly released kid-friendly movie, children's game, special entertainment, and a petting zoo all for free. It's free Friday Flicks at Jacobson Park. Coming back for its 14th year, this family event offers a great evening of entertainment for everyone of all ages. Pre-show activities begin at 7 p.m. and the movie will start at dark. Bring your lawn chairs, blankets, and pack a picnic dinner or purchase concessions from one of the many vendors on site. Please note that neither pets nor open flames are allowed in the event area for the safety of the patrons. Free Friday Flicks is presented by Lexington Parks and Recreation, WKYT TV, 981 The Bull, and NYX 94.5. For more information and movie titles, call 288-2900. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. What's got it wrong? We can all die in a day. Oh, yeah, yeah. I'll dance my life away Oh, baby, say Do you have some zero zero party over roots all the time? So do you not have a party like it's 19, 19, 19 Do you have some zero zero party over roots all the time? Hi, I'm Stacy Diamond. Welcome to an Inside Look. Welcome to an Inside Look at your city. Coming up next on an Inside Look, it's only downtown. Hi, I'm Renee Jackson with the Downtown Lexington Corporation, and we're very excited to be talking about Central Bank Thursday Night Live. We're kicking off the event this evening, and it'll be going on all summer and through early fall into October. We're going to finish up on October the 15th. It's every Thursday night. We get started right around 5 o'clock. Music starts at 5.30 and goes until about 7.30, 7.45. But we've got, you can get drinks, and there's lots of food vendors that come out. We do a lot of activities for kids. We have different vendors that come down. I know we're going to have a chiropractor out every night at Thursday Night Live. We always have a nonprofit that people can learn about and donate money to if they so choose. For information about the different bands that we have, you can go to downtownlex.com, which is our website. You can also call our office at 425-2590. All of our events are family friendly. We also encourage people to come down with their pets. In, I believe it's July, we'll be having a pet costume contest. This will be our third annual pet costume contest, which is very popular. We've had lots of creative different dogs and other animals come out for that. So we try to do different themes. If you look at our website, again, it'll list if there is a special theme. We try to have many, many different types of bands out. And the whole schedule is out there through October 15th. We also want to let people know that there's plenty of parking when you come down. The lot at the corner of Market and Short Street is $1 every Thursday, and that's courtesy of Central Parking Systems. But there's also, I believe, almost 3,000 parking spots within walking distance of Cheapside Park, which is, when I say walking distance, I mean about one to two blocks. There's parking garages, there's surface parking and on-street parking, and people should know that when they come downtown after 5 p.m., they do not have to pay the meters. I'm Renee with the Downtown Next Incorporation. What's your name? I'm Matt Vincent with Bluegrass Kettle Masters. And you come out to Thursday Night Live every week. What do you enjoy about it? I enjoy the music. I enjoy the food. I enjoy the kettle corn. Have you seen it grow over the years? I have. I've been here for six years, and I've seen it grow a lot. I've seen it grow in quality and quantity, both. What do you think about the park so far? I think they did a great job. I think that grass is going to be a premium, so people are going to want to get down here early to get their grass spots. That's definitely what I think. I think that utilizing the better times of the year as far as weather goes, May, September, and October, is going to improve the quality of it, get better weather, cooler. I think it's going to go great. We really never thought about that, but a lot of people think the midsummer is really hot, and we are at the weather's mercy. Well, we don't have fountains anymore, so we're going to want the cooler weather now. My name's Al. I'm here from Goodfellas Pizzeria. Where's Goodfellas? It's right across the way at 110 North Mill Street. We have the biggest pizza in town, 22 inches, biggest breadsticks. And we're up until 3.30 a.m. Thursday, Friday, Saturday. And what do you think about coming out to Thursday Night Live? Thursday Night Live's great. Great place, great music, great food, great fun. Do you see people of all ages? All ages, all sizes, and all shapes. Moffs right across the street get to walk out and enjoy some beverages and some live music. And, you know, weather holds out most of the time, so it's a great event. It's the shiny, happy bubble that's around Cheapside Park. Yeah. And it seems to get better and better every year. I think it started out with probably about 30 people, 20 to 30 people showing up, and it seems like maybe we get a couple hundred these days. Yeah. First of all, it's great to be out here. This is an awesome location. It keeps getting better with these changes. But as far as parking goes, we did a little survey the other day and found there are 3,000 parking spaces within two blocks of Cheapside. And most of them are available after 5 p.m. So all 3,000 are not typically available during the day, but for functions like Thursday Night Live, there's 3,000 parking spaces within two blocks of Cheapside. Pretty cool. This is Laura Farnsworth of the Downtown Lexington Corporation. I want you to tell us about some of the special events that we know we have planned throughout the season. On June 18th, the Lexington History Museum will be conducting a birthday party for Belle Breezing. It's going to be Belle's Birthday Bash. This event will go on inside the History Museum located here in Cheapside Park, as well as during the band breaks. We have girls that are going to be dressed as Belle acting out vignettes from the different scenes of her life. There will also be a carriage, all kinds of things. And it's a fundraiser for the Lexington History Museum. What other ones do we know we have coming up? In July, we will have a pet costume contest. It's Better Off Dead is the band and we encourage everyone to bring your pets out. Last year we had I think 14 animals come out in the array of costumes. It's an awful lot of fun. And then we actually kick off the 4th of July season. I agree. I think it's going to be a long weekend with July falls on Saturday and then we'll have Friday off. We do. On July 2nd we have Rob Dredd. He'll be performing here in the park and we're gonna do a beach party and All kinds of great beach festivities going on out here The last Thursday night live of the year October 15th we're gonna do a people costume party We did that last year the week before Halloween, and it was just a blast the weather's right Everybody's already got their costume. It's gonna be a great time That's a great reason to wear your costume again. I like to wear my costume as much as possible We just wanted to remind everybody that during the month of May, which is Bike Month, anybody who rides their bicycle down to Thursday Night Live gets one free beverage voucher of their choice. And that's good every Thursday through May. There's also lots of great bike activities that are going on here in Cheapside Park during the month of May. We're here with downtown Jessica, and I wanted to ask her what she thinks of the event. I'm just so excited that on our first Thursday Night Live of the year, it did not rain. It's beautiful. We have a happy, shiny bubble above Cheapside Park. It doesn't rain on Thursdays. Believe me, I won't let it. I love Thursday Night Live because I love to eat. If I can eat, I'll do it. And there are so many food vendors this year at Thursday Night Live. We have snow cones. We have kettle corn, which we've always had. We have pizza, burgers straight from the grill, and, of course, cold beer to go with it. So come on down to Thursday Night Live. Don't miss it. It's a lot of fun for your family. Everything is here just for you, something for everyone. I'm here today with Matt Cordell from All Tech, Kentucky, Yale. Thank you, Matt, for coming out. One of our great sponsors of the event. You enjoy coming out every week. I love it thoroughly. It's one of our favorite events. Every Thursday evening, getting the local community involved, the downtown business people. Like the relief, getting off work, having a cold beer, and loving the entertainment. It's a fantastic event. I'm here with Steve Kelly of Central Bank. First of all, Steve, thank you all so much for being such great sponsors of the event. Each year it gets bigger, it gets better, the crowds are better, there's more food, there's more fun. We love it. How many years has Central Maine been involved now? I think this is our fourth year. And this is an idea that came back from, I believe, Greenville, South Carolina. Right. Greenville, South Carolina. Mayor Miller was on that chamber trip and brought the idea back. And we've been fortunate to have folks who were willing to sponsor the event and stayed with it. And it's developed its own following. We're just thrilled that we could kind of come in when we did and keep it going. And we're thrilled that you did. And I agree. I've been coming for years and know that the crowd has gotten bigger. And I think the park improvements are only going to help the space. More people are bringing chairs. They're sitting. They're bringing baby strollers, the whole bit. Yeah, you do see it. We've been encouraging lots of families. We always have activities, bubbles and chalk for the kids, and the dogs have a watering station. So it's just growing, and we love it. It's very family-friendly. Well, thank you again, Steve. Our pleasure. Let's keep it going. Okay. Thanks for watching Only Downtown. Coming up next is an affair of the arts. We'll be right back. of litter on the first day of each month. Good morning. Hi, I'm Mayor Jim Newbeer, and I'd like to talk to you about some important telephone numbers. For fire, theft, and accidents, please call 911. 311 is the number you need to dial for all city services like garbage pickup, sanitary sewers, traffic, and much more. Calling 211 connects you to local health and human services provided through the United Way. Remember, 911 is for emergencies. 211 is for Health and Human Services. And 311 is your connection to City Hall. I'm Jim Clark. I'm President and CEO of LexArts. And LexArts is Lexington's United Arts Fund and Arts Council. And as the United Arts Fund, we raise money for the arts and then distribute it to various groups throughout the community. And then as the Arts Council, we manage Arts Place and the Downtown Arts Center on behalf of LFUCG. And we also do things like Gallery Hop and Art Showcase Weekend. It was started in the 70s as the Lexington Council on the Arts. and then it merged with Lexington's United Arts Fund in the 80s and became the Lexington Arts and Cultural Council. And since that is quite a mouthful, we shortened that about five years ago to LexArts. But it's been around for quite a long time. It was part of the community arts movement that spread across the country in the late 60s and into the 70s of organizing all the arts groups and trying to find public and private support for the arts. So it was really designed as a mechanism to help strengthen the arts community here in Lexington. Apart from delving into people's wallets every year with our campaign for the arts, we're probably very well known for horse mania. It happened in 2000. 79 horses graced the streets of Lexington for quite a few months. The funds generated from that have been put into a public art fund. In 2004, we did Dynamic Doors, which we utilized about 200 doors from Bluegrass Aspendale housing project when it was demolished. We took the doors, handed them over to artists and schools and community groups to create artworks with those doors. And we're preparing to do Horse Mania again in 2010 for the World Equestrian Games. Well, we know through quite a few conversations that we have had with people here in Lexington, as well as the mayor's 2040 planning process, that there is a keen interest in public art. And right now we really don't have the revenue stream to commission permanent works of art, but we did have the funds available to do a temporary project, and that is how we came up with the balancing act. The works will be up for six months. There are ten sculptures around town. And it really is a way to show the public and some of the property owners how we could do this and sort of introduce the idea of public art, get it going, so that that might help generate ideas of how we could get a permanent program in place. The genesis of Balancing Act came about when the downtown master plan suggested Vine Street becoming a linear park. And in those conversations, people were talking about the role that public art could play in that. But it was all very distant. You know, it's going to take a very large financial effort in order to transform Vine Street into this linear park. And we thought this might be a great way to jumpstart that conversation and just start putting sculpture out there just to see how that could provoke certain ideas of what Vine Street could become. and also at the same time then we launched into the debate about Centerpoint and then also through the mayor's 2040 plan the key question or the grounding question is how do we balance growth while preserving the things that we cherish and I think that's you know sculptures are dealing but the idea of balance all the time in a very formal way in terms of the engineering of their works, but also in a metaphorical way. And so what we did was put out a call for artists, sculptors, saying the idea is let's put together a collection of work that really begs the question of achieving balance or how do you maintain balance. And this way, artists get to participate in this larger conversation about balancing the growth of Lexington while protecting the bluegrass or protecting our way of life here. So it's just our way of throwing ourselves into a larger conversation that's impacting the growth of the city, but also of stimulating the ideas of what our city sidewalks could look like if art was more a part of it. We have quite a few local artists like James Wade, who teaches at UK, Tony Higdon and Erica Strecker who have their gallery and workshop over at Newtown and 3rd Street. And actually their studio and gallery space is, the gallery is open to the public and you can see quite a few of their works. And then we have artists from throughout the region, Berea and Louisville and other parts of eastern and western Kentucky. And if artists are interested, they could always send us either a JPEG or a DVD with their images on that. We're constantly looking. At the end of six months, we'll be looking for another crop of artists. We worked with an advisory group that helped select the artists. It was the same advisory group that helped us with the mural project. So we're really building a support system to get public art going here through this project. Actually, the sculptors are primarily located on Vine Street from Broadway to Limestone. We have a brochure that you can pick up at the Downtown Arts Center or Arts Place. I think we even have a sign out near Triangle Park that has the map showing where all the pieces are located. But it's fairly highly concentrated on Vine Street. The Balancing Act will continue into 2009, and then as those pieces come down, we'll probably find new artworks and move them around town. We have our campaign coming up. That'll be in February through April. We run that. We always have shows rotating in here at the gallery at Arts Place. And also there's the gallery hops, Keep Us Busy, which is about every other month. They can always call 255-2951, which would give you our receptionist who knows quite a bit about what's going on around town and can direct you to either the right person on staff or to another arts organization, or you visit www.lexarts.org, and there we have a complete calendar of everything that's going on as well as information about how to get involved in the arts. We have an opportunity to give online, but also during the campaign, we are looking for companies that could do workplace giving sites, act as an employee-based giving program, sort of how the United Way operates. and if anyone's interested in that they can contact us to get some information but more importantly they could talk to contact their human resource director and ask about getting that started at their companies as well as information about how to get involved in the arts Hi, Mayor. 911 is for emergencies. 211 is for health and human services. And 311 is your connection to City Hall. Pick it up, Lexington. You can make a difference. Be a Lexington Litter Buster. Pick up a piece of litter on the first day of each month. Pick it up, Lexington. You can make a difference. Be a Lexington Litter Buster. Pick up a piece of litter on the first day of each month. Pick it up, Lexington. You can make a difference via Lexington Litter Buster. Pick up a piece of litter on the first day of each month. You're watching GTV3. Coming up next is Social Moments. We have children here that range in age from six weeks, and we keep them up until they start attending kindergarten. Most of the infants and toddlers have moms that are going to school here, but we do take children from families that are not attending school here. We have families that may be attending UK, BCTC, or are working. So we have several working parents that we provide care for their children. Our four-year-old classrooms, and we have two of those, are a cooperation with Fayette County Schools and it's part of their Early Start program. And Early Start is for families that have children at risk and at risk is determined that those families that are eligible for the free lunch program. The Early Start program is half a day program and we do have children that are attending just that half day. And then we have children that are in need of care before and after the Early Start day. So Fayette County Schools provide the teachers for the program. We provide the assistant teachers. We may be providing transportation if it's needed. And we provide the social services. And the assistant teachers come through Auburn County Government, so it's a real nice partnership between two agencies to provide those services. Our center opens at 6.30 in the morning, and we do have children arriving at 6.30. And we do close by 5.30 in the afternoon. The buses come in at about 8 o'clock, and children coming in on our buses and our van are coming in with their mothers to coming in for school. And they, upon entering the center, they wash their hands, including our infants have their hands washed when they enter the classroom, and then they have breakfast in the morning. All of our classrooms produce lesson plans so they know in advance the activities that they want to do with the children and we do try to follow a schedule as close as we can. We have large group activities, small group activities in our classrooms. We have teacher directed activities. Most of the day is free choice for the children where they are choosing the activities that they go into. Our children do have screenings that we do with them about 30 days after they have enrolled or have been attending the center. We have some guidance and we share this with the parents. Where their children are, what skills they want to work on, if any of them, if we need further evaluation for more information what's going on with the child. It may be with language development. We would like a further evaluation. And if that's the case and we meet with the parents and with their approval, we will submit a referral for a speech evaluation for them. Or it could be OT or PT. And we do have parent meetings. We try to meet at least twice a year with parents for parent-child conferences. And the teachers go over where the child is in the classroom, what they're doing, the skills they're working on. We try to find out what things are going on with the child at home, what are their preferences, what time they go to bed at night, so we know if they're tired in the morning. Is it that they're not feeling well? Did they have a hard time going to bed? Those sorts of things, so we know how to better work with the child the next day. And then we do have lunch for the children, and our children do have a rest time, a quiet time after lunch, which most of them are sleeping and take a nap. Those that do not need a nap, they still have quiet time. They may be looking at books on their cots or that sort of thing. And then when they get up from nap, they all have a snack. Then the ones that are riding our transportation, they leave at about 2.30 in the afternoon. And then the others who have parents that are picking them up leave at some point later in the day. We do have a large gross motor room, an indoor large gross motor room on days that the weather does not allow the children to go outside, but we do try to take them outside as many days as possible, weather permitting. There are lots of opportunities for parent and child interaction, and I think having the parents under the same roof with the child, I think it helps them become more of a team with the classroom staff. It's not an us-them sort of situation. It is we're all working with this child together. We all want to be on the same page. We want to be working toward the same goals. It may be if a child is beginning to take their first steps, the child care staff may call up to the parent's classroom, come down, you want to see this, you know, this is really neat. And so a parent gets an opportunity to come down for that. For instance, if a child's having a rough time adjusting that day for some reason, a baby may have a difficult time calming himself, we're just not finding the right way to help calm them down, we can call a mom to come down and help us calm them with whatever her unique trick is with her particular child. And if we haven't learned it or go through whatever steps need to happen with the child. So it's nice being in the same building. You can call them and they can call you. They can also call into rooms at any time and ask How are they doing? I was missing them, and that's okay too. We do have some opportunities throughout the month that parents and children come together. We have been reaccredited by the National Association for the Education of Young Children, and this is a national accrediting organization, and they are the gold standard. They set the gold standard in early childhood. So we were granted reaccreditation with this organization, which says we meet their guidelines. And those are pretty tough guidelines to meet. For instance, they require lower child staff ratios than what Kentucky daycare licensing requires. They require a higher level of teacher training coming into the program and annual training that the teachers attend. throughout the year. Our teachers obtain at least 15 hours per year of child development training. And most of our staff end up with more than the 15 hours. NAEYC also requires a certain amount of parent-child interaction activities for the parents. We also have a three-star rating from the state of Kentucky under the Kids for Now stars rating program. So we have achieved a three star level with them and we see benefits through the state with additional training, opportunities for additional training with our staff through that program. We always have a steady stream of students coming in to do observations or some sort of class activity where they're working with children. We have a nice relationship with the local community college, BCTC, working with their students and also with staff. They come in and also do staff training with us to bring in new information, new ideas with our staff. Because we are in AEYC accredited and because of our participation in the STARS rating program, students are encouraged to go to NAIC-accredited programs for different models. We have our child care staff sit on a variety of committees, both locally and statewide, in developing different resources for early childhood providers. And one thing about our staff that I think is unique In child care, there tends to be a heavy turnover rate in staff, but at the Family Care Center, we have a very low staff turnover rate. And in fact, most of my staff have worked here at the Family Care Center for over 10 years. And I have staff, all of my teachers have a degree in some form related to early childhood. I have teachers and assistant teachers that hold CDA credentials, which is a child development associate credential. So we have staff that really, I think, go out of their way to try to strengthen their skills. or visit us on the web at lexingtonky.gov. You're watching Government Channel 3, your award-winning link to the Lexington Fayette Urban County Government. Watch us online at lexingtonky.gov. Thank you. In central Kentucky, we like spring. After all, there are not many things any more beautiful than spring in central Kentucky. The green fields, the derby, Keeneland, horses galore. But unfortunately, here in Lexington, for more years than anyone wants to remember, heavy rains, including those that turn our fields so green each spring, have also meant overflowing sewage pump stations that seriously damage our streams. We're working hard to address the problems in Lexington's dilapidated sanitary and storm sewer systems, problems that have made the city itself a key reason why we have not in the past been in compliance with the Clean Water Act. Since this is Earth Week, it is entirely appropriate that we focus on this issue today and break ground on a facility that will address one of our worst sanitary sewer overflow sites in our system, the South Elkhorn Pump Station. It is a pleasure for me to have several friends with me this morning. And first, I want to invite our Congressman Ben Chandler to say a few words about this event. Chairman Chandler has been enormously supportive of our efforts to improve this pump station, and he secured a grant of $1,180,000 to help fund it, and I'm very grateful for his help. Congressman. Thank you, Mayor. Appreciate it very much. Good to be with you today, and to everybody here who's supporting this effort, it's good to be with you. You know, nobody wants to talk about sewers. They aren't catchy, they aren't attractive, and they often aren't the topic of conversation and nobody particularly wants them to be the topic of conversation. We weren't planning on this, but today you can see the reason. You've heard Mayor Newberry talk about the reason why we need to make our wastewater infrastructure a topic of conversation. Now today, fortunately, you can't smell the reason, but last time we were here to announce the grant, the federal grant, you could smell it. And I understand that you could smell it quite often, so it's important that something be done about this problem. The EPA is allowing this project to go forward with no further environmental review. We're satisfied with what's been done thus far, and because of this we can clean up this area much faster. The health of our sewer systems is important to our neighborhoods, our communities, and our state. Just imagine downtown Nicholasville Road and the Kentucky River without our sewer systems. I was very fortunate to have the opportunity to assist in a small way, but the important thing that we're interested in now is the reduction of the environmental impact here in Fayette County on our people and in the surrounding counties. Streams don't stop at the county line, and Judge Cassidy knows that. I'm glad that the folks are here from Jessamine County because this obviously has an effect on Jessamine County, too. With wet weather, this pump station doesn't have enough capacity to handle the flow, and It sends raw sewage right into the South Elkhorn Creek. The Division of Water Quality says that the South Elkhorn Station has been the site of more overflows of raw sewage than any other overflow site in Fayette County. Replacing this pump station and building the larger line that we will need is going to take time. So we've got to be patient to get the whole thing done. but I'm sure that all involved are working to remedy this problem as soon as possible. I'm pleased to see that this project is off to a great start, and I look forward to seeing the results soon. The city's leadership has truly made a statement that our neighbors and the environment should be paramount, that our streams can sparkle, and that we can work together to make this region safe and clean. I'm awfully proud of Lexington, of the leadership that Mayor Newberry has showed on environmental issues in general, and the leadership he's shown in talking about and dealing with sewer problems. As I say, something that none of us are excited to talk about, but something that is very basic and very important to our people. Mayor, thank you. Ah, you're over there. Congressman, I'm very, very pleased to have the opportunity to serve as mayor when the environment is such a critical part of what we're trying to accomplish in Lexington. And while no one particularly likes talking about sewers, we do like talking about having clean water in our streams and rivers in central Kentucky. And if we don't do a good job with our sewer infrastructure, we won't have clean water in our rivers and streams. And so that's really why we're all here today. One of the major problems that we've had, as Congressman Chandler alluded to just a moment ago, has been a lack of capacity. By replacing the pump station at a cost of $15 million, we will be increasing our capacity by 85%. That increase in capacity will help to make us a much better neighbor. We will treat waste from Justman County, which is only appropriate since the West Hickman wastewater treatment plant is in Justman County. And I'd like for Justman County Judge Executive Neal Cassidy to come to the podium and talk just a little bit about the impact of these improvements on his county. Judge Cassidy has been a great friend. He is a wonderful neighbor, and he is the dean of the local officials in central Kentucky. So, Judge, come on up and say a few words. You wouldn't give a fellow a big head, would you? You know, he teased me in Jessamon County about saying that when I began my talk, this is a great day or this is a great project. But I will have to say that this is indeed a great project, and it's a special day. It's a project that is not only a Fayette County project that only affects Fayette County. It's a central Kentucky project as far as I'm concerned because it goes down the creek and then the river, and we all have repercussions of things that don't work right. I'd like to say thanks to Mayor Newberry. He's a good fellow to work with. He does what I think is right Fayette County, and he likes his neighbors, and that's kind of unusual. Also, I'd like to thank Congressman Chandler. He is a real asset to Central Kentucky. He's always there in helping fund him what he can, and if he can't fund, well, he's helping you do other things also. But it is a good day, and like I said a while ago, we could... When we've been up here before, you could smell things around that wasn't too pleasant. But I'm real thankful that we're getting this project done because it does go directly into Jessamine County. And this is certainly going to make a better environment for all of us to live in. Thank you very much. Thanks, Judge. It is a pleasure to have you here. And in addition to Congressman Chandler and Judge Cassidy, there are three other folks here that I want to introduce. Council Member Doug Martin, who represents this part of Fayette County. We're very pleased to have you here, and we're grateful for all the council's support along the way. And then Environmental Quality Commissioner Cheryl Taylor and our Director of the Division of Water Quality, Charlie Martin, are the folks that are really on the point in terms of improving our water quality here in Fayette County, and we're grateful for all the work and leadership that both of you have provided. As most of you know, the city signed a consent decree last year with U.S. Environmental Protection Agency after the EPA sued us in 2006 for violations of the Clean Water Act. I have made the implementation of that agreement and through it the cleaning up of our environment a top priority for our administration, in fact the top priority for our administration. My goal is to leave the bluegrass to our children and to our grandchildren in far better shape than the way we found it. One priority of our agreement with the EPA is to resolve sanitary sewer overflow issues and that's what we're working on today. The pump station right here has been the site of more overflows of raw sewage than any other overflow site in the county. The pump station does not have sufficient capacity to handle the flow during the wet weather we experience from time to time. When there is an overflow, the raw sewage flows straight into South Alcorn Creek, and I don't have to explain the difficulties that creates for everybody living downstream. We have neglected this problem far too long as well as an assortment of others in our sanitary sewer system in Fayette County, and I am glad that we are getting started here and in several other places in our community to address these problems. Waiting, quite frankly, is just no longer an option for Fayette County and for Central Kentucky, and today we're making substantial progress. I'm very grateful to Congressman Chandler, Judge Cassidy, and all the folks at Urban County Government who have been helpful in moving this along. And with that, if I could get everybody to help me break a little ground here, we will get the project moving. Thank you. We could use the money, right? Yeah, we could always use the money, but 20th, that's not sure what would be next. Oh, definitely. Looks like a legitimate check. All you have to do is sign, and your money troubles are over. Looks like all I have to do is sign it. Don't, or you could lose your home. Don't borrow trouble. Call 1-866-830-7868. We'll be right back. Thank you very much. It is a great place to be on Earth Day, here at Mary Todd on a beautiful day with a bunch of great young people who are going to probably be telling their moms and dads a lot about rain gardens that I bet your moms and dads don't know. So you can help your moms and dads learn something. Rain gardens help our city, and we hope to have literally thousands of them installed over the next several years. By virtue of having these filters, as you described just a moment ago, we will be able to put more of our rainwater runoff into the ground and less of it into our storm sewer system. And that means we don't have to build as large a storm sewer system. That means we don't have to spend as much taxpayers' money, and that means we save a lot in taxes over the long haul. So the more rain gardens we have all across our community, the better off we're going to be. This is a wonderful event because it involves a lot of different people in our community. John, thanks so much for your assistance in putting it together. The PTA, the Neighborhood Association, the school, all have come together to make this event happen, and we're glad that urban county government could play a small role in assisting along the way. So thanks to everybody for taking the time to be out here, especially the moms and dads who probably have other things they could be doing right now. And boys and girls, thanks so much for your all's help. You all are the stars of this show today, and this will help make our community better. Lexington has a long history in many well-established neighborhoods. Periodically, these older neighborhoods need infrastructure upgrades, and the LFECG's Division of Engineering steps in to get the job done. Roger Costin explains. We're on Oak Hill Drive between Shawnee and Morgan Avenue. It's part of the Meadows-Northland Arlington neighborhood, and this is going to be Phase 3C of this neighborhood improvement development project. The street below us, Meadow Park is Phase 3B that we're currently working on, and there will be consecutive projects following behind this. So work going on behind us is utility relocation. The contractor working behind me is a contractor for Kentucky American Water. They're putting in new water mains for the upcoming street improvement project that the LFUCG will be doing. The gas company is also renewing their lines and what that does is before we come in it updates all the utilities so that we shouldn't have any problems in the near future that we would have to come back and dig up the streets for. What it involves is the utility companies going in first and renewing their stuff, and then we have a contractor come in after that and do the storm sewer work, rebuild the streets, put in new curb and gutters, sidewalks, and make everything finished up and tied together. These are old neighborhoods. We don't have any curbs here. Some places have some sidewalks. Some don't, and the ones that are here are mostly in bad shape. And so we renew everything and try to bring some life back to these older neighborhoods. Roger Costin talks about how these improvement projects are funded and gives us an idea of when they will be completed. Each utility bears the cost of their renewals. The contracts for the individual streets vary. Meadow Park is about $1.1 million. Shawnee is going to be just a little less than that, but they tend to run all about the same, near a million dollars per street. I do know that Meadow Park will be finished this year. Shawnee, we should be starting by June, and so it should be able to be finished by the end of the year. I think the next phase is edge lawn, but sometimes our priorities change depending on the utility's progress and other conflicts we have with finances, funding. A lot of this money is federal money, CDBG grant money. And so, but this whole neighborhood eventually is slated to be reworked, much like the Loudon and Meadow Lane neighborhood was in the past few years. Each of the neighborhoods in line for upgrades is different, and so are the needs of that neighborhood. Mr. Costin talks about how these needs are assessed and what can be expected upon completion and talks about his experience with these projects. What starts all this is a detailed survey of what needs the street has. Meadow Park's getting a really large storm sewer system that serves all the streets above it. Everything drains that way, so we're putting in a pretty substantial storm sewer system down there. And each consequent street above it gets storm sewers that tie into it. so the design has to fit that storm sewer into what's already here and then the utility companies take our design and when they put their new facilities in they adjust them up or down or move them out of the street or into the street to accommodate our planned construction so it's a detailed process it takes several years of design and development and then once they start coming out putting their stuff in then we progress right along with them and bring other improvements along behind them what they look forward to after the work is done is a lot cleaner and better drain in neighborhood we will have street curb boxes that catch street water drainage is much improved you have new sidewalks Here we don't have any sidewalks, so they have sidewalks on both sides of the street, curbs. Their streets can then get regular service from the street sweeping service. It's just a lot cleaner and a better-appearing neighborhood. I've been doing CDBG projects since I first started doing construction inspection with the city 25 years ago. I've worked quite a few, I forget now, dozens of neighborhoods where we've gone in and done this. And it's an ongoing process. It's federal money sent to us for neighborhood improvement, and we try to pick areas that really need it. We'll go into a neighborhood and work that one for several years until we work our way through it, and then we'll go to another one. Yeah, there are many neighborhoods here in Lexington that have benefited from this CDBG project over the last 25 years. There's always other neighborhoods that need improvement, and there's no shortage of places to be improving your infrastructure and upgrading what you have. The upgrades are a temporary inconvenience for residents while the construction is ongoing, but the finished product is worth the wait. Mr. Costin has a message for those inconvenienced by the work. I just want them to know that we're out here doing a hard job and it involves a lot of inconvenience for the residents while we're doing it, but bear with us, work with us, understand that we're out here trying to make things better for you. It's not easy to get through on these projects because you spend a couple years going through the disruption, the noise, the dust, and not being able to get through when you want to every time. So just bear with us and work with us. This is a dangerous job. These guys are out here every day trying to make your neighborhood better. So bear with them and appreciate it. If you want to find out about the schedule of upcoming neighborhoods, where we're at, you can call engineering office. It's 258-3400 and ask for the construction management section. And there are people there that are working on the plans for the future projects. And they can give you information about what neighborhoods are scheduled. Entertainment, shopping, and the many new developments invite you to experience downtown Lexington. Downtown Lexington is a safe, low-crime area for singles, couples, and families to enjoy all it has to offer. At the start of 2008, Lexington experienced its lowest crime rate in 34 years, even though our city continues to grow, drawing new residents who recognize what a safe place Lexington is to live, work, and raise families. We invite you to come play, shop, dine, live, or stay downtown. And don't forget to say hello to all of your friends in blue. Can I ask a few questions about the apartment on Park Street? What was your name? My name? My name is Juan Hernandez. It's been rented. Hello, my name is Sanjay Kumar. I'm calling about the apartment on Park Street. It just rented. My name is Tyrone Washington. I'm calling about the apartment for rent on Park Street. It's not available. I use a wheelchair and... It's gone. Hello, my name is Graham Wellington. I'm calling about the apartment for rent on Park Street. Is that still available? Yes, it is. It is. Housing discrimination is illegal. If you think you've been a victim, call us. Music As Lysington continues to grow, so does the need for better utilities, especially in older neighborhoods. Many neighborhoods need broader scoped upgrades to streets and sidewalks, but others need more focused work. One of those neighborhoods is Cadentown. Darren Wallingford of the LFUCG's Division of Engineering tells us about that work. What we're doing here today is in the Cadentown area. It's an older section of town that has not been sewered. There's a grant that gives us the opportunity to come in in unsewered areas, to come in, place sanitary sewer lines for people who are on septic tanks that we need to really get off. In this particular project, it's taken a long time to develop the plans, work with the public, as well with the UK Archaeology Society. The archaeology department has worked with us. We know it's a sensitive area for history. So we've come in and taken all that into consideration to do this project. Darren Wallingford discusses what goes on to get a project of this magnitude off the ground and what to expect once the work is finished. Through several years of looking at the layout on this particular project, we've looked into many different scenarios of where to place the lines and working with the two churches here in the area as well as the property owners here in Cadentown, a final selection of where to put the lines were agreed upon, which brought us to the construction as you see today. I know with a lot of construction sites, as you see things tore up, it looks terrible. But once completed, this will undoubtedly be a nice-looking area to come in, move into, and yes, you will have sewer to hook onto. Mr. Wallingford goes into a bit more detail about some of the specifics of the work itself and what residents need to do to get their property onto the system. He goes on to discuss the timeframe for completion of the project. The work we're doing here today, the guys just completed putting in a lateral for this home. At this point, the homeowner would go down and get a permit from the sanitary sewer tap-on division located on the fourth floor of the engineering office. After doing that, they would hire a plumber to hook onto the laterals that we are placing in the ground. And after all of our testing and our sanitary sewer division has gone through and made sure everything is good to go, they may be able to do this. In gravity line construction of sewer lines, basically, as gravity says, you start at the highest point and move down to a lower point, which the sewage will flow through. In some instances, we have to have gravity lines come through to a lower point. In some instances, such as Bracktown, which we just got completed with about two years ago, we had to pump the sewage to a different location to where the gravity will pick up from that point and take it down. So the sewage systems we have here in town basically are gravity to possibly a pump station which takes it on to another gravity. And it's a continuation of those things that get it to the proper area to be treated. The project started in February 16th of this year. We're hoping that the way we're moving, it will probably be completed by the end of April. We've run gravity sewer lines up Todd's Road from Maple Leaf, down Maple Leaf, and along Cadentown up to the old Liberty Road here, which adjoins the new Liberty Road just off to my left. The sewer lines are here to benefit us as a community, to make things a whole lot greener, as the new phrase is, so to speak. We need to get the people off the septic tanks and into the sewage. There have been several major projects of this type in Lexington in recent years. Mr. Wallingford concludes by discussing the time frame for getting everyone off the septic tanks and onto the regular sewer system. This is the third project that has gone on in recent years. As I mentioned earlier, Bracktown Road area, the Wilderness Road area just down the road from here, this Cadentown area. There's another one in Lee's Way. There's a couple homes on Vercels, Beverly Avenue. So there are a couple more of these we need to do. The three big ones, this being the last of the big ones, hopefully will be completed as of this year. I know there will be some more work continuing on for the years to come. Hopefully to get everyone off the septic tanks is our goal and to get them tied into the local sewage system. Lexington 9-1-1, where is your emergency? Lexington 9-1-1, where is your emergency? You was eyeballing. You can't get your mind on them weeds if you're eyeballing. You know the weeds, Mr. Kiplegoss. Welcome back to Safe and Secure. I'm Captain D. Kelly, Department of Community Corrections. This is Corporal D. Smith. He's our road crew supervisor, and we're out today with the road crew, and we're going to ask Corporal Smith a few questions. Corporal Smith, what is the road crew? The road crew is a group of about five, maybe six of our eventual custody inmates. They're carefully screened for charges and everything. They come out here and pick up the trash that we find along the side of the road. It's a way for them to give back to the community, pay back for having been in custody, and it also makes the city look better. How often do you all go out with the road crew and clean up the areas of Lexington? We go out as much as we can any day that's nice. If it's raining, we don't go out. If it's 30 degrees or below, we generally don't go out, although we can. We do have some cold weather gear that we can use if there's a need to go out and pick up a particular area. How much trash do you pick up, or have you picked up since you've been doing this? Since the program started in March of 2007, they picked up over 2,600 bags of trash, which totals about 72,000, 73,000 pounds. As an everyday citizen, how would I go about alerting your department as to areas of Lexington that need to be cleaned? The primary way would be to call LexCol. They have a list that if you call in and tell a location that we can access the list and we'll know what we need cleaned up and when. Another way to do it is to contact your county councilman and let them know. They can also notify us. And if we take care of everything that's on the list, which occasionally happens, we'll just come back out to one of the main thoroughfares like Man of War, where we know there's a lot of trash that gets left over time. And we'll come back out and clean this up on an occasional basis. As an everyday citizen of Lexington, if I were to see my neighbor's yard, for instance, they weren't keeping it clean. Could I call LexCol and have your crew come out and clean my neighbor's yard? No, we don't do private property. All we do is the public right away on the sides of the streets and highways around the county. After your road crew has picked up all this trash, where does it all go? Well, we pick it all up. We put it up, right now we're putting it on a particular street corner and I call solid waste. We have a partnership with them. They'll come out and pick our trash up. We're also developing a program with recycling so we can separate all the recyclable material out from the trash itself, therefore lessen the landfill and better for us. Better for the environment. That's great. Better for us. That's great. Well, thanks for joining us today. I appreciate you letting us come out with your road crew and seeing what all you do. Thanks for coming out. All right. Don't you ever talk that way to me. Never! Never! What we've got here is failure to communicate. Some men you just can't reach. So you get what we had here last week, which is the way he wants it. Well, he gets it. I don't like it any more than you, ma'am. I saw the photograph He blew his mind out in a car He didn't notice that the lights had changed A crowd of people stood and stared They'd seen his face before. Nobody was really sure he was on the house before. Welcome back to Safe and Secure. I'm Battalion Chief Marshall Griggs with the Lexington Fire Department. And today we want to take an opportunity to show you some of the fire training that your fire and emergency services folks go through to help keep you safe. And today we're going to be looking at extrication training. Now when I say extrication, what I'm referring to there is most folks are familiar with the expression, the jaws of life. We're talking about being able to extricate or remove someone from a vehicle when they've been in an auto accident. So that's what we're going to be doing today and hopefully you'll get to see a little bit more about how that works and it'll make you feel better about should the unfortunate event that you're in an accident, you're going to get the best care possible. Here we have firefighters getting instruction before we begin. These firefighters are of course line firefighters and we're having all our firefighters come through this training. We do in-service training on a monthly basis so that everyone is up to date on the latest tools and techniques. These Hamaltrow tools that we're going to be using today are the latest generation that the Lexington Fire Department has so we're making sure all our people are completely familiar and comfortable using them so that in an emergency situation we're ready to go. These are some of the basic components of our extrication tools. Initially here, this is our power unit. This is what gets things started. It's totally portable. If you notice how small it is, they've reduced dramatically in size from what we used to have to deal with. This is small enough that one firefighter can carry it easily, and that allows us to work on vehicles that might be very far away from an incident. Also if you notice we've got two different lines coming off here. Each one of these lines represents a different tool that can be used to help extricate a victim. Come on around here and I'll show you these other tools. This tool here is called our spreaders. This is traditionally what people think of when they think of the jaws of life. These two arms here are able to go into a vehicle or an opening and spread it open which obviously would assist us in getting someone out of an incident. Over here we've got our cutting tools. This is a cutter. As you can notice, it's shaped like so and they close together and it gives us an incredible amount of cutting power when it's necessary to cut through various aspects of a vehicle. What we have here is a ram. It's a telescoping ram that extends out. So this helps us in spreading situations that are greater than the jaws or the arms of the spreaders. So this allows us to spread large areas open to make for easy access so we can get to the patient in a safe manner. In the unfortunate event that someone's involved in an auto accident, chances are they're injured and they're entrapped in this vehicle. So even though our initial reaction is to immediately get in there to them, sometimes The best thing for them is to stabilize the vehicle so that the vehicle doesn't move unnecessarily while we're extricating them. So the first thing we do is stabilize, and we do that by various cribbing and step chalks. This is called a step chalk. We slide it up under the vehicle, and then that stabilizes the vehicle so that the shock absorbing abilities of the vehicle are minimized and it keeps the vehicle from moving. So we would do this. We would use these. Sometimes we also use various sizes of timber that we can stack. That supports the vehicle and minimizes movement, which helps keep the patient safe until we're able to extricate them. The tool he's using is a windshield saw. It's designed specifically for this purpose. It allows him to make a purchase point with one end and then to use the saw blade to take it out. You can also do that same skill with a fire act. It's just a little bit of a newer tool, a newer technology that makes the job a little easier. is made of double laminate glass. It's actually two pieces of glass with laminate or plastic in between, which are very tough, which is a good thing, but when it comes to extricating someone it causes complications as well. Once they remove the glass they'll put it in a safe place so that it doesn't cause hazards for the rescuers or for the patients. These spreaders have a force, a maximum force of nearly 50,000 PSI or pounds per square inch. Incredibly powerful. By doing this they're pulling the door away from the patient and often times it will break away from the nadir pin and allow the door to open up easy. And again, although it may seem obvious, we would never do this on a vehicle unless it was necessary, unless the doors were jammed and we couldn't open them in a traditional manner. those spreaders to open up the side of that door so that they can get to the nader pin, which is one of the toughest metals in the vehicle. And once we get that opened up, then that door will open up much easier, come off much easier. So now you see they've gotten this door completely off, except for the wiring. They'll cut through that with the cutters. and then this door can be moved to be safely out of the way. And if you notice now how much more open that is for us to have access to that patient, our rule of thumb when we're working on a vehicle, as long as we can stabilize the health of that patient, we want to, rather than take the patient from the vehicle, we want to take the vehicle from the patient. We want to move as much as possible from them so that we don't have to manipulate their spine as small amount as possible. Next, we're going to start working on these posts, A posts. Those are the posts that support the roof, hold the roof up. Many of those posts now have airbag systems in them. They also have that micro alloy or that stronger metal. So that really makes it a challenge to cut through them. And that's why these new cutters are so good, so powerful. The older extrication tools simply couldn't do what that tool just did right there. The average age of a vehicle on the road now is five years old. So basically what that means is essentially everything that you deal with, we have to count on them having airbag or restraint systems. So that absolutely complicates our job. It's safer for the patient, but it can complicate things and make it a little harder to extricate them, more challenging to extricate them. It just means we have to be more aware of the types of vehicles we're working on. Next we're going to be cutting this firewall. And basically that gives us some relief there so that we've got a place we can spread, begin to spread or push that dash off of the patient. The last tool that they're going to demonstrate here is our RAM, the telescoping RAM that we looked at earlier. Yeah, where that 45 is, that won't bend. We gained several inches there of patient access, so that would allow us to free someone's legs if need be. So what you had here is just a glimpse of the challenges and the equipment that's involved in an extrication process. We hope you never have to experience this or to even see this firsthand. But if you do, it is nice to know that the equipment's there, that the training is being done to do everything that we can to make sure that you have a safe and secure day. Hi, welcome back to Safe and Secure. My name is David Jarvis, and I'm the Director of Code Enforcement with the Lexington Fayette Urban County Government within the Department of Public Safety. Today we want to talk about filing an appeal to a code enforcement action. Today with me I have Cooey Parks. Cooey is our Administrative Appeals Coordinator within the Division of Code Enforcement. Coie, let's go over some of the things about filing an appeal within the division. How do you file an appeal? Well, what the property owner would need to do is, in writing, say that they want to file an appeal on their property and for a housing notice it would be they have 20 days plus 3 days for mail to do so. If it's a nuisance notice, then they have 10 days plus 3 days for mail to do. And I guess they do that in writing in the division. They must fill out a form that we have there and drop it off in our division. We don't accept faxes and we don't accept emails, right? Correct. Okay. Once a hearing is, we receive that appeal, what are the steps after that? What I would do is send the property owner notice three weeks in advance of the hearing date and they would have to come down to our division at 101 East Vine Street for the appeal hearing. I guess our hearing officers, we have five hearing officers and they're all volunteers and they're appointed by the mayor. They're not connected with code enforcement in any way. I guess once the hearing is set, code enforcement presents their side and then the property owner presents their side of the case and the hearing officer makes a decision. Right. If the property owner doesn't agree with the decision that's made, they can appeal it to district court. Is that right? Yes, they have seven days to appeal the decision to district court. Some of the things that people can appeal I guess would be a housing notice or a nuisance notice whether it be trash and debris, junk vehicles, that sort of thing, or even a sidewalk notice if their property owner is cited for a sidewalk notice. Some of the things that they can appeal would be? Abatements. If we come out and clean up the property and have already sent the invoice, it's too late to appeal. Sure. So if we have to clean up the property and bill the owner for the cleanup, that is not an appealable issue. All right. Great. Well, thanks. And thanks for watching another episode of Safe and Secure. He's a real nowhere man. Sitting in his nowhere land Making all his nowhere plans for nobody NamUs.gov. It's a new website. It's not your ordinary new website. It's not glamorous. It's a very serious website. And today we have with us Dr. Emily Craig, the Kentucky State Forensic Anthropologist. anthropologist, and she's going to discuss today about the importance of this new website because we need you, the public's help. Dr. Emily Craig, could you please tell our audience why this website came to be? Well, this was an effort of the federal government to get a centralized listing place for missing and unidentified. It had existed within law enforcement for years, but the computer just couldn't do what human eyes and brains could do. So they decided to give it to the public. So for the first time ever, we've got data on missing persons and unidentified victims on a web-based browser. So when the public goes to the NamUs.gov, then they link into these two separate databases? Yes, they can search either one. They're not linked at this point. But I want to emphasize you don't have to log in. Go straight to search, and you can bring it up by county, by state, by age, race, sex, whatever. But like I said, it's publicly accessible. And before too long, they'll be linked by computer. But right now, it takes someone to look at both sides of the equation. And could you tell our audience, I mean, this is such a tool for the forensic anthropologists, the medical examiners, law enforcement, and people, I don't think, realize the magnitude of this, and it's just been out since January 2009. That's right. And hopefully it's going to put an end to this nation's silent mass disaster, because there are over 100,000 missing persons on any given day. And the problem that we've had so far is we've created our own monster. So now we've got 5,000 unidentified victims, well over 1,000 missing persons. And people don't have time to keep up. People are sending me emails, you know, match this one to this one. Maybe this one's this one. It's like, oh, my gosh, oh, my gosh, what am I going to do? And I think thanks to you and the Citizens Police Academy, we've kind of figured out what to do. And that is to recruit members of the academy to help do our searches. Because my biggest fear is to have someone send me a possible match and miss it because I'm out in the field working a case or, you know, involved in one autopsy right after another. So this is the searches and the follow-ups are kind of an add-on to normal duties. So without the Citizens Police Academy, I'm really not sure what we'd do. Dr. Craig, the Citizens Police Academy Alumni Association, we are very honored that you have chosen us to be involved in this pilot program. And with this program, Susan Zagafus, she will be the chairperson and the coordinator over the Citizens Police Academy Alumni Association members. And to be a member of the NamUs committee, what is involved with that? So everyone who's a member of the NamUs committee is a Citizens Police Academy alum. Everyone's trained on the NamUs website in how to filter and organize these cases and help Dr. Craig with responding to the overload of emails that she might receive from the public. Yes, and we hope from people watching this show that they are on their computers right now, on the website, going to it. Because it is, it's like Dr. Craig said, it's very serious, it's very important. And exactly why are we doing this? Well, I think the problem is just overwhelming. Like most people don't realize that on any given day there's 100,000 missing persons in the United States. A hundred thousand. And of unidentified victims, there's probably 40,000. And we know the interest is out there, but exactly how for people to interact with this. This is just the first time we've ever tried it. And like I said, it became overwhelming pretty quickly. And that's why we need the Citizens Police Academy to be my watchdogs. These are the super sleuths, people that anybody that's interested in CSI and law and order and those kind of things can actually get involved. And what about the interest of cases that we hear on the news? Oh, the interest we know is there, because if you think about Natalie Holloway and Stacey Peterson, Chandra Levy, when those women went missing, it was like the whole world was involved. And you multiply that by tens of thousands. So we know the interest is there. And this is, like I said, kind of our first attempt at getting people involved because the computer will never be able to do what people do. The best computer in the world is right here, right between your ears. And your people have got it in spades. Oh, we thank both of you. I know the program, it's going to be so successful. And also the public that's viewing today, we need their involvement. Yeah, and if you have any, you know, if you're searching and you have information or tips, just make sure to contact the case manager that's listed for that particular case. And like Dr. Craig said, it's really easy to log on and search. And there's a user guide actually on the website. Yeah, there's a user guide and search tips to help you navigate those websites. And it's not just for Kentucky. There's cases out there that are from all over the country. Yeah. We would like to thank both of you for being here today. Susan Zagafus, who is the chair of the NamUs Committee for the Lexington Citizens Police Academy Alumni Association. And also Dr. Emily Craig, who is a Kentucky State Forensic Anthropologist. and she is one of only 40 people in the United States that performs the type of job that she does. And we are so proud of you that you're here with us today and you represent Kentucky so well. So thank you, Dr. Craig. Well, thank you for having me. Thank you. Squalls out on the ghost train. Big storm's coming soon. I passed out in my hammer. Got to slip till we pass through Stood up and try Hi, I'm Pat Duggar, the Director of Emergency Management And today I'd like to talk with you about a couple spring and summer severe weather hazards And lightning is the first thing we're going to talk about I'm going to give you a few lightning facts And then we'll talk about some lightning safety Some places not to be during lightning And some safe places where you can go So just a little bit all about lightning. These facts tend to kind of enlighten and also just amaze some people. Lightning number one is at 54,000 degrees hot. If you think about pulling something out of the oven that's 350 to 450 degrees and how that can burn you, just imagine what it would be like to be struck by something that's 54,000 degrees. Another thing that's interesting about lightning is that it is, can it be anywhere from six miles to 10 miles long, and that's kind of like from the ground to the air. So just think of 6 to 10 miles, if you drive that distance, how long that is and how long a bolt of lightning can be. And then also it can be, it travels at a speed of 60,000 miles per second. So lightning is extremely fast. And as you know, lightning is made out of electricity from the clouds. Another interesting fact about lightning is that it initially and usually starts from the air up here and comes down, but it doesn't usually go all the way to a ground. There's another charge of electricity that actually starts at the ground and works its way up, and then these two bolts of electricity actually meet in the middle, and that's what you see. And that's why sometimes you may see a little hesitation or some crooked line. It's the electricity trying to find each other, and that's what makes some of the wavy lines in electricity. And also, you can see lightning, or lightning can occur six to ten miles away from a storm. So if you hear thunder, you know that lightning is usually with it. Don't wait for the rain to actually occur before you start to take shelter. So if you hear thunder, that's your key to also take cover and take shelter because lightning is not far behind, and it can actually be six to ten miles in advance of the actual rainstorm itself. Okay, now where are some places that lightning tends to like to hit? One, it likes to hit things that are very tall, such as trees or flagpoles or towers. It also likes metal, so you don't want to be on aluminum or metal benches. It also likes open areas, so if you're at a ballpark or just an open field park, you know, those are the types of places that you want to get into shelter and take cover. Also, you might think, well, if I'm at the ball field, if I go in the dugout, that might be a good place to be. Well, actually, that's not the case. have a very open area, and so you want to actually take shelter in a regular building with four walls and a roof. So don't use picnic shelters or dugouts or little sheds or tents or anything like that to take cover in during a thunderstorm. You want to actually make sure to get in secure cover. If you are out somewhere like an open field or a park and you have no regular building to get into, your car or vehicle will actually offer more shelter than being in a dugout or a picnic shed or something like that. So you have your vehicle and then you have a fixed building that you want to get into. So just remember, lightning is one of our underrated hazards. It really is very dangerous. It's very fast. It's very hot. It can strike quickly and it's an advance of the thunderstorm. There are places you don't want to be and if you are there, then you want to immediately when you hear thunder, take shelter. Now, we're going to talk a little bit about tornadoes and tornado safety. Tornadoes are very prevalent in Kentucky, and they can happen anywhere from, let's say, the prominent time is from April to November, although tornadoes can occur and have occurred year round. But we see them more commonly in the spring and then in the summertime. We want to make sure that there's two things you want to know about a tornado. One is a tornado watch, and if the National Weather Service issues a tornado watch, that means that all of the conditions atmospherically are right for a tornado to occur, but one has not been seen yet. But you do want to start watching the weather and maybe think about the activities you're going to take if you do intend to go outside. A tornado warning means that a tornado has actually been sighted and that you need to take shelter immediately. A lot of the same principles apply to a tornado as they do to lightning. If you see a tornado or if you have a tornado warning, you want to get out of all those unprotected areas and you want to take shelter in a building. And you want to go to the lowest level of that building and usually weather comes in this type of the country and in Lexington especially, usually comes from the south-southwest. You want to stay away from windows and you want to protect your head. A lot of damage and injuries in a tornado come from flying debris. And so if you protect your head and the rest of your body, you know, with a mattress or a blanket or even your arms, it's better to have a broken arm than have some injury to your head. So you do want to protect your head. So we want to remember the basics about a tornado. A watch is that conditions are right, and you want to start watching the weather and watching the skies. And a warning means that a tornado has been sighted. So if you want more information on severe weather, tornadoes, lightning, or any other kind of severe weather, you can look at our website, lexingtonky.gov slash em, or you can call our office at 258-3784. There are a lot of things that I could visit with you about tonight, but one thing that I did want to spend just a little bit of time talking about is some of our economic development efforts here and why that is important as far as your neighborhoods are concerned. Essentially, I want to try to address the question of, well, why is it you put so much emphasis on the downtown area? And I think there's some good reasons for that, and I just wanted to share a thought or two with you about that general topic. And I wanted to start with a pie chart that's up here. Now, this reflects the general fund revenues that we have proposed as a part of the fiscal year 2010 budget. You don't have to be a financial genius to understand that this sort of overconcentration in the licenses and permits area could be a problem for us. Essentially, that includes things like the occupational license fee, the net profits tax, and an assortment of other fees and taxes that are directly tied to our local economy. What does that mean? Well, it means that if the local economy is doing well, we have a lot of money coming in the door. If the local economy is doing poorly, we don't. now if we have money coming in the door we have the opportunity to do a lot of things around the community that are important to you and to the members of your neighborhood associations and your homeowners associations I see Lieutenant Ken Armstrong back here tonight he's in charge of our clear unit one of the reasons we're able to operate the clear unit which I know is vitally important to a number of your neighborhoods is because we have the financial wherewithal in the general fund to do those types of things. And there are a whole host of other things we do in the community, but the point here is because of the way our revenue stream is structured at Irvin County Government, it is vitally important for our local economy to keep humming along. Well, how do you do that? there are lots of different ways that you could do economic development. You know, traditionally, the model has been you go out and you chase a bunch of factories and you bring them in and you provide jobs. There's nothing wrong at all with encouraging manufacturing facilities to locate in our community, and we continue to try to do some of that, and I hope we'll continue to have some success with it. but more and more the model is changing. In Lexington, we don't have a lot of industrial land to begin with, and furthermore, the prevailing view in the world these days and times is that the most important thing you can do to enhance your opportunity to grow your economy is to create the kind of quality of life so that people want to live in your community. They figure out where they want to live first, and they figure out what they're going to do second. So it is vitally important for us to do all that we can to improve the quality of life and make Lexington an attractive spot for folks who are thinking about relocating. Well, what does that mean? We've talked with a number of our employers, and many of them tell us it is critically important for their recruitment efforts to have a vibrant downtown. Now, some of you are kind of my age, and you recall maybe when you were small, all of the vibrancy that was downtown, and then there was this focus out to the suburbs, to the malls, people living further away from the urban center. That's reversed. And we could talk all night long about why that's so, but believe me, all across the country, people are returning to put more emphasis on the downtown area. And so employers are increasingly interested in trying to make sure that we have a vibrant downtown area. Therefore, one of the most significant things I believe that we can do as a community to encourage a strong local economy is to invest in our downtown area so that we have that kind of vibrant downtown, that sort of urban lifestyle, if you will, that employers want us to have so they can attract the employees that they need. So what are we doing? And that's our next photo. This is an aerial photo of downtown that I have shared with some of you as you all have come down to our office, but this is sort of a new and improved version of it, So I expect there may be a few changes here that none of you have seen. And if you haven't seen this before, I wanted you to see it tonight because it pulls together a lot of things that are going on in our downtown area right now that I want you to have a little familiarity with. Let me begin by talking for a moment about what I consider to be one of the most significant events that has happened in Lexington since I've lived here for 35 years, and I really honestly believe it is as significant as anything we could do to prepare Lexington for this entire century, and that's the relocation of Eastern State to Coal Stream followed by the relocation of Bluegrass Community and Technical College to the Eastern State campus. The Eastern State campus is shown in the brown area in the upper left portion of the photograph. there. That is enormously significant because in the first place we're going to have a vastly improved mental health facility in our community. Everybody in this community, and I would argue everybody in this state ought to be ashamed of what we have had at Eastern State for a long time. It has been grossly substandard. Now we're going to have a state-of-the-art mental health facility located out on the Coal Stream Farm, that in and of itself would be an enormous step forward for our health care community. But what it does for the rest of us is open up a spot of ground that totals about 65 acres, that brown area on the photo. And with Bluegrass Community and Technical College moving from down around Commonwealth Stadium out to the Eastern State Campus, we will have a remarkable situation. Number one, we've got a great community and technical college that will be able to bring its two campuses together in one spot. It will provide employment opportunities for that whole area of town within walking distance of where a lot of people live. it will provide a vastly improved appearance for our community as people come in Newtown Pike. I had somebody tell me not long ago, they remember the first time they came into Lexington. They've been here now for several years. And they were struck by how nice it was until they got to New Circle Road on Newtown Pike coming off the interstate. And then they were wondering, well, I don't know. and Eastern State has contributed to that problem and having a community college campus there will be a vast improvement. But let me show you how significant it is beyond just the improvement at that particular location. With bluegrass located here, UK located in this general vicinity, and Transylvania located right at this corner, we have a higher ed triangle comprised of those three institutions of higher education. A community and technical college, a great four-year liberal arts institution, and a major research institution. I don't think there's another community in the United States and maybe in the world that has that configuration of campuses, higher ed institutions, so close together. And right in the middle of it is what? Our downtown area. All of those campuses will be within walking distance of our downtown area. And when you connect them up, in the case of Bluegrass and UK with the Newtown Pike extension, which is scheduled for completion in 2014, ultimately, and in stages between now and then. And you connect them with the improvements we're talking about making in our streetscapes downtown. You have an opportunity to more fully integrate those campuses with our downtown area. And I think that situates Lexington in such a fashion that we can take those intellectual property factories on the campuses, if you will, and have them interact with the downtown business community on a more regular basis, and the end result should be a sustainable, powerful economy for Lexington for many years to come. Well, what does that mean? that means that your kids and my kids will have greater chances at staying in lexington over the long haul because we'll be able to generate the kinds of jobs that are going to be attractive to the to the younger generation if you will in the future that's exciting it suggests to me that we're going to have the opportunity to have more and better paying jobs in Lexington as a result of that sort of vibrant local economy that that arrangement can generate for us. And to bring it on closer to home, that more vibrant local economy means, if you go back to that first pie chart, more revenue coming into the community, into urban county government's general fund that will enable us to hire more police officers, to hire more firefighters, to take care of our parks better, to make sure we get our potholes filled, that the traffic signals are working, and all the other things we do to maintain and improve the quality of life in Lexington, many of which, many of those things, of course, will impact your respective neighborhoods, even if you're nowhere close to the downtown area. so all of this is an effort to say yes we are guilty of the charge of putting a lot of attention downtown right now but the reason why we're doing that is because downtown I firmly believe will prove to be an economic engine particularly when we get it integrated more fully with the three campuses that I described just a moment ago. And so as members of your neighborhood associations and homeowners associations raise the question from time to time, why on earth are we spending so much money downtown on sidewalks and farmers markets and rain gardens and the like? I hope you'll be able to share with them at least the rationale and perhaps help them understand a little better about why we're doing it. It's part of a conscious effort. It's not just because I'm enamored with downtown. It's because I think that's how we generate the revenue here in the long term to make Lexington a better place to live. Well, that concludes what I wanted to say in the way of a formal presentation. I'm very excited about this next presenter. He has a wonderful concept here, and I hope that you'll give him your undivided attention and perhaps even sign up to be a part of this very important network. And I have to tell you, John, I got an email from someone that thought I misspelled the word incorrectly. They thought it was a cleaning network. So it is gleaning is the correct term. So John Walker, who is the president of Hamilton Park Neighborhood Association. So what is gleaning? Gleaning is really the collecting of food left over from harvest and giving it to the poor or the aliens or the needy or the elderly or the sick. And you have in your packet two things. One is a trifold. It's a yellow color. And the other is a gleaning guide. And I hope that you won't spend the time I have going through these, but read them at your leisure afterwards. So why this is important is the economic times that we're in mean that there is an increased demand for food. God's Pantry is receiving lots and lots of requests for food. The Catholic Action Center is now feeding three meals a day, seven days a week. The other agencies that feed the homeless are sort of overextended. and there is an awful lot of food that goes to waste. And also, nicely tied into that, there is an increase in demand for people growing their own food. My wife and I run the Edible Garden series at the Arboretum and the last two times we met we had over 30 people there wanting to know how to grow food. And so tying those two things together, hopefully we can take all this extra food and give it to those people who need it most. I got started on this because last year on the Common Dreams website, there was an article about a woman in North Berkeley in California, a Natasha Boisier, who walking around the neighborhood noticed apple trees and noticed fruit on the floor. And so she knocked on the doors and said, what are you doing with that fruit? Nothing. Well, can I pick it? Sure. And in doing so, I mean, they picked an incredible amount of food in a short period of time and gave it to the various food banks around L.A. So that week that I read that article, a number of people on my street said to me, you know, do you want some apples? Do you want some pears? Do you want some figs? And I said, sure. And I realized, well, okay, I can't eat all this stuff, so I'll take it to the Hope Center, which is just up the street from us. And then I thought, well, why don't I walk around the neighborhood and see what I can find? And then I knocked on doors. One of Peggy Henson's neighbors lives across the street from her. I knocked on his door, and he said, oh, sure, come on in. Please take it. You know, they just collect wasps and everything. So we probably picked out of about eight yards in my son's school, and my son is here at the front, and that's his picture on. He and I picked a lot of apples, and we took them to various places, including the Primate Rescue Center out in Nicholasville. So it's not just humans that benefit from this. Our nearest relatives also benefit from it too. So why do we need a network? Why do we need a structure? You know, I'm probably one of the most unstructured people there is, and I hate sort of getting involved in stuff, but why do we need it? Well, part of it is, though most people who grow food or have opportunities glean anyway, they may take it into work or their school or their church, we need to raise the awareness. And having something out there where we've got a nice brochure and a guide and some posters, then people will go, hey, maybe I can organize this in my neighborhood. The other part of this is to get people out into their neighborhoods meeting their neighbors. I live in a very fortunate street where we know all our neighbors. And we know our neighbors because I keep the street directory and I update it every time there's a major change and people move or whatsoever moving. So we're very lucky that people will phone us because they know my number, not just because I'm the president, because everybody knows everybody's numbers. And in fact, today I get home, and this is an example of how our street works. This is Mike from down the street. Are you interested in mushrooms? I got some mushrooms. I don't know what they are. So Gareth and I went down, and what were they, Gareth? Morels. Big morels. Now, I'm not telling you the address. And we picked about a pound and a half. Now, if you know morel mushrooms, you know that that's quite a... So this is how it works. A lot of people I talk to say, I don't really know my neighbors. Well, this is an opportunity to get out, walk around your neighborhood, see who's got fruit trees, see who's growing food, and saying, hey, would you like to give a little bit of that away to charity? And on the back of the gleaning guide, there is a list of God's Pantry, Emergency Food Bank, and other agencies that will accept food. And there's a lot more. I only had a little bit of space in here. So how do I see this operating? I see this operating really in a very autonomous way. I don't want to organize what you do. I can't even organize what I do most of the time. So I don't want to organize what you do. And it's really up to you. It depends on your neighborhood. It depends on how big it is, how small it is, how well you know each other, whether it's an older neighborhood. If it's an older neighborhood, you probably have apple trees. If it's Masterson Station, they probably don't. Okay? So however you would like to do it is up to you. One person can pick, like I did with Gareth, went round and knocked on doors and picked the fruit myself. Other times people may want to pick it, leave it on their doorstep. You arrange to go and pick it up on a Saturday and then take it to the emergency food shelter or God's Pantry as you wish. Who gets this food? Well, God's Pantry is the only food bank in town. there are other emergency food agencies and many of those actually get food from God's Pantry the only two that I know that don't are the Lexington Rescue Mission on Glen Arvin Way and the Catholic Action Center on Chestnut on 5th Street as I said earlier the Catholic Action Center now is cooking three meals a day seven days a week so there's a great demand I couldn't do this without a lot of good help from people. And I would like to mention those because some of them are here tonight, and if I don't, they won't help me anymore. But first I want to thank my wife and my son, Roberta Burns. She's the education coordinator at the Arboreasum, and she's been very helpful in saying, yes, you can do it. You need to do it. It's what we need. Mary Powell is a neighbor who is very one of the people who said who kicked this off by saying do you want some pears? I have lots to give away of course Marion Blodgett of LFUCG has been bugging me and helping me she helped print all these out and has been a great help Kristen Ingwell Good of God's Pantry did a lot of the editing and has been very supportive of not getting in the way of saying well if you glean you have to do it this way you'll notice on the front the Society of St. Andrew the Society of St. Andrew is in Virginia I think and that is part of the states on the sort of eastern seaboard in the south who are trying to sort of organize it, they do mostly farm gleaning, we're not doing farm gleaning, we're doing urban gleaning but they've been very helpful in printing things up and giving me some resources that I can use. And finally, Seedleaf, and Ryan's in the front here. Ryan Cook and Beck herself have been very helpful. And many of these documents will be on their website in PDF format that you can download, and their website is actually on both of these. The unit was created back in 2005, or a little bit before then, I guess to combat or to help the police department keep track of the false alarms that we were receiving throughout the city. And about that time in 2005, the city passed a city ordinance that basically stated that anyone that has an alarm system or is using an alarm system within Fayette County has to have it registered. And therefore, the police department would be responsible for registering the alarm system. Starting in 05, the police department did a, I guess what would be considered a media blitz to let people know through the television and through the radio and through the newspapers. And then after that, the police department was responsible for sending out, I guess, renewal forms and forms so the people could register their alarms. And starting the first of this year, or a little bit before, it's now going to be the alarm company's responsibility to let their users know that they have to register their alarm systems. Not everybody has a monitored alarm system. In the ordinance, it does describe alarms that either aren't monitored, which would be an audible alarm. If it's an audible alarm, it still has to be registered as well. Because basically if a civilian or somebody hears that, they call the police, then we respond. So they also have to keep their alarms registered as well. The fee is $15, and it is good for one year. So if you register your alarm January 1 of 2009, it's good all the way until December 31st of 2009. And then on January 1st of 2010, you have to submit another $15 fee along with an updated permit. The fine system or structure, basically we have it set up in the ordinance to where you have what we consider three free false alarms. So that means if we get an alarm call to your house and you are a registered alarm user, then you will not be fined the first three false alarms. If it turns out that either somebody was trying to break into your house or something like that and there's documentation by the police in the form of a report, then that alarm of course doesn't count. But you do get three free ones and then the fourth one is when you start getting a fine. If you do have someone break into your house and you're not a registered user, we still require that documentation. You can do an appeals process through what's called the Alarms Advisory Board, which that is being seated by the mayor. So hopefully that will be in place this year. Or what you can do is on the back of your fine payment or on the back of your letter that says we had a false alarm call to your house, there is a false alarm appeal guidelines. And it tells you what things you can appeal on and what things you can't. And it also gives you the process in which to do that. If your alarm is due on the 1st of January, you actually have until the end of January to get your permit and your fee in. So you do kind of have a little bit of a grace period. We encourage them to call their alarm company because their alarm companies are now in charge of handling their renewals. So we do encourage that. If not, they can go on the LFUCG website, and there should be, if they click on the police department, that area there, there should be another link to the FOSS Alarms Unit to our little portion of the website on the police server, and they can either download a copy of a permit and fill it out and send it to us, or like I said before, they can definitely contact their alarm company. If we get it mailed to us here at police headquarters, the two people that are in the office that do the paperwork, the day-to-day operations, they will take it, do the data entry or the data processing, and then they will send the alarm company either an email or a copy of the permit and say this is their permit number and they are now up to date. It all originates if someone does have a false alarm, their alarm goes off. then goes and gets somehow reported to their alarm company or whoever is their monitoring company. Their monitoring company is then supposed to do what we call is a two-call verification to see if someone can respond, and it also comes to us at the police department. It comes into a communications unit. They then put in the call and dispatch the officers out to the scene where the alarm is. if we get told to disregard before the office. actually make it to the area where the alarm is, then that does not count against a person. If we still continue on and make it to the house or to the business and check it out, the officer then is responsible for letting the communications unit know that it's either a false alarm or a true alarm. And then once that happens, it's then typed into the computer and it's put onto our server. And then what happens is the two people next door come in every morning. They check the alarms, the alarm calls, and then they'll go through and basically check and make sure that there wasn't a report done or something to that effect. And then that's how we get our alarm information. Are you looking for a way to make a difference in our environment? The annual Kentucky River Clean Sweep is gearing up for Saturday, June 20th from 8 a.m. to 2 p.m. We will be cleaning the banks along a 12-mile stretch of the river in Fayette County, and we need your help. Join us at the Clays Ferry Boat Dock off Old Kentucky 25 under the bridge. Wear sturdy shoes and come ready to get wet. Breakfast and lunch will be provided, along with gloves and trash bags for the cleanup. To volunteer yourself, your boat, or both, or if you need more information, call 425-2255 or 311. Do you enjoy great music, food, and fun? Then bring the whole family down to Cheapside Park and Central Bank Thursday Night Live. Thursday Night Live features the best in live local entertainment, great food from local restaurants, and a lively, family-friendly atmosphere. The fun runs from 430 to 8 p.m. every Thursday through October 15th, and admission is free. Food and drink are available for cash purchase. So if you are looking for a great place to relax and enjoy live music, come down to Central Bank Thursday Night Live at Chiefside beside the Lexington History Museum. So if you are looking for a great place to relax and enjoy live music, come down to Central Bank Thursday Night Live at Chiefside beside the Lexington History Museum. One of these days I'm gonna bring these chains I'm gonna be somebody, someday You can lift your heart and bother, I will Yeah, yeah Bobby played his hometown One full moon all this night When he had a voice There is only one place in Lexington where you can enjoy a newly released kid-friendly movie, children's game, special entertainment, and a petting zoo all for free. It's free Friday Flicks at Jacobson Park. Coming back for its 14th year, this family event offers a great evening of entertainment for everyone of all ages. Pre-show activities begin at 7 p.m. and the movie will start at dark. Bring your lawn chairs, blankets, and pack a picnic dinner or purchase concessions from one of the many vendors on-site. Please note that neither pets nor open plans are allowed in the event area for the safety of the patrons. Free Friday Flicks is presented by Lexington Parks and Recreation, WKYT-TV, 981 The Bull, and NYX 94.5. For more information and movie titles, call 288-2900. I'm out. Down the ring that Play a song for me In the jingle jangle Morning I'll come following you Take me for a trip Upon your magic Swirling ship All my senses Have been stripped And my hands Can't feel to grip In my toes too numb to step Wait only for My foo heels to be wandering I'm ready to go anywhere I'm ready for today On to my own parade Cast your dance and sell my way I promise to go under it Hey, Mr. Tampereen Man Put a song for me I'm not sleepy yet The real place I'm going to Hey, Mr. Tampereen Man Put a song for me In the jingle jangle morning I'll come far with you Thank you. River Clean Sweep is gearing up for Saturday, June 20th from 8 a.m. to 2 p.m. We will be cleaning the banks along a 12-mile stretch of the river in Fayette County, and we need your help. Join us at the Clays Ferry Boat Dock off Old Kentucky 25 under the bridge. Wear sturdy shoes and come ready to get wet. Breakfast and lunch will be provided, along with gloves and trash bags for the cleanup. To volunteer yourself, your boat, or boat, or if you need more information, call 425-2255 or 311. So be my guest, you've got nothing to lose. Won't you let me take you on a sea cruise? Hoo-wee, hoo-wee, baby. Hoo-wee, hoo-wee, baby. Hoo-wee, hoo-wee, baby. Won't you let me take you on a sea cruise? I got to get to moving, baby, I ain't lying. My heart is beating rhythm and it's right on time. So be my guest, you've got nothing to lose. Do you enjoy great music, food, and fun? Then bring the whole family down to Cheapside Park and Central Bank Thursday Night Live. Thursday Night Live features the best in live local entertainment, great food from local restaurants, and a lively, family-friendly atmosphere. The fun runs from 4.30 to 8 p.m. every Thursday through October 15th, and admission is free. Food and drink are available for cash purchase. So if you are looking for a great place to relax and enjoy live music, come down to Central Bank Thursday Night Live at Chiefside beside the Lexington History Museum. Hello again, hello Just called to say hello I couldn't sleep at all tonight I know it's late I couldn't wait There is only one place in Lexington where you can enjoy a newly released kid-friendly movie, children's game, special entertainment, and a petting zoo all for free. It's free Friday flicks at Jacobson Park. Coming back for its 14th year, this family event offers a great evening of entertainment for everyone of all ages. Pre-show activities begin at 7 p.m. and the movie will start at dark. Bring your lawn chairs, blankets, and pack a picnic dinner or purchase concessions from one of the many vendors on site. Please note that neither pets nor open plans are allowed in the event area for the safety of the patrons. Free Friday Flicks is presented by Lexington Parks and Recreation, WKYT-TV, 981 The Bull, and Mix 94.5. For more information and movie titles, call 288-2900. We've been through it all, nothing just the same. When you're not there I just need to hear Hello, my friend, hello It's good to meet you so It's good to love you like I do I can feel this world When I hear you say Hello Oh, my friend, you're all Just calm to let you know I think about you in the night And I know it's me But I couldn't do it And I know it's me The End I see your face smiling inside. I'm so happy that you love me. Life is lovely when you're near me. Tell me you will stay. Make me smile. When life is just a bit, so they say. All the games we used to play, they win. We may now enjoy the dreams we share. So long ago. Are you looking for a way to make a difference in our environment? The annual Kentucky River Clean Sweep is gearing up for Saturday, June 20th from 8 a.m. to 2 p.m. We will be cleaning the banks along a 12-mile stretch of the river in Fayette County, and we need your help. Join us at the Clay's Ferry Boat Dock off Old Kentucky 25 under the bridge. Wear sturdy shoes and come ready to get wet. Breakfast and lunch will be provided, along with gloves and trash bags for the cleanup. To volunteer yourself, your boat, or boat, or if you need more information, call 425-2255 or 311. We'll be right back. Oh, yeah. More than ever. Oh, yeah. No more crying. Woo-hoo. We're together. Do you enjoy great music, food, and fun? Then bring the whole family down to Cheapside Park and Central Bank Thursday Night Live. Thursday Night Live features the best in live local entertainment, great food from local restaurants, and a lively, family-friendly atmosphere. The fun runs from 4.30 to 8 p.m. every Thursday through October 15th, and admission is free. Food and drink are available for cash purchase. So if you are looking for a great place to relax and enjoy live music, come down to Central Bank Thursday Night Live at Chiefside beside the Lexington History Museum. Come on, come on, come on, come on, now Dusty May. Can you see that I am afraid What was that promise that you made Why won't you tell me what she said What was that promise that you made Now I'm gonna love you Till the river will start the rain I'm gonna love you Till the stars fall from the sky But when I There is only one place in Lexington where you can enjoy a newly released kid-friendly movie, children's game, special entertainment, and a petting zoo all for free. It's free Friday flicks at Jacobson Park. Coming back for its 14th year, this family event offers a great evening of entertainment for everyone of all ages. Pre-show activities begin at 7 p.m. and the movie will start at dark. Bring your lawn chairs, blankets, and pack a picnic dinner or purchase concessions from one of the many vendors on site. Please note that neither pets nor open flames are allowed in the event area for the safety of the patrons. Free Friday Flicks is presented by Lexington Parks and Recreation, WKYT-TV, 981 The Bull, and Mix 94.5. For more information and movie titles, call 288-2900. All down the sky For you and I We'll be right back. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah I took a try to love a few. Well, that's my love. What was just for you? My darling, I need you To call my own and never to wrong To hold in mind your written name I'll go too soon That all is so great Please hold my hand My daughter I'm not stronger To try To love you Are you looking for a way to make a difference in our environment? The annual Kentucky River Clean Sweep is gearing up for Saturday, June 20th from 8 a.m. to 2 p.m. We will be cleaning the banks along a 12-mile stretch of the river in Fayette County, and we need your help. Join us at the Clay's Ferry Boat Dock off Old Kentucky 25 under the bridge. Wear sturdy shoes and come ready to get wet. Breakfast and lunch will be provided, along with gloves and trash bags for the cleanup. To volunteer yourself, your boat, or both, or if you need more information, call 425-2255 or 311. Mr. Crowley What they've done in your head Oh, Mr. Crowley, did you talk to me again? Your life sounds amazing, so tragic. Do you enjoy great music, food, and fun? Then bring the whole family down to Cheapside Park and Central Bank Thursday Night Live. Thursday Night Live features the best in live local entertainment, great food from local restaurants, and a lively, family-friendly atmosphere. The fun runs from 4.30 to 8 p.m. every Thursday through October 15th, and admission is free. Food and drink are available for cash purchase. So if you are looking for a great place to relax and enjoy live music, come down to Central Bank Thursday Night Live at Chiefside beside the Lexington History Museum. The night of the secret And we're scared to see the episode There's the drowning Won't you ride by my lord? There is only one place in Lexington where you can enjoy a newly released, kid-friendly movie, children's game, special entertainment, and a petting zoo all for free. It's free Friday flicks at Jacobson Park. Coming back for its 14th year, this family event offers a great evening of entertainment for everyone of all ages. Pre-show activities begin at 7 p.m. and the movie will start at dark. Bring your lawn chairs, blankets, and pack a picnic dinner or purchase concessions from one of the many vendors on-site. Please note that neither pets nor open claims are allowed in the event area for the safety of the patrons. Free Friday Flicks is presented by Lexington Parks and Recreation, WKYT TV, 981 The Bull and Mix 94.5. For more information and movie titles, call 288-2900. Yeah! Thank you. You got a smile so bright You know you could have been a candor I'm holding you so tight You know you could have been a hander The way you swept me off the field You know you could have been a broom The way you smelled so sweet You know you could have been some perfume Well, you could have been anything that you wanted to And I can tell The way you do the things you do The way you do the things you do As pretty as you are You know you could have been a flower And would look so awesome in it You know that you could be an hour The way you stole my heart You know you could have been a cool book And baby, you're so smart You know you could have been a school book Well, you could have been anything that you wanted to And I can tell the way you do the things you do Oh, baby Yeah You made my life so rich You know you could have been some honey And baby, you're so sweet You know you could have been some honey Well, you could have been anything Are you looking for a way to make a difference in our environment? The annual Kentucky River Clean Sweep is gearing up for Saturday, June 20th from 8 a.m. to 2 p.m. We will be cleaning the banks along a 12-mile stretch of the river in Fayette County, and we need your help. Join us at the Clay's Ferry boat dock off Old Kentucky 25 under the bridge. Wear sturdy shoes and come ready to get wet. Breakfast and lunch will be provided along with gloves and trash bags for the cleanup. To volunteer yourself, your boat or boat, or if you need more information, call 425-2255 or 311. We go out to a party somewhere, the moment we walk in the door. People stop and everybody stares, she don't know what they're staring for. She don't know she's beautiful, never cause the night. She don't know she's beautiful, no she's not that kind. She don't know she's beautiful, though time and time I've told her so. Do you enjoy great music, food, and fun? Then bring the whole family down to Cheapside Park and Central Bank Thursday Night Live. Thursday Night Live features the best in live local entertainment, great food from local restaurants, and a lively, family-friendly atmosphere. The fun runs from 4.30 to 8 p.m. every Thursday through October 15th, and admission is free. Food and drink are available for cash purchase. So if you are looking for a great place to relax and enjoy live music, come down to Central Bank Thursday Night Live at Chiefside beside the Lexington History Museum. We'll be right back. Coming your way next on Channel 3, a new batch of lily rain barrels has arrived. A story on backup power for town brands and rounding up your old titles. This and more coming your way on Lexington Now. I'm sorry. Hello, everybody. Welcome to this week's edition of Lexington Now, your place for updates on the latest news, events, and programs of the Lexington-Fayette Urban County government. I'm David Sullivan, coming to you from the studios of GTV3. Thursday, May 21st, Mayor Jim Newberry and Commissioner Environmental Quality Cheryl Taylor announced that 500 lily rain barrels were now available for purchase by Fayette County residents. Last year, the lilies sold out in less than a week, prompting the order for more. The lilies are part of a water quality initiative to prevent excess runoff and to conserve our greatest natural resource. The maintenance of our environment has been the top priority of my administration, and I expect it will continue to be so. Our goal is to leave this community in a better condition than we found it for the benefit of our children and grandchildren, and I know that is a goal that many people share. And at the core of those efforts these days and times are a number of things we're doing to try to improve the quality of our water here in Fayette County. It is a big task. And for us to do what we need to do to improve the quality of our environment, it is imperative that we have lots of help from lots of different people. And one of the things that we can do and one of the things that Danielle is doing is to utilize rain barrels, what we have called lilies. Lilies are our way to implement that time-honored practice of utilizing rain barrels to capture water running off the roofs of our homes and businesses. They are sort of miniature versions of the much larger retention and detention basins that you see around town. They are designed to control stormwater runoff during periods of rain so that the water can be held for a short period of time and then released out gradually over a longer period of time. Rain barrels can also save homeowners money. One inch of rain on a thousand square foot roof produces more than 600 gallons of water. And a portion of that water can be saved in the lily and used for watering plants and gardens. And water from a rain barrel has the added advantage of having a lower pH level, which is one of the qualities that makes it just ideal for watering plants and gardens. Last year we introduced lily. It proved to be very popular, so popular in fact that our supply of 500 lily rain barrels was quickly depleted. We still have around 100 people on the waiting list looking to receive a rain barrel. So today we're here to announce the details of the 2009 Lilly program. Also, I wanted to mention that some of the other communities in Kentucky have been looking at our rain barrel program and the city of Indianapolis is actually going to borrow the Lilly logo from us, so it's catching on in other cities. This year we wanted to make the process of obtaining a lily more user-friendly and more efficient. For those like Danielle that participated last year, it was a little awkward. You had to bring a check downtown and then we delivered and that caused us several weeks of delay. But this year we're pleased to announce that Lexington residents can order and pay the $75 fee for the rain barrel over the Internet. Starting tomorrow about 10 o'clock, Lexington residents can go to the Department for Environmental quality homepage and that's www.lexingtonky.gov slash environment and click on the link to order the Lily. That will take you to the page to order your rain barrel. For residents who want to take advantage of purchasing over the internet, we do have some instructions that you need to pay attention to. You can pay for Lily by credit or debit card and you have to print out a receipt once you pay. You can bring the receipt and your driver's license and actually pick up your Lily which which is something many people asked to do last year, at the City Storage Facility at 1306 Versailles Road, or for those of us that have been around Lexington a while, the old Furrows building on Versailles Road. If you purchase over the Internet, you can pick up the Lily Monday, Tuesdays, or Saturdays, 8 to noon, or Wednesdays, Thursdays, and Fridays, noon to 4, so you can pick morning or afternoon, and remember to bring your receipt and driver's license. If you're physically unable to pick up the lily, you can call the Department of Environmental Quality at 425-2800, and we'll make arrangements to have it delivered to your house. To pay by check, if that's the way you prefer to do it, you can still come down to the Department of Environmental Quality. Our office is on the ninth floor of the Government Center building at 200 East Main. The check should be made out to LFUCG lily program, and you must bring it down personally. Our business hours typically are Monday through Friday, 8 in the morning to 5 in the afternoon, and any of those times are fine to bring the check. Citizens paying by check can also pick up the lily Monday, Tuesday, Saturday, 8 to noon, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, noon to 4. Bring the receipt and the driver's license. We hope our citizens will take advantage of the opportunity to order and pay for the rain barrel over the Internet. We really appreciate the help from our IT staff in getting this set up. We think it will make it a lot easier for people. We have more news on protecting the environment, news of this year's tire roundup going on this week. Steve Feast, the director of waste management, talks about the tire collection and dropping off tires for processing at the old Frankfort Pike landfill. Well, most estimates say that we generate about one tire per person per year. So that means that we have about 260,000 tires here in Fayette County generated each year. While we have a waste tire fund that retrieves a good number of those tires, we still wind up with a lot of tires that are dumped that are just, for some reason, not recovered through the system. We're announcing a tire amnesty, which means that basically anyone who has tires in Fayette County can bring tires to our old Frankfort Pike landfill site at 1631, old Frankfort Pike, from 7 a.m. to 5 p.m., May 26th through Saturday, May 30th. That's just after Memorial Day. And basically we can take tires from anyone, from agricultural tires, personal tires, large equipment tires, anything that has a bead of one-third, one and three-fourths inches or less. They can be on the rims or off. And basically we're making sure that these tires don't wind up beside the road or in a dump. They can't go in a landfill. We're making sure that they have a beneficial reuse that's identified for these tires. This is actually funded through a state grant and it happens every five years. So we encourage everyone to take advantage of this. We want to remind people that this is, of course, just a drop-off. We are not offering to pick the tires up for this special event. If people are physically unable to unload the tires once they get there, we will help them. But otherwise, we would expect the folks that actually bring the tires there to help with the unloading. So if they have any questions they can call a lexical at 311 and get more information. Are you looking for a way to make a difference in our environment? The annual Kentucky River Queen Sweep is gearing up for Saturday, June 20th from 8 a.m. to 2 p.m. We will be cleaning the banks along a 12-mile stretch of the river in Fayette County, and we need your help. Join us at the Clay's Ferry Boat Dock off Old Kentucky 25 under the bridge. Wear sturdy shoes and come ready to get wet. Breakfast and lunch will be provided, along with gloves and trash bags for the cleanup. To volunteer yourself, your boat, or boat, or if you need more information, call 425-2255 or 311. Last week, the Town Branch Wastewater Treatment Plant received backup power. A new diesel generator was delivered to keep the facility running during power failures. Outages occur during severe thunderstorms and during the ice storms in the past decade. Today we are installing like a second phase to our redundant power. At the beginning of the year we had KU run two feeds into both of our treatment plants. When we install this generator today, it will supply power, backup power. If both of KU's feeds went down, it will supply backup power to our screw pumps and our dewatering pump station here at Town Branch, which is also referred to as our primary effluent pump station. What that will do is, again, in the event of KU losing both feeds, we will still be able to push water through the plant, and we will not bypass straight to the chlorination area of our plant. Power went down, I guess it's been a couple years ago, and during the last ice storm, not the one recently, but the older one, we were without power for a long period of time. At that time, we only had one feed from KU, and we had no backup generator. And then the last major issue we had was when we had a substation go down, and we were without power, and we were bypassing straight to the creek, and there was a large fist kill. This is to prevent that. Now, even in the event of a power outage, we'll be able to pump the water through the plant up to our aeration tanks, and it'll have detention time before going to the chlorination and disinfection area of the plant. So we're doing this. The first part of the consent decree was the redundant power from KU, and then we're doing this as a backup to prevent that and give us even better sense of redundancy. This project was right at between $800,000 and $1 million, when that's design and equipment and everything. You know, they've had to run new wiring. They're going to have to test all that, get that hooked up to the generator, and then they'll have the actual Generac equipment manufacturer come in and test the generator, do start-up procedures, and then we'll fuel it up and see how it works. I think we get about 12 hours per load of diesel fuel. Thank you. Looking for a place to cool off, relax, and enjoy affordable entertainment this summer? Then check out the Kentucky Theater Summer Classic Series on Wednesdays through Labor Day. Fred Mills, Theater Manager of the Kentucky, talks about this and other entertainment at Lexington's oldest movie house. Hello, I'm Fred Mills, manager of the Kentucky Theater. For those of you that are unaware, the Kentucky Theater is located on East Main Street in downtown Lexington. The Kentucky Theater opened in 1922. It's very historic. It's continually operated since that time as a movie theater. It's used for concerts periodically, maybe every four to six weeks that we have a concert. Also it's the home of the smaller auditorium, the State Theater Auditorium is the home of Wood Songs, Old Town Radio Hour, which is every Monday evening. Well, it's just that time of year, time for our classic movies. This is probably our sixth or seventh year of doing this. It's every Wednesday. We have a matinee at 1.30 and an evening show at 7.15. This summer we have 15 different features. We have around five or six features this year that are brand-new 35-millimeter prints. The Godfather, Planet of the Apes, The King and I, The Day the Earth Stood Still, and of course Paul Newman and the Hustler. So I encourage you to come down and to see one of these new prints the way it was meant to be seen on the big screen. The schedule is, like I said, begins May the 27th and it goes through the Wednesday of Labor Day ending September the 2nd. The price is right. It's admissions $4. You can't go wrong with that. In the evenings we have plenty of free parking. It's the City Hall Annex Garage next door to the police department. So plan some of your social life this summer around the Kentucky Theater. Well, we're very fortunate to have the Kentucky Theater because if it were not for the Kentucky Theater, there would be many movies that would not come to Lexington. The Kentucky is the theater that usually plays the alternative movies, the offbeat movies, the independent movies. This summer, and last summer also, we switched gears a bit. And we had Iron Man last summer. We played Kung Fu Panda and Indiana Jones. This summer, presently, we're playing Star Trek. Hopefully there's going to be some other features out there that'll present themselves and that our booker will be able to work his magic and talk the film distributors into letting us have one of those films downtown. It's a lot of folks that may not like alternative films. Well, hopefully that you'll come downtown to the Kentucky Theater and you'll become a regular patron here, as many people are. These classic movies that we've talked about earlier, Once Upon a Time in the West, The Godfather, The King and I, oftentimes that your grandparents or your parents, the first time they saw these movies were here at the Kentucky Theater. that many of these films premiered here at the Kentucky Theater. And it's a great setting. It's very nostalgic. Like I said, your family probably has their own special Kentucky Theater stories. And so many people just haven't had the opportunity to come down, so try to include this in your summer plans. We have a 24-hour recording line, 231-6997. Also, they can go to our website, which is pretty easy. It's KentuckyTheatre.com. Up next, news for local youth. Stephanie Hong, director of Partners for Youth, a local nonprofit organization geared toward furthering youth programs for Lexington's young people. Stephanie has details on their June event, Spotlight on Youth. The newest program we have is the 21C Assessment Center. Again, we go back and look at, if you look at a criminal and look at the criminal's history all the way back, it usually started out as a kid, the person started skipping schools. And then when the kids are not in school, they are more likely getting in trouble and higher teen pregnancy issues, drug and alcohol abuse, those type of the problems. So we have the Truancy Assessment Center working very closely with Judge Wise and the family court and try to resolve whatever the issues the young person bring in, either their personal issue or the family issues. and we try to bring the resources, help the young people resolve the issue so they could stay in school and be able to make good grades and continue on further education. So those are the programs that we have. One of the upcoming events that we have is annual Spotlight on Youth, and that will be in June the 7th, Sunday afternoon, at Court House Plaza. And the reason we want to do this is sometimes some people think about juvenile, they think about delinquency. So there's a negative image attached to young people. And this is an opportunity we want to spotlight on youth. We have the resources fair for young people. This is the first Sunday right after school end. So we want to kind of kick off for the summer. So the community organization will have the resources there that the kids to see. There are some maybe volunteer opportunities, summer job opportunities, or even like a library the kids could utilize them, or park and recreation activities, that type of thing. And we also, the highlight of our Spotlight on Youth is the talent show. And it's completely designed, facilitated, and emceed by young people. And so first Sunday in June, come down to the courthouse and join us with a spotlight on you. Anything you want to do about young people, about youth, feel free to call me, Stephanie Hong, at 859-258-3119. Or you can email me, shong at lfucg.com. Time for Lexington Now's Lane Closure Report, a weekly update for traffic delays, detours, and roadway construction. The Lane Closure Report provided by Channel 3's morning show, Crosstown Traffic. It airs weekday mornings at 630. Here's a look at this week's Lane Closures from Crosstown Traffic and the Traffic Management Center. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Tune in to Crosstown Traffic every weekday morning from 6.30 to 8.30 a.m. on GTV3 for live traffic surveillance cameras, collision and impact reports, and up-to-the-minute lane closure information. We'll be right back. live at Chiefside beside the Lexington History Museum. Welcome to this week's Parks Minute. Bring your family out to Jacobson Park and enjoy a free movie at Free Friday Flicks. Activities which begin at 7 p.m. will include face painting, pony rides, a petting zoo, and special entertainment. The movie will start at dark. Be sure to bring your lawn chairs and blankets for seating and pack a picnic dinner or visit one of the many vendors who will be selling concessions on site. Please note that neither pets nor open flames are allowed in the event area for the safety of the patrons. Free Friday Flicks will be held on Friday evenings through June 26th. This event is brought to you by Lexington Parks and Recreation, 98.1 The Bull, Mix 94.5, and WKYT TV. All remaining city pools open for the season on Saturday, June 6th. Picadome, Berry Hill, Constitution, and Douglas are open from noon to 6 p.m. Monday through Saturday and 1 to 6 p.m. on Sunday. Shillitoe is open from 11 a.m. to 8 p.m. Monday through Saturday and 1 to 8 p.m. on Sunday. Cost for daily admission is $3 for youth and $4 for adults. Pool passes for the 2009 season will be available. They can be purchased at any aquatic facility during operating hours throughout the summer. The cost is $50 for a single pool pass and $160 for a family pass. That's this week's Parks Minute. For more information, visit the park's website at www.lexingtonky.gov. I'm Stacey Diamond, and I'll see you next time. A full slate of meetings for city council and other government agencies during the week ahead. As you take a look at the rundown, remember you can view complete listings of upcoming urban county meetings and events by going to the city's website, lexingtonky.gov. Thank you. As a reminder, all city pools will open Saturday, June 6th. Now, it's later than normal opening due to Fayette County Schools being in session until June 4th. For details on pool fees and summer passes, please call the Division of Parks and Recreation at 311. That wraps it up for this edition of Lexington Now. We'll see you back here next week with more updated news and information from your urban county government. For Lexington Now, I'm David Sullivan, and that's it for now. Hi, I'm Stacy Diamond. Welcome to an Inside Look. Welcome to an inside look at your city. Coming up next on an inside look, it's only downtown. Hi, I'm Renee Jackson with the Downtown Lexington Corporation, and we're very excited to be talking about Central Bank Thursday Night Live. We're kicking off the event this evening, and it'll be going on all summer and through early fall into October. We're going to finish up on October the 15th. It's every Thursday night. We get started right around 5 o'clock. Music starts at 5.30 and goes until about 7.30, 7.45. But we've got, you can get drinks, and there's lots of food vendors that come out. We do a lot of activities for kids. We have different vendors that come down. I know we're going to have a chiropractor out every night at Thursday Night Live. We always have a non-profit that people can learn about and donate money to if they so choose. For information about the different bands that we have, you can go to downtownlex.com, which is our website. You can also call our office at 425-2590. All of our events are family-friendly. We also encourage people to come down with their pets. In, I believe it's July, we'll be having a pet costume contest. This will be our third annual pet costume contest, which is very popular. We've had lots of creative different dogs and other animals come out for that. So we try to do different themes. If you look at our website, again, it'll list if there is a special theme. We try to have many, many different types of bands out, and the whole schedule is out there through October 15th. We also want to let people know that there's plenty of parking when you come down. The lot at the corner of Market and Short Street is $1 every Thursday, and that's courtesy of Central Parking Systems. But there's also, I believe, almost 3,000 parking spots within walking distance of Cheapside Park, which is, when I say walking distance, I mean about one to two blocks. There's parking garages, there's surface parking and on-street parking, and people should know that when they come downtown after 5 p.m., they do not have to pay the meters. I'm Renee with the Downtown Mexican Corporation. What's your name? Matt Vincent with Bluegrass Kettle Masters. And you come out to Thursday Night Live every week. What do you enjoy about it? I enjoy the music. I enjoy the food. I enjoy the kettle corn. And have you seen it grow over the years? I have. I've been here for six years, and I've seen it grow a lot. I've seen it grow in quality and quantity, both. What do you think about the park so far? I think they did a great job. I think that grass is going to be a premium, so people are going to want to get down here early to get their grass spots. That's definitely what I think. I think that utilizing the better times of the year as far as weather goes, May, September, and October, is going to improve the quality of it, get better weather, cooler. I think it's going to go great. We really never thought about that, but a lot of people think the midsummer is really hot. And we are at the weather's mercy. Well, we don't have fountains anymore, so we're going to want the cooler weather now. My name's Al. I'm here from Goodfellas Pizzeria. Where's Goodfellas? It's right across the way at 110 North Mill Street. We have the biggest pizza in town, 22 inches, biggest breadsticks. I'm in a row until 3.30 a.m. Thursday, Friday, Saturday. And what do you think about coming out to Thursday Night Live? Thursday Night Live is great. Great place, great music, great food, great fun. Do you see people of all ages? All ages, all sizes, and all shapes. Moffs right across the street get to walk out and enjoy some beverages and some live music. And, you know, weather holds out most of the time, so it's a great event. It's the shiny, happy bubble that's around Cheapside Park. Yeah, and it seems to get better and better every year. I think it started out with probably about 30 people, 20 to 30 people showing up, and it seems like maybe we get a couple hundred these days. Yeah. First of all, it's great to be out here. This is an awesome location. It keeps getting better with these changes. But as far as parking goes, we did a little survey the other day and found there are 3,000 parking spaces within two blocks of Cheapside, and most of them are available after 5 p.m. So all 3,000 are not typically available during the day, but for functions like Thursday Night Live, there's 3,000 parking spaces within two blocks of Cheapside. Pretty cool. This is Laura Farnsworth of the Downtown Mexican Corporation. I want you to tell us about some of the special events that we know we have planned throughout the season. On June 18th, the Lexington History Museum will be conducting a birthday party for Belle Breezing. It's going to be Belle's Birthday Bash. This event will go on inside the History Museum, located here in Cheapside Park, as well as during the band breaks, we have girls that are going to be dressed as Belle, acting out vignettes from the different scenes of her life. There will also be a carriage, all kinds of things. And it's a fundraiser for the Lexington History Museum. What other ones do we know we have coming up? In July, we will have a pet costume contest. It's Better Off Dead is the band, and we encourage everyone to bring your pets out. Last year we had, I think, 14 animals come out in the array of costumes. It's an awful lot of fun. And then we actually kick off the 4th of July season. From what I can tell, it's going to be a long weekend. Fourth of July falls on Saturday, and this is going to have Friday off. We're going to have... We do. On July 2nd, we have Rob Dredd. He'll be performing here in the park, and we're going to do a beach party. All kinds of great beach festivities going on out here. And anything else that we never have? The last Thursday Night Live of the Year, October 15th, we're going to do a People costume party. We did that last year, the week before Halloween, and it was just a blast. The weather's right. Everybody's already got their costume. It's going to be a great time. That's a great reason to wear your costume again. I like to wear my costume as much as possible. We just wanted to remind everybody that during the month of May, which is bike month, anybody who rides their bicycle down to Thursday Night Live gets one free beverage voucher of their choice. And that's good every Thursday through May. There's also lots of great bike activities that are going on here in Cheapside Park during the month of May. We're here with downtown Jessica, and I wanted to ask her what she thinks of the event. I'm just so excited that on our first Thursday Night Live of the year, it did not rain. It's beautiful. We have a happy, shiny bubble above Cheapside Park. It doesn't rain on Thursdays. Believe me, I won't let it. I love Thursday Night Live because I love to eat. If I can eat, I'll do it. And there are so many food vendors this year at Thursday Night Live. We have snow cones. We have kettle corn, which we've always had. We have pizza, burgers straight from the grill, and, of course, cold beer to go with it. So come on down to Thursday Night Live. Don't miss it. It's a lot of fun for your family. Everything is here just for you, something for everyone. I'm here today with Matt Portal from All Tech, Kentucky Ale. Thank you, Matt, for coming out. One of our great sponsors of the event. Do you enjoy coming out every week? I love it thoroughly. It's one of our favorite events. Every Thursday evening, getting the local community involved, the downtown business people. I like the relief, getting off work, having a cold beer, and loving the entertainment. It's a fantastic event. I'm here with Steve Kelly of Central Bank. First of all, Steve, thank you all so much for being such great sponsors of the event. Each year it gets bigger, it gets better, the crowds are better, there's more food, there's more fun. We love it. How many years has Central Maine been involved now? I think this is our fourth year. And this is an idea that came back from, I believe, Greenville, South Carolina. Right. Greenville, South Carolina. Mayor Miller was on that chamber trip and brought the idea back, and we've been fortunate to have folks who were willing to sponsor the event and have stayed with it, and it's developed its own following. We're just thrilled that we could kind of come in when we did and keep it going. And we're thrilled that you did. And I agree. I've been coming for years and know that the crowd has gotten bigger, And I think the park improvements are only going to help the space. More people are bringing chairs. They're sitting. They're bringing baby strollers, the whole bit. Yeah, you do see it. We've been encouraging lots of families. We always have activities, bubbles and chalk for the kids. And the dogs have a watering station. So it's just growing, and we love it. It's very family friendly. Well, thank you again, Steve. Our pleasure. Let's keep it going. Good night. Thanks for watching Only Downtown. Coming up next is an Affair of the Arts. Pick it up, Lexington. You can make a difference. Be a Lexington Litter Buster. Pick up a piece of litter on the first day of each month. Pick it up, Lexington. You can make a difference. Be a Lexington Litter Buster. Pick up a piece of litter on the first day of each month. Pick it up, Lexington. You can make a difference. Be a Lexington Litter Buster. Pick up a piece of litter on the first day of each month. Good morning. Hi, I'm Mayor Jim Newbeer, and I'd like to talk to you about some important telephone numbers. For fire, theft, and accidents, please call 911. 311 is the number you need to dial for all city services like garbage pickup, sanitary sewers, traffic, and much more. Calling 2-1-1 connects you to local health and human services provided through the United Way. Remember, 9-1-1 is for emergencies. 2-1-1 is for health and human services. And 3-1-1 is your connection to City Hall. I'm Jim Clark. I'm president and CEO of LexArts, and LexArts is Lexington's United Arts Fund and Arts Council. And as the United Arts Fund, we raise money for the arts and then distribute it to various groups throughout the community. And then as the Arts Council, we manage Arts Place and the Downtown Arts Center on behalf of LFUCG. And we also do things like Gallery Hop and Art Showcase Weekend. It was started in the 70s as the Lexington Council on the Arts. and then it merged with Lexington's United Arts Fund in the 80s and became the Lexington Arts and Cultural Council. And since that is quite a mouthful, we shortened that about five years ago to LexArts. But it's been around for quite a long time. It was part of the community arts movement that spread across the country in the late 60s and into the 70s of organizing all the arts groups and trying to find public and private support for the arts. So it was really designed as a mechanism to help strengthen the arts community here in Lexington. Apart from delving into people's wallets every year with our campaign for the arts, we're probably very well known for horse mania. It happened in 2000. 79 horses graced the streets of Lexington for quite a few months. The funds generated from that have been put into a public art fund. In 2004, we did Dynamic Doors, which we utilized about 200 doors from Bluegrass Aspendale housing project when it was demolished. We took the doors, handed them over to artists and schools and community groups to create artworks with those doors. And we're preparing to do Horse Mania again in 2010 for the World Equestrian Games. Well, we know through quite a few conversations that we have had with people here in Lexington, as well as the mayor's 2040 planning process, that there is a keen interest in public art. And right now we really don't have the revenue stream to commission permanent works of art, but we did have the funds available to do a temporary project, and that is how we came up with Balancing Act. The works will be up for six months. There are ten sculptures around town. And it really is a way to show the public and some of the property owners how we could do this and sort of introduce the idea of public art, get it going, so that that might help generate ideas of how we could get a permanent program in place. The genesis of Balancing Act came about when the Downtown Master Plan suggested Vine Street becoming a linear park. And in those conversations, people were talking about the role that public art could play in that. But it was all very distant. You know, it's going to take a very large financial effort in order to transform Vine Street into this linear park. And we thought this might be a great way to jumpstart that conversation. and just start putting sculpture out there just to see how that could provoke certain ideas of what Vine Street could become. And also, at the same time, then we launched into the debate about Centerpoint. and then also through the mayor's 2040 plan the key question or the grounding question is how do we balance growth while preserving the things that we cherish and I think that's you know sculptors are dealing with the idea of balance all the time in a very formal way in terms of the engineering of their works but also in a metaphorical way and so what we did was put out a call for artists of sculptors saying the idea is let's put together a collection of work that really begs the question of achieving balance or how do you maintain balance. And this way sort of artists get to participate in this larger conversation about balancing the growth of Lexington while protecting the bluegrass or protecting our way of life here. So it's just our way of throwing ourselves into a larger conversation that's impacting the growth of the city, but also stimulating the ideas of what our city sidewalks could look like if art was more a part of it. We have quite a few local artists like James Wade, who teaches at UK, Tony Higdon and Erica Strecker, who have their gallery and workshop over at Newtown and Third Street. And actually, Their studio and gallery space is open to the public, and you can see quite a few of their works. And then we have artists from throughout the region, Berea and Louisville and other parts of eastern and western Kentucky. And if artists are interested, they could always send us either a JPEG or a DVD with their images on that. We're constantly looking. At the end of six months, we'll be looking for another crop of artists. We worked with an advisory group that helped select the artists. It was the same advisory group that helped us with the mural project. So we're really building a support system to get public art going here through this project. Actually, the sculptors are primarily located on Vine Street from Broadway to Limestone. We have a brochure that you can pick up at the Downtown Arts Center or Arts Place. I think we even have a sign out near Triangle Park that has the map showing where all the pieces are located. But it's fairly highly concentrated on Vine Street. The Balancing Act will continue into 2009, and then as those pieces come down, we'll probably find new artworks and move them around town. We have our campaign coming up. That'll be in February through April. We run that. We always have shows rotating in here at the gallery at Arts Place. And also there's the gallery hops keep us busy, which is about every other month. They could always call 255-2951, which would give you our receptionist who knows quite a bit about what's going on around town and can direct you to either the right person on staff or to another arts organization. or you visit www.lexarts.org, and there we have a complete calendar of everything that's going on as well as information about how to get involved in the arts. We have an opportunity to give online, but also during the campaign, we are looking for companies that could do workplace giving sites, act as an employee-based giving program, sort of how the United Way operates, and if anyone's interested in that they can contact us to get some information but more importantly they can contact their human resource director and ask about getting that started at their companies as well as information about how to get involved in the arts. Hi, Mayor. 911 is for emergencies. 211 is for health and human services. And 311 is your connection to City Hall. Pick it up, Lexington. You can make a difference. Be a Lexington Litter Buster. Pick up a piece of litter on the first day of each month. Pick it up, Lexington. You can make a difference. Be a Lexington Litter Buster. Pick up a piece of litter on the first day of each month. Pick it up, Lexington. You can make a difference. Be a Lexington Litter Buster. Pick up a piece of litter on the first day of each month. You're watching GTV3. Coming up next is Social Moments. We have children here that range in age from six weeks, and we keep them up until they start attending kindergarten. Most of the infants and toddlers have moms that are going to school here, but we do take children from families that are not attending school here. We have families that may be attending UK, BCTC, or are working. So we have several working parents that we provide care for their children. Our four-year-old classrooms, and we have two of those, are a cooperation with Fayette County Schools and it's part of their Early Start program. Early Start is for families that have children at risk and at risk is determined that those families that are eligible for the free lunch program. The Early Start program is half a day program and we do have children that are attending just that half day. And then we have children that are in need of care before and after the Early Start day. So Fayette County Schools provide the teachers for the program. We provide the assistant teachers. We may be providing transportation if it's needed. And we provide the social services. And the assistant teachers come through Auburn County Government, so it's a real nice partnership between two agencies to provide those services. Our center opens at 6.30 in the morning, and we do have children arriving at 6.30. And we do close by 5.30 in the afternoon. The buses come in at about 8 o'clock. And children coming in on our buses and our van are coming in with their mothers. They're coming in for school. And they, upon entering the center, they wash their hands, including our infants, have their hands washed when they enter the classroom. And then they have breakfast in the morning. All of our classrooms produce lesson plans so they know in advance the activities that they want to do with the children and we do try to follow a schedule as close as we can. We have large group activities, small group activities in our classrooms. We have teacher directed activities. Most of the day is free choice for the children where they are choosing the activities that they go into. Our children do have screenings that we do with them about 30 days after they have enrolled or have been attending the center. So that we have some guidance, and we share this with the parents, where their children are, what skills they want to work on, if any of them, if we need further evaluation for more information what's going on with the child. It may be with language development. We would like a further evaluation. And if that's the case and we meet with the parents and with their approval, we will submit a referral for a speech evaluation for them. Or it could be OT or PT. And we do have parent meetings. We try to meet at least twice a year with parents for parent-child conferences. And the teachers go over where the child is in the classroom, what they're doing, the skills they're working on. We try to find out what things are going on with the child at home, what are their preferences, what time they go to bed at night, so we know if they're tired in the morning, is it that they're not feeling well, did they have a hard time going to bed, those sorts of things, so we know how to better work with the child the next day. And then we do have lunch for the children, and our children do have a rest time, a quiet time after lunch, in which most of them are sleeping and take a nap. Those that do not need a nap, they still have quiet time. They may be looking at books on their cots or that sort of thing. And then when they get up from nap, they all have a snack. Then the ones that are riding our transportation, They leave at about 2.30 in the afternoon, and then the others who have parents that are picking them up leave at some point later in the day. We do have a large gross motor room, an indoor large gross motor room, on days that the weather does not allow the children to go outside. But we do try to take them outside as many days as possible, weather permitting. There are lots of opportunities for parent and child interaction. And I think having the parents under the same roof with the child, I think it helps them become more of a team with the classroom staff. It's not an us-them sort of situation. It is we're all working with this child together. We all want to be on the same page. We want to be working toward the same goals. It may be if a child is beginning to take their first steps, the child care staff may call up to the parent's classroom, come down. You want to see this. You know, this is really neat. And so a parent gets an opportunity to come down for that. For instance, if a child's having a rough time adjusting that day for some reason, a baby may have a difficult time calming himself. We're just not finding the right way to help calm them down. We can call a mom to come down and help us calm them with whatever her unique trick is with her particular child. and if we haven't learned it or go through whatever steps need to happen with the child. So it's nice being in the same building. You can call them and they can call you. They can also call into rooms at any time and ask, how are they doing? I was missing them, and that's okay too. We do have some opportunities throughout the month that parents and children come together. We have been reaccredited by the National Association for the Education of Young Children. And this is a national accrediting organization. And they are the gold standard. They set the gold standard in early childhood. So we were granted reaccreditation with this organization, which says we meet their guidelines. And those are pretty tough guidelines to meet. For instance, they require lower child staff ratios than what Kentucky daycare licensing requires. They require a higher level of teacher training coming into the program and annual training that the teachers attend throughout the year. Our teachers obtain at least 15 hours per year of child development training. And most of our staff end up with more than the 15 hours. NAEYC also requires a certain amount of parent-child interaction activities for the parents. We also have a three-star rating from the state of Kentucky under the Kids for Now stars rating program. So we have achieved a three-star level with them and received benefits through the state with additional training, training, opportunities for additional training with our staff through that program. We always have a steady stream of students coming in to do observations or some sort of class activity where they're working with children. We have a nice relationship with the local community college, BCTC, working with their students and also with staff. They They come in and also do staff training with us to bring in new information, new ideas with our staff. Because we are NAEYC accredited and because of our participation in the STARS rating program, students are encouraged to go to NAEYC accredited programs for different models. We have our child care staff sit on a variety of committees, both locally and statewide, in developing different resources for early childhood providers. And one thing about our staff that I think is unique, in child care there tends to be a heavy turnover rate in staff. at the Family Care Center, we have a very low staff turnover rate. And in fact, most of my staff have worked here at the Family Care Center for over 10 years. And I have staff, all of my teachers have a degree in some form related to early childhood. I have teachers and assistant teachers that hold CDA credentials, which is a child development associate credential. So we have staff that really, I think, go out of their way to try to strengthen their skills. We'll be right back. Thank you. In central Kentucky, we like spring. After all, there are not many things any more beautiful than spring in central Kentucky. The green fields, the derby, Keeneland, horses galore. But unfortunately, here in Lexington, for more years than anyone wants to remember, heavy rains, including those that turn our fields so green each spring, have also meant overflowing sewage pump stations that seriously damage our streams. We're working hard to address the problems in Lexington's dilapidated sanitary and storm sewer systems, problems that have made the city itself a key reason why we have not in the past been in compliance with Clean Water Act. Since this is Earth Week, it is entirely appropriate that we focus on this issue today and break ground on a facility that will address one of our worst sanitary sewer overflow sites in our system, the South Elkhorn Pump Station. It is a pleasure for me to have several friends with me this morning. And first, I want to invite our Congressman Ben Chandler to say a few words about this event. Congressman Chandler has been enormously supportive of our efforts to improve this pump station and he secured a grant of $1,180,000 to help fund it, and I'm very grateful for his help. Congressman? Thank you, Mayor. Appreciate it very much. Good to be with you today, and to everybody here who's supporting this effort, it's good to be with you. You know, nobody wants to talk about sewers. They aren't catchy, they aren't attractive, and they often aren't the topic of conversation, and nobody particularly wants them to be the topic of conversation. We weren't planning on this, but today you can see the reason. You've heard Mayor Newberry talk about the reason why we need to make our wastewater infrastructure a topic of conversation. Now, today, fortunately, you can't smell the reason, but last time we were here to announce the grant, the federal grant, you could smell it. And I understand that you could smell it quite often, so it's important that something be done about this problem. The EPA is allowing this project to go forward with no further environmental review. They're satisfied with what's been done thus far. and because of this, we can clean up this area much faster. The health of our sewer systems is important to our neighborhoods, our communities, and our state. Just imagine downtown Nicholasville Road and the Kentucky River without our sewer systems. I was very fortunate to have the opportunity to assist in a small way, But the important thing that we're interested in now is the reduction of the environmental impact here in Fayette County on our people and in the surrounding counties. Streams don't stop at the county line, and Judge Cassidy knows that. I'm glad that the folks are here from Jessamine County because this obviously has an effect on Jessamine County, too. With wet weather, this pump station doesn't have enough capacity to handle the flow, and it sends raw sewage right into the South Elkhorn Creek. The Division of Water Quality says that the South Elkhorn Station has been the site of more overflows of raw sewage than any other overflow site in Fayette County. Replacing this pump station and building the larger line that we will need is going to take time, so we've got to be patient to get the whole thing done. But I'm sure that all involved are working to remedy this problem as soon as possible. I'm pleased to see that this project is off to a great start, and I look forward to seeing the results soon. The city's leadership has truly made a statement that our neighbors and the environment should be paramount, that our streams can sparkle, and that we can work together to make this region safe and clean. I'm awfully proud of Lexington, of the leadership that Mayor Newberry has showed on environmental issues in general, and the leadership he's shown in talking about and dealing with sewer problems. As I say, something that none of us are excited to talk about, but something that is very basic and very important to our people. Mayor, thank you. You're over there. Congressman, I'm very, very pleased to have the opportunity to serve as mayor when the environment is such a critical part of what we're trying to accomplish in Lexington. And while no one particularly likes talking about sewers, we do like talking about having clean water in our streams and rivers in central Kentucky, and if we don't do a good job with our sewer infrastructure, we won't have clean water in our rivers and streams, and so that's really why we're all here today. One of the major problems that we've had, as Congressman Chandler alluded to just a moment ago has been a lack of capacity. By replacing the pump station at a cost of $15 million, we will be increasing our capacity by 85%. That increase in capacity will help to make us a much better neighbor. We will treat waste from Justman County, which is only appropriate since the West Hickman wastewater treatment plant is in Justman County. And I'd like for Justman County Judge Executive Neil Cassidy to come to the podium and talk just a little bit about the impact of these improvements on his county. Judge Cassidy has been a great friend. He is a wonderful neighbor, and he is the dean of the local officials in central Kentucky. So Judge, come on up and say a few words. You wouldn't give a hell of a big hand, would you? You know, he teased me in Jessamon County about saying that when I began my talk, this is a great day or this is a great project, but I will have to say that this is indeed a great project and it's a special day. It's a project that is not only a Fayette County project that only affects Fayette County, it's a central Kentucky project as far as I'm concerned because it goes down the creek and in the river, and we all have repercussions of things that don't work right. I'd like to say thanks to Mayor Newberry. He's a good fellow to work with. He does what I think is right Fayette County, and he likes his neighbors, and that's kind of unusual. Also I'd like to thank Congressman Chandler. He is a real asset to central Kentucky. He's always there when helping fund him what he can, and if he can't fund, he's helping you do other things also. But it is a good day, and like I said a while ago, when we had been up here before, you could smell things around that wasn't too pleasant. But I'm real thankful that we're getting this project done because it does go directly into Jessamine County and this is certainly going to make a better environment for all of us to live in. Thank you very much. Thanks, Judge. It is a pleasure to have you here. In addition to Congressman Chandler and Judge Cassidy, there are three other folks here that I want to introduce. member Doug Martin who represents this part of Fayette County. We're very pleased to have you here and we're grateful for all the council's support along the way. And then Environmental Quality Commissioner Cheryl Taylor and our director of the Division of Water Quality, Charlie Martin, are the folks that are really on the point in terms of improving our water quality here in Fayette County and we're grateful for all the work and leadership that both of you have provided. As most of you know, the city signed a consent decree last year with U.S. Environmental Protection Agency after the EPA sued us in 2006 for violations of the Clean Water Act. I have made the implementation of that agreement and through it the cleaning up of our environment a top priority for our administration, in fact the top priority for our administration. My goal is to leave the bluegrass to our children and to our grandchildren in far better shape than the way we found it. One priority of our agreement with the EPA is to resolve sanitary sewer overflow issues and that's what we're working on today. The pump station right here has been the site of more overflows of rural sewage than any other overflow site in the county. The pump station does not have sufficient capacity to handle the flow during the wet weather we experience from time to time. When there is an overflow, the raw sewage flows straight into South Alcorn Creek, and I don't have to explain the difficulties that creates for everybody living downstream. We have neglected this problem far too long, as well as an assortment of others in our sanitary sewer system in Fayette County and I am glad that we are getting started here and in several other places in our community to address these problems. Waiting quite frankly is just no longer an option for Fayette County and for Central Kentucky and today we're making substantial progress. I'm very grateful to Congressman Chandler, Judge Cassidy and all the folks at urban county government who had been helpful in moving this along. And with that, if I could get everybody to help me break a little ground here, we will get the project moving. Frank, come here. Ever get one of those big, fat checks in the mail? What you got? A check of $20,000. $20,000? Cash advance? Home equity? We could use the money, right? Yeah, we could always use the money, but 20 of this sure would be nice. Oh, definitely. Looks like a legitimate check. All you have to do is sign, and your money troubles are over. It's like all I have to do is sign it. Don't, or you could lose your home. Don't borrow trouble. Call 1-866-830-7868. Thank you. Thank you very much. It is a great place to be on Earth Day, here at Mary Todd on a beautiful day with a bunch of great young people who are going to probably be telling their moms and dads a lot about rain gardens that I bet your moms and dads don't know. So you can help your moms and dads learn something. Rain gardens help our city, and we hope to have literally thousands of them install over the next several years. By virtue of having these filters, as you described just a moment ago, we will be able to put more of our rainwater runoff into the ground and less of it into our storm sewer system. And that means we don't have to build as large a storm sewer system. That means we don't have to spend as much taxpayers' money, and that means we save a lot in taxes over the long haul. So the more rain gardens we have all across our community, the better off we're going to be. This is a wonderful event because it involves a lot of different people in our community. John, thanks so much for your assistance in putting it together. The PTA, the Neighborhood Association, the school, all have come together to make this event happen, and we're glad that urban county government could play a small role in assisting along the way. So thanks to everybody for taking the time to be out here, especially the moms and dads who probably have other things they could be doing right now. And boys and girls, thanks so much for your all's help. You all are the stars of this show today, and this will help make our community better. Lexington has a long history in many well-established neighborhoods. Periodically, these older neighborhoods need infrastructure upgrades, and the LFUCG's Division of Engineering steps in to get the job done. Roger Custin explains. We're on Oak Hill Drive between Shawnee and Morgan Avenue. It's part of the Meadows-Northland Arlington neighborhood. And this is going to be Phase 3C of this neighborhood improvement development project. The street below us, Meadow Park, is Phase 3B that we're currently working on. And there will be consecutive projects following behind us. The work going on behind us is utility relocation. The contractor working behind me is a contractor for Kentucky American Water. They're putting in new water mains for the upcoming street improvement project that the LFUCG will be doing. The gas company is also renewing their lines. and what that does is before we come in, it updates all the utilities so that we shouldn't have any problems in the near future that we would have to come back and dig up the streets for. What it involves is the utility companies going in first and renewing their stuff, and then we have a contractor come in after that and do the storm sewer work, rebuild the streets, put in new curb and gutters, sidewalks, and make everything finished up and tied together. These are old neighborhoods. We don't have any curbs here. Some places have some sidewalks, some don't, and the ones that are here are mostly in bad shape. And so we renew everything and try to bring some life back to these older neighborhoods. Roger Koston talks about how these improvement projects are funded and gives us an idea of when they will be completed. Each utility bears the cost of their renewals. The contracts for the individual streets vary. Meadow Park is about $1.1 million. Shawnee is going to be just a little less than that. But they tend to run all about the same, near $1 million per street. I do know that Meadow Park will be finished this year. Shawnee, we should be starting by June, and so it should be able to be finished by the end of the year. I think the next phase is edge lawn, but sometimes our priorities change depending on the utilities' progress and other conflicts we have with finances, funding. A lot of this money is federal money, CDBG grant money. But this whole neighborhood eventually is slated to be reworked, much like the Loudon and Meadow Lane neighborhood was in the past few years. Each of the neighborhoods in line for upgrades is different, and so are the needs of that neighborhood. Mr. Costin talks about how these needs are assessed and what can be expected upon completion and talks about his experience with these projects. What starts all this is a detailed survey of what needs the street has. Meadow Park's getting a really large storm sewer system that serves all the streets above it. Everything drains that way, so we're putting in a pretty substantial storm sewer system down there. And each consequent street above it gets storm sewers that tie into it. So the design has to fit that storm sewer into what's already here. And then the utility companies take our design, and when they put their new facilities in, they adjust them up or down or move them out of the street or into the street to accommodate our planned construction. So it's a detailed process. It takes several years of design and development. And then once they start coming out and putting their stuff in, then we progress right along with them and bring other improvements along behind them. What they can look forward to after the work is done is a lot cleaner and better drain in neighborhood. We will have street curb boxes that catch street water. Drainage is much improved. You have new sidewalks. Here we don't have any sidewalks, so they have sidewalks on both sides of the street. Curbs, their streets can then get regular service from the street sweeping service. and it's just a lot cleaner and a better repairing neighborhood. I've been doing CDBG projects since I first started doing construction inspection with the city 25 years ago. I've worked quite a few, I forget now, dozens of neighborhoods where we've gone in and done this, and it's an ongoing process. It's federal money sent to us for neighborhood improvement, and we try to pick areas that really need it. We'll go into a neighborhood and work that one for several years until we work our way through it, and then we'll go to another one. Yeah, there are many neighborhoods here in Lexington that have benefited from this CDBG project over the last 25 years. There's always other neighborhoods that need improvement, and there's no shortage of places to be improving your infrastructure and upgrading what you have. The upgrades are a temporary inconvenience for residents while the construction is ongoing, but the finished product is worth the wait. Mr. Costin has a message for those inconvenienced by the work. I just want them to know that we're out here doing a hard job, and it involves a lot of inconvenience for the residents while we're doing it, but bear with us, work with us, understand that we're out here trying to make things better for you. It's not easy to get through one of these projects because you spend a couple years going through the disruption, the noise, the dust, and not being able to get through when you want to every time. So just bear with us and work with us. This is a dangerous job. These guys are out here every day trying to make your neighborhood better. So bear with them and appreciate it. If you want to find out about the schedule of upcoming neighborhoods, where we're at, you can call Engineering Office. It's 258-3400 and ask for the construction management section. And there are people there that are working on the plans for the future projects. And they can give you information about what neighborhoods are scheduled. Entertainment, shopping, and the many new developments invite you to experience downtown Lexington. Downtown Lexington is a safe, low-crime area for singles, couples, and families to enjoy all it has to offer. At the start of 2008, Lexington experienced its lowest crime rate in 34 years, even though our city continues to grow, drawing new residents who recognize what a safe place Lexington is to live, work, and raise families. We invite you to come play, shop, dine, live, or stay downtown. And don't forget to say hello to all of your friends in blue. Can I ask a few questions about the apartment on Park Street? What was your name? My name? My name is Juan Hernandez. It's been rented. Hello, my name is Sanjay Kumar. I'm calling about the apartment on Park Street. It just rented. My name is Tyrone Washington. I'm calling about the apartment for rent on Park Street. It's not available. I use a wheelchair and... It's gone. Hello, my name is Graham Wellington. I'm calling about the apartment for rent on Park Street. Is that still available? Yes, it is. It is. Housing discrimination is illegal. If you think you've been a victim, call us. Music As Lexington continues to grow, so does the need for better utilities. especially in older neighborhoods. Many neighborhoods need broader scoped upgrades to streets and sidewalks, but others need more focused work. One of those neighborhoods is Cadentown. Darren Wallingford of the LFUCG's Division of Engineering tells us about that work. What we're doing here today is in the Cadentown area. It's an older section of town that has not been sewered. There's a grant that gives us the opportunity to come in in unsewered areas, to come in, place sanitary sewer lines for people who are on septic tanks that we need to really get off. In this particular project, it's taken a long time to develop the plans, work with the public, as well with the UK Archaeology Society. The archaeology department has worked with us. We know it's a sensitive area for history. So we've come in and taken all that into consideration to do this project. Darren Wallingford discusses what goes on to get a project of this magnitude off the ground and what to expect once the work is finished. Through several years of looking at the layout on this particular project, we've looked into many different scenarios of where to place the lines and working with the two churches here in the area as well as the property owners here in Cadentown. A final selection of where to put the lines were agreed upon, which brought us to the construction as you see today. I know with a lot of construction sites, as you see things tore up, it looks terrible, but once completed, this will undoubtedly be a nice looking area to come in, move into, and yes, you will have sewer to hook onto. Mr. Wallingford goes into a bit more detail about some of the specifics of the work itself and what residents need to do to get their property onto the system. He goes on to discuss the time frame for completion of the project. The work we're doing here today, the guys just completed putting in a lateral for this home. At this point, the homeowner would go down and get a permit from the sanitary sewer tap-on division located on the fourth floor of the engineering office. After doing that, they would hire a plumber to hook onto the laterals that we are placing in the ground. After all of our testing and our sanitary sewer division has gone through and makes sure everything is good to go, they may be able to do this. In gravity line construction of sewer lines, basically, as gravity says, you start the highest point and move down to a lower point, which the sewage will flow through. In some instances, we have to have gravity lines come through to a lower point. And in some instances, such as Bracktown, which we just got completed with about two years ago, we had to pump the sewage to a different location to where the gravity will pick up from that point and take it down. So... .