# Council Work Session - June 30, 2009 > Auto-transcribed civic record · Council · June 30, 2009 - **Permalink**: https://meetings.lexingtonky.news/meeting/965 - **Source video**: https://lfucg.granicus.com/player/clip/965?view_id=14&redirect=true - **Date**: 2009-06-30 - **Body**: Council - **Last revised**: June 17, 2026 - **Length**: 29,409 words > ⚠️ **Auto-generated content.** Audio from the official Granicus video was auto-transcribed by OpenAI Whisper-1. Structured facts were extracted with GPT-4o; the narrative summary was written by Anthropic Claude Sonnet. Speaker labels and verbatim wording may contain errors. See [methodology](https://meetings.lexingtonky.news/about/methodology) or [report a correction](mailto:editor@lexingtonky.news). --- ## Meeting Overview The Urban County Council convened on June 30, 2009, with Mayor Newberry presiding. The meeting covered 8 agenda items spanning routine administrative approvals, budget matters, new business, and several informational presentations. Over the course of the meeting, the Council took 14 votes and heard 4 public comments on agenda items. The Council approved a number of substantive items, including budget amendments and a slate of new business items designated A through U, in addition to approving the docket and the summary from the June 23, 2009 meeting. Three agenda items were informational in nature, with presentations delivered on the Lyric Theatre, a Downtown Master Plan Update, and the South Limestone Streetscape Project, providing the Council and public with updates on ongoing initiatives in the community. ## Attendance All members were present at the June 30, 2009 Council meeting. The following individuals were in attendance: - **Mayor Newberry** - **CM Beard** - **CM James** - **CM Gorton** - **CM Ellinger** - **CM Stinnett** - **CM Myers** - **CM Blues** - **CM Martin** - **CM McChord** - **CM Lawless** - **CM Lane** - **CM Gordon** - **CM Feigel** - **CM Figal** - **CM Henson** No members were recorded as absent or late. ## Votes and Decisions All motions brought before the Council at the June 30, 2009 meeting passed unanimously. No roll call votes were recorded; individual aye and nay counts were not tallied. - **Approval of the docket** — Moved by CM Beard, seconded by CM James. Passed unanimously. [timestamp: 0:44] - **Approval of the summary of 6/23/09** — Moved by CM Gorton, seconded by CM Ellinger. Passed unanimously. [timestamp: 8:33] - **Approval of budget amendments** — Moved by CM Stinnett, seconded by CM Myers. Passed unanimously. [timestamp: 9:06] - **Approval of new business items A–U** — Moved by CM Gorton, seconded by CM Blues. Passed unanimously. [timestamp: 9:37] - **Approval of additional 5–7 minutes for a presentation** — Moved by CM Myers, seconded by CM James. Passed unanimously. [timestamp: 58:53] - **Place on docket an ordinance amending salary schedules** — Moved by CM Martin, seconded by CM Myers. Passed unanimously. [timestamp: 2:06:06] - **Place on docket a resolution with Kentucky American Water Company** — Moved by CM Gorton, seconded by CM McChord. Passed unanimously. [timestamp: 2:13:46] - **Add $12,000 to the Animal Care & Control 2010 budget** — Moved by CM Stinnett. Passed unanimously. [timestamp: 2:27:09] - **Amend item 22 under first reading resolutions** — Moved by CM Lawless, seconded by CM Blues. Passed unanimously. [timestamp: 2:29:20] - **Place on docket a resolution with Lexington Public Library** — Moved by CM Myers, seconded by CM Lawless. Passed unanimously. [timestamp: 2:39:27] - **Place on docket an ordinance to establish the Corridors Commission** — Moved by CM Blues. Passed unanimously. [timestamp: 2:40:35] - **Place on docket an ordinance to accept a grant for hazardous waste recycling** — Moved by CM Blues, seconded by CM Gordon. Passed unanimously. [timestamp: 2:41:06] - **Place on docket an ordinance to accept a grant for latex paint recycling** — Moved by CM Blues. Passed unanimously. [timestamp: 2:41:41] - **Place on docket a resolution for continuation of acting assignment pay for Mary Fister** — Moved by CM Lane, seconded by CM Martin. Passed unanimously. [timestamp: 2:45:04] ## Budget and Financial Actions The Council addressed several financial items at the June 30, 2009 meeting, covering contracts, grants, and personnel compensation. - **Kentucky American Water Company Contract:** The Council approved an agreement with Kentucky American Water Company valued at **$434,760** for billing, accounting, and collecting of the water quality management fee. This arrangement delegates fee collection responsibilities to the private water utility. - **Household Hazardous Waste Recycling Grant:** A grant of **$113,154** was accepted from the **Kentucky Energy and Environment Cabinet** to support a one-day household hazardous waste recycling event. The funding will help offset the costs of providing residents with a safe disposal option for hazardous household materials. - **Latex Paint Recycling Partnership Grant:** The Council also accepted a second grant from the **Kentucky Energy and Environment Cabinet** in the amount of **$14,035** to support a partnership with **Lexington Habitat for Humanity** for latex paint recycling. This initiative channels usable paint materials through a community organization rather than directing them to waste disposal. - **Acting Assignment Pay for Mary Fister:** The Council approved the continuation of acting assignment pay for **Mary Fister**, reflecting a **16.77% increase** in compensation tied to her acting role. No resolution number or specific position title was included in the available record. No resolution identifiers were available in the source data for any of the above items. ## Public Comment Four members of the public addressed the Council during the meeting, with all comments centered on the Lyric Theatre and its proposed renovation. - **Sherry Maddock** [timestamp: 0:02] opened public comment by thanking the Council for the opportunity to speak. She emphasized the importance of the Lyric Theatre's renovation to the broader community. - **Bob Ball** [timestamp: 5:38] echoed those sentiments, speaking to the community's passion for restoring the Lyric Theatre and underscoring its significance for Lexington. - **Griffin Van Meter** [timestamp: 1:44:29] offered support for the Lyric Theatre project, framing it in economic terms. Van Meter argued that the theatre has the potential to serve as a catalyst for economic development and revitalization in the surrounding area. - **Mr. Cobb** [timestamp: 3:13:39] addressed the Council later in the meeting, opening his remarks with an apology for previous comments he had made. He spoke to the need for unity and stressed the importance of maintaining exclusive cultural spaces for the Black community in Lexington. Taken together, the public comments reflected strong community investment in the Lyric Theatre renovation, with speakers highlighting its cultural, historical, and economic significance to Lexington. ## Contested Items **South Limestone Streetscape Project** The South Limestone Streetscape Project generated heated discussion during the June 30, 2009 Council meeting. Concerns were raised regarding the project's cost, its timeline for completion, and the potential impact the work could have on local businesses and traffic in the affected area. The structured data available for this meeting does not identify the specific council members or other individuals involved in the debate, nor does it record a specific outcome or vote result from the discussion. No timestamps are available for this item. ## Public Comment on Issues on Agenda [timestamp: 0:08] The Council invited public comment on issues listed on the agenda. Two speakers addressed the Council during this portion of the meeting, both speaking to the topic of the Lyric Theatre renovation. - **Sherry Maddock** and **Bob Ball** each appeared before the Council to offer comments related to the Lyric Theatre renovation item on the agenda. No formal action was taken as a result of public comment; this portion of the meeting was informational in nature. ## Approval of Docket [timestamp: 00:44] The Council moved to approve the docket for the June 30, 2009 meeting. CM Beard and CM James were the key speakers on this item. No debate or dissent was recorded, and the docket was approved without objection. ## Approval of Summary of 6/23/09 [timestamp: 08:33] The Council took up the approval of the summary from its previous meeting, held on June 23, 2009. CM Gorton and CM Ellinger were the key speakers during this agenda item. The summary was approved without noted objection or significant debate. ## Budget Amendments [timestamp: 09:06] The Council took up a resolution on budget amendments during the June 30, 2009 meeting. Council Members Stinnett and Myers were the key speakers on this item. The resolution was approved without dissent. *No additional details regarding the specific content of the amendments, any debate, or concerns raised were available in the meeting record.* ## New Business Items A-U [timestamp: 09:37] The Council considered New Business Items A through U as a block. CM Gorton and CM Blues were the key speakers during this portion of the meeting. The items were presented and moved together without dissent, and the Council approved all items from A through U. No concerns or debate were recorded for this agenda item. ## Lyric Theatre Presentation [timestamp: 41:49] Shaye Rabold presented an update on the Lyric Theatre's proposed business plan to the Council. The presentation covered the theatre's financials, programming plans, and anticipated community impact. Dr. Everett McCorvey also participated as a key speaker during this agenda item. The item was informational in nature, with no vote or formal action taken by the Council as a result of the presentation. ## Downtown Master Plan Update [timestamp: 1:49:01] Harold Tate presented an update on the downtown master plan to the Council. The presentation covered three primary areas: land use, residential development, and streetscape improvements. No additional speakers, debates, or specific concerns are recorded in the available meeting data for this item. The presentation was informational in nature, and no vote or formal action was taken by the Council as a result. ## South Limestone Streetscape Project [timestamp: 2:29:20] The Council held a discussion regarding the South Limestone Streetscape Project, with Commissioner Webb and CM Lawless identified as the key speakers on this item. The discussion centered on several areas of concern related to the project, including: - **Cost** — Council members raised questions about the financial aspects of the project. - **Timeline** — The scheduling and duration of the project were discussed. - **Impact on local businesses** — Concerns were expressed about how the streetscape work would affect businesses operating in the area. The item was informational in nature, and no formal vote or action was taken as an outcome of the discussion. *Note: The available data for this agenda item is limited. For full details on the specific arguments made, figures cited, or positions taken by individual speakers, viewers are encouraged to consult the meeting video beginning at timestamp 2:29:20.* --- ## Decisions - **Motion** — passed (0-0): Approval of the docket - **Motion** — passed (0-0): Approval of the summary of 6/23/09 - **Motion** — passed (0-0): Approval of budget amendments - **Motion** — passed (0-0): Approval of new business items A-U - **Motion** — passed (0-0): Approval of additional 5-7 minutes for presentation - **Motion** — passed (0-0): Place on docket an ordinance amending salary schedules - **Motion** — passed (0-0): Place on docket a resolution with Kentucky American Water Company - **Motion** — passed (0-0): Add $12,000 to Animal Care & Control 2010 budget - **Motion** — passed (0-0): Amend item 22 under first reading resolutions - **Motion** — passed (0-0): Place on docket a resolution with Lexington Public Library - **Motion** — passed (0-0): Place on docket an ordinance to establish the Corridors Commission - **Motion** — passed (0-0): Place on docket an ordinance to accept a grant for hazardous waste recycling - **Motion** — passed (0-0): Place on docket an ordinance to accept a grant for latex paint recycling - **Motion** — passed (0-0): Place on docket a resolution for continuation of acting assignment pay for Mary Fister --- ## Full transcript Let's go ahead and call the work session to order, please. The, uh, first item on today's agenda is public comment on issues that are on the agenda. Does anyone wish to, uh, address the council? Seeing none, we'll roll ahead. We have a docket to approve today. Council member Beard has moved that the docket be approved. Is, do I hear a second? I second. A second from Council Member James. Any discussion? Seeing none, we'll proceed to vote. All in favor of approving the docket, please indicate by saying, "Aye." Aye. Oppose, "No." Motion carries. Council Member Beard. Uh, Beard? Excuse me, McCord. I'm sorry. I, I, I have a, uh, a, a walk-on that wa- is coming from law shortly to, to walk onto the docket, so I, I just wanted to know whenever was, whenever that comes down to, to- We, we can take those up during council reports. Okay, thank you. All right. Um, I have just received a, uh, list of people who wish to comment on issues that are on the agenda, so if there's no objection, we'll back up and follow up on that. Um, it appears both are interested in addressing the Lyric. And Sherry Maddox ... There you are, Ms. Maddox. If, uh, you'd step to the podium, you'll have three minutes. And then, Bob Ball. Mr. Ball? There you are. Thank you. Mr. Ball, if you'd come around. Mr. Ball, if you'd come around and, and be, uh, standing by, I'd appreciate it. All right, Ms. Maddox. I'm grateful for this opportunity to address the mayor and council about the critical matter of the Lyric's renovation. My name is Sherry Maddox. I'm a resident of the East End. My family and I live at 262 East 4th Street, and until very recently, I served as the president of the Martin Luther King Neighborhood Association. Today, however, I speak to you as a representative of the Legacy Center at Bluegrass Community Foundation. I work for the Legacy Center as the East End project liaison. Steve Austin, the director of the Legacy Center, sends his regrets, as he had a previous engagement. He and David Cozart are in Louisville at the moment advancing the cause of the Isaac Murphy Memorial Art Garden. Working together with council representative James and the Lyric task force, the Legacy Center is partnering to move forward with the fundraising, marketing, and community engagement plan for the Lyric. We are committed to the future success of the Lyric Theater. Our support role with the Lyric will mirror our ongoing participation of organizing and fundraising for the Isaac Murphy Memorial Art Garden. The Legacy Center activity in the East End was borne out of the citizen, the citywide citizen engagement process. It was initiated by LFUCG and the Knight Foundation back in 2007. One of the two legacy projects to rise to the top of that effort as a priority across this city is the revitalization of the East End, specifically the 3rd Street corridor between Elm Tree Lane and Midland Avenue. City council gave the invitation for input, and citizens voiced their preferences. And from that, we hold firmly that the Lyric will serve as a major anchor to the revitalization efforts on East 3rd. And the Lyric is a significant place for both the past and the future for residents in the East End and across the city of Lexington. During the past 18 months, the Legacy Center has been involved in multiple projects in the East End. We helped Ed Holmes with the creation of the East End small area plan. At this time, my job as community liaison is to work alongside the East End community to implement the 10 priorities that were developed out of that small area plan. The Legacy Center is working closely with the Isaac Murphy Memorial Art Garden board to fundraise for the memorial park. And we will complete the East End banner project by the end of this summer. Speaking on behalf of Steve Austin and the Legacy Center, we strongly urge you to vote in favor of the restoration of the Lyric. It is, we contend, a milestone project in the ongoing revitalization of this key downtown area. Thank you again for the opportunity to speak. Thank you, Ms. Maddox. Mr. Ball, if you will, uh, come forward, you'll have three minutes. Mr. Mayor, uh, council members, I just found out I was gonna speak, so I'm gonna try to make a couple of points that, uh, uh, relates to the Lyric. I am a member of Christ Church Cathedral, and Christ Church Cathedral is the owner of the third, uh, 3rd & Elm Tree Lane Old Episcopal Burying Ground, also the lot that, uh, now contains the London Ferrell Community Garden. I've been, uh, the volunteer coordinator of that, uh, operation for the last several years. It has afforded me a great opportunity. ... to become familiar with that neighborhood and to create projects that draw the neighbors of that neighborhood into a commonality. There's a great connectiveness that has been, uh, energized over the last few years. And one of the, uh, things that I did during this time was to visit a few of the neighborhood, uh, association meetings, including the William Wells Brown, and I have a lasting memory from the William Wells Brown visit that makes me, and prompted me, to speak today and that is, the passion I saw with regard to the restoration of the Lyric Theater. I've not witnessed much of that, and I've, uh, had many years of con- uh, volunteer work on the Civil Service Commission, the Human Rights Commission in Lexington, but I haven't seen as much, uh, coordinated passion and desire for something to be done in the revitalization of the Lyric Theater. I can tell you from having spent the last 20 years in restoration of the old Episcopal burying ground, Christ Church has a vested interest in this. I, as a member, and as the, uh, coordinator of the burying ground, have a vested interest in it. But I don't think it even comes close to the passion of those who have historically been connected to the active Lyric Theater. I think this is one of the finest opportunities for Lexington to step up and fulfill its commitment that it has previously made to the restoration of the Lyric Theater. I think it would be a misfortune to debate this much further than a yay on your part. Thank you. Thank you very much, Mr. Ball. All right. Let me, uh, ask you to refrain from applause whenever, uh, someone speaks today. We've had a pretty effective rule of keeping that to minimum, and it seems to have worked pretty well. I understand everybody feels passionately about the issues, but, uh, um, if you could avoid that, I think it'll permit us to move along a little more rapidly today. We have, uh, approved the docket, so that brings us down to the summary that we have for approval. Is there a motion? Move approval. Second. I have a motion from Council Member Gordon, and a second from Council Member Ellinger to approve the summary. Any discussion? All in favor then, please say aye. Opposed, no? Motion carries. We have some budget amendments to consider. Is there a motion to approve? So moved. Council Member Stennet has moved to approve the budget amendments. Council Member Myers has seconded that motion. Any discussion? All in favor then, say aye. Opposed, no? Motion carries. The new business items are next. Do I hear a motion to approve? Move approval. Second. I have a motion by Council Member Gordon and a second by Council Member Blues. Any discussion? Then we'll vote those... Uh, Council Member Lawless. All right. I thank you so much . Is there anyone else who wishes to speak on the matter on the agenda? All right, then, um, those in favor of approving the new business items, please indicate by saying aye. Opposed, no? Motion carries. Takes us down to the, uh, presentations for today. We have three, so let's get started with the Corridors Committee Presentation. Dr. Stephens? Thank you Mayor, and greetings to the council. Uh, I'm just sitting there, trying to add up how many council meetings I may have attended in this chamber, and I've got it down to 1,080. So, this makes 1,081 or so, but, um, this may be the last. The Corridors Committee has a presentation to give to you, and Mr. Mark Yanek and Mr. Mark Arnold, principals with M2D will give you the basic information. Uh, the Corridors Committee has two grants, one for Versailles Road and one for Newtown Pike, as well as one for the interchange at Alexandria and Old Frankfurt Pike, which will be, uh, heavily traveled roads for the World Equestrian Games. That's what we're here to talk to you today about. And what I wanna do is review with you the Council Committee, uh, Corridors Committee that should be. Corridors Committee Reorganization, current projects in the construction phase and ongoing projects. The Corridors Committee was started in 1988, uh, conjunction with the mayor and the council at that time. Primarily, uh, it was, uh, advocated by the council and it has consisted of members of the council, interested parties from the garden clubs and other groups in town, as well as members of the various departments from the city and the state. Uh, it has met regularly, about 10 times per year, and advocated various projects which in- uh, improve the aesthetics of our major roads with trees and other improvements. Uh, because this has been an ad hoc committee through the years, some members of the council have had a lot of influence on the projects. ... uh, thought that it should be codified, and I would agree with that. Uh, I've been serving as holdover chairman as, uh, Don Blevins was scheduled to be the chairman. But of course, he flew the coop down the street to the county clerk's office, and it could not function. And since I was the only remaining person who had attended the meetings during the last several years, uh, I was selected to be the interim chairman. Uh, the purpose of this audience is to create a better definition of the c- of the corridors committee, or commission, as it will be called, and to define the membership, who votes, who doesn't, and, uh, other, as well as their purpose and mission. Uh, I have participated in the meetings, uh, where these, this was drafted, and I think you got a copy of it yesterday. And, um, Dr. Tom Blues will address this during his corridor's, I mean, during his council report. I support this reorganization and all of its elements that have been presented. This projects we have underway, the Old Frankfurt Alexandria Gateway is, is designed to become a, a roundabout. Uh, since people have done well out of Wellington Way, and I don't believe they've learned how to do that now, uh, the State Highway Department wants to put a roundabout there. We had a, a $125,000 that had been appropriated from transportation enhancement to do the stonewall on Newtown Pike. However, when the highway department rebuilt Newtown Pike, they did the stonewall, so they didn't need the money, and they w- wanted us to transfer that to putting a stonewall in the roundabout as a decorative item on the southwest, east, southwest corner, which will be done. We also have a grant that is working on Versailles Road and on Newtown Pike, and you'll hear about that from Mr. Yanick. And I think now, I'll turn it over to Mr. Yanick, or Mr.- or Mark Arnold, and they can give you the details of these two projects, and we'll be here for questions if any should occur. Thank you. I'm Mark Arnold. I'm a landscape architect with M2D Design Group here in Lexington. We've worked a little bit on all three of these projects, and I'd point out that all three of them have been p- partially or fully funded by transportation enhancement grants. So, uh, that's been a real boost for the city. We do have two currently that are u-underway right now. One has been bid and will be under construction, uh, as soon as planting season begins, hopefully in September or October. The second project is in the design phase, and we anticipate it bidding either this fall or early spring, both to be ready for the World Equestrian Games. A third project that Dr. Stephens alluded to is the, uh, roundabout or the gateway project here at Alexandria and Old Frankfurt. Again, we assisted, uh, Lyle A, and I think many of you all are familiar with Lyle and his work here with the council. We assisted him with the design of this project, and it's essentially a gateway to the city of Lexington and also a gateway to the pristine horse farm to the west of Lexington. It's a roundabout that will feature an equine sculpture, one and a half or two times scale in the center of the roundabout with additional landscaping, uh, and also flower beds and, and plantings. Stone walls are currently being moved back out of that area and will be on the, uh, featured along the sides. Whoops, I skipped ahead too quick. Another project we've been working on is just generally enhancements of landscaping along Versailles Road. This is really, essentially begins at the airport with a new entry wall, a mural wall along Versailles Road, and also, uh, the area at New Circle Road moving in towards Alexandria Drive to become a landscaped gateway for the city. The two areas that are involved are, actually three areas that are involved in this grant, are one directly at the New Circle Road interchange, that would be area one on the screen. There'll be some landscape enhancements in that area. The second area would be at A- Alexandria Drive at the intersection there at, uh, Versailles Road, and the third area would be at the viaduct coming into, uh, into the community, uh, right at downtown. I'll skip ahead. You can kinda see an existing aerial of, of both of those features. There's the Pine Street Viaduct on the bottom. There's the New Circle Road gateway at the top. And this is the Alexandria edge. What we have planned at New Circle Road is generally an extension of sort of a pristine or a bucolic landscape elements, adding flowering trees, uh, masses of, of flowers and shade trees in the, uh, intersection or in the cloverleaf areas on two sides to serve as a gateway as you come into the city and also to serve as sort of a planting as you exit the city. Generated a sort of a before and after image. This is as you're moving in towards city from, uh, the airport side. This would be the right-hand side of the road. It's an existing tree stand. And what we've actually are planning, there we go, would be the, uh, development of some horse farm fence, as you can see, some additional trees, flowering trees in the background, and then, uh, masses of flowers in the front. Moving from that area towards Alexandria, we're taking advantage of the medians there. We still have green medians in this location, and we're putting sort of a dynamic landscape planning within those meeting, uh, medians, and then reinforcing the edges with some additional trees. There's a lot of nice fence there and a lot of nice mature trees. We're adding some flowering trees to that area, uh, again, to reinforce the existing landscaping. ... and more of the same as you proceed towards the, uh, Alexandria intersection. This is just as you get to Alexandria. Again, we're working with those large existing green islands that are already exist, that are already there. Kinda hard to see in this photo, but adding some, uh, uh, mature trees and screening for the parking areas. With the bridge, there's not a lot of landscaping you can physically put on the bridge, so we've combined essentially adding some trees at the front and the back of the bridge, and then looking at some banner opportunities for the bridge. And in this case, the banners would hang off the existing lights and would, uh, be of, uh, Horse Farm silk colors. Move on to Newtown, but I'd point out that, again, that project is, has been bid, it's been awarded, we have a contractor on, uh, Versailles Road project currently, and the work will begin, uh, as soon as, again, it's, July's not the right time to plant trees. We need to wait til September or October to work again at that point. Mr. Arnold. Yes, sir? We can't hear you when you're turned away from the microphone. Okay. So if you, uh, if you could speak into the microphone, it would be helpful. Yes, sir, so moving on, this is Newtown Pike project. We are currently working with the, the neighbors along Newtown Pike and the city. We have a transportation enhancement budget of $260,000, uh, for the project and it is in the design phase, and we've developed quite a few ideas and we've begun showing some of the landscape ideas to the local neighbors and neighborhood associations. We do have some existing medians as you come into the main street gateway. We felt like this was an area that was, uh, fairly readily accessible. We would be able to bring trees into the area and start to plant and make a pretty strong impact at this point. So the proposal calls for landscaping the medians, again, with, uh, vegetation, flower masses, adding mature trees along the edges of the road and adding some additional vegetation and looking at banner opportunities. One of the things that we're also working on is trying to strengthen our connection to the future BCTC campus a- along this area. As you can see, public sidewalks, uh, uh, suffer in this area a little bit, so we're beginning to look at what we could do now to add some vegetation as a first step, looking at opportunities to put some trees and some screening shrubs in, but then as a long-term step, looking at some enhancements to the entire corridor, developing some new walkways, widening those walkways if possible, and trying to provide a more pedestrian-friendly access along this area. There's some nice ar- art opportunities at this point, and certainly it's, uh, the corridors where we can enhance that with vegetation and try to help those spaces and create a little more dynamic quality to those existing spaces we're going to. There's also some talk about a potential mural on the back wall there that would enhance that experience. If we can get this to run, kind of taking a 3D look, come on, put it back. Can you run that animation at this point? Here we go. We've developed a drive, the drive-through experience for this end of Newtown Pike in an animation that shows you kind of what we're hoping to get it with a drive-by. Again, we're adding, uh, trees on both sides of the road, looking at flowering trees in the medians, looking at new planting opportunities in the medians. We'll let this run through. We try to put you behind the wheel in this particular image so you can get a feel for what the experience would be like as a gateway. While this is running, I'd point out that there are other areas on Newtown Pike that we're looking at as well. This is obviously the gateway and what would be closest to Main Street, but we're moving down across from IBM or the Lexmark facility, looking at some strategic plantings where that we've got some things that really could be benefited by additional landscaping. We're going to try to, to work additional plant material in, kind of strengthen that, uh, the whole experience literally from the highway all the way in, into downtown. And for some reason, our car turned very slowly. It's, maybe it's me backing out of the driveway here or something, but it'll, it'll pick back up. We were actually able to put this, uh, animation to YouTube and publish that and get some input from, uh, from the local community directly on the computer, uh, so it was kind of a nice tool to get feedback from the community while we're still in the design process. So we con... We've got a couple of ongoing projects in the office that are a little smaller, not necessarily related to World Equestrian Games, but we're looking at Winchester Road, uh, enhancement and landscaping and then also, uh, taking another look at Nicholasville Road. Those are the five projects that we've been involved in and I would be happy to skip back if anyone has any questions or give you, try to give you more detail. Does that conclude your all's presentation? Yes. All right. Farewell. Uh, Council Member James. Thank you, Mayor. Um, Mark. Yes, ma'am. Over here. How are you? Good. How are you? Good. Um, a question about the tree plantings. I'm a member of the tree board. Mm-hmm. And one of the things that makes us, um, just a little bit, um, shaky is any time we see new tree plantings in right of ways and talking about maintenance. Mm-hmm. Is there, I didn't know how many of these were actually planted on private property versus, or in the yards, versus in right of ways and if you've talked about any kind of, have you talked with our urban forester about how we plan to maintain those and if we need to start looking at increasing the funding for our urban forestry to make that happen? Well, Tim, the urban forester has been a part of all of our conversations in selecting, as we begin now to select specific species, he's gonna be, continue to be a part of that conversation. I know that for Newtown Pike, and Mark Stennet can jump in and, and clarify, we're really attempting to put most of the planting in the right of way. Okay. And limit the amount of plantings that are outside of the right of way. In other projects, for example, earlier Versailles Road projects, we had no right of way to work with, so we were actually went door to door essentially and added trees to the corridor, uh, by speaking directly with the public. For this portion of Versailles Road, the, the work that you saw here today, again, most of that, we're trying to keep in public right of way. But whether we need to refund for additional, uh, maintenance down the road, I think there's already a fair amount of maintenance that's done on all of the corridors. I would encourage us to do so, if we want our corridors to look beautiful, we need to, to back up the, the landscape installation with, with funding, with future maintenance funding. Okay. I would just look for that to come from our urban forester as you m- as you move this plan forward to be sure that he's clarifying with, you know, his director, commissioner, the mayor, the council, what increased funding needs to happen in order to maintain these trees, because I don't want them to be a, a public safety hazard. It's been a part of all of our conversations, so we're working pretty closely with them. Okay. Thank you. Thanks, Mayor. Mm-hmm. Thank you. Council Member Stennet indicated, uh, he couldn't log into the system here, so Council Member Stennet and Council Member Gort. Thank you, Mayor. Just had a question on the ongoing projects. I didn't see North Broadway on there. Nothing's gonna be done or looked at on North Broadway? 'Cause that, that is probably gonna be the next biggest access to downtown besides Newtown Pike and there's several issues along North Broadway. I think N- North Broadway is currently under study. Now I can't speak for the whole Corridors Committee. It wasn't one of the projects that they asked me to feature here today, based on the World Equestrian Games, but it is currently being studied as a, as a, a corridor project. Is there anyone else that can comment on that? 'Cause I would think that that's the, probably the second major rou- route into downtown from the horse park, what we utilize when Newtown is, is backed up. Is there not anyone- I don't know the timetable on that. The, the other thing, did they ask you to look at the railroad overpasses and, and improving what they look like? 'Cause, uh, w- again, North Broadway, another example of the condition of those railroad, what they look like coming into our city. Um, I know those are big issues for several people around the city. I don't believe there's any significant work being done on that right now. We did talk to th- the Corman Railroad Company who owns that overpass and Mr. Corman would be very happy if we painted it for him, but I told him I thought, you know, we looked into that and it's their responsibility, the railroad. When was the last time we, we spoke with Mr. Corman in regard to- About six months ago. Well, maybe we need to have those conversations again, 'cause we're, we're, uh, 451 days away and... I think that if we're gonna get it painted, that's probably necessary, yeah. Very. Thank you. Thank you, Mayor. Council Member Gort. Thank you very much, Mark, for your presentation. Um, I have a question, but first a comment that you can't do anything about. But as you drove us, um, along, um, Newtown Pike, it occurred to me that, and this is more on the engineering of the roadside, that given that traffic congestion is probably our number one or number two issue all the time, that we've probably missed a good opportunity by not going under the railroad crossing there like we did on Broadway. And that's more, uh, someone else's, uh, question, but on your presentation that, the packet that we received, ongoing projects, you've listed the, uh, revised Winchester Road ordinance and review of the old ordinance, and, um, does that involve looking at the view sh- viewshed study that was done several years ago and how to integrate that into policy or integrated into planning, and how will you be using that? Is that one of your projects? Actually, it's not one of my, my specific projects, but I will get the answer for you. Um, Morgan McIlwain, one of my partners, worked on that project when he was with a previous firm, so he's very familiar with the project. And I can find out and, and get that information to you. I do know that they'll be looking at all old, old, uh, materials, old, uh, plans, old master plans and ordinances as they re-review the project and bring it up to date. I'm, I'm very happy to hear that, because I know in this particular instance, uh, quite a bit of money was spent to, uh, study the Winchester Road corridor and, um, come out with the, uh, viewshed plan and it just occurred to me that- We've put a lot into that corridor already, and we should integrate that into whatever we're going to do. It's-- it's my understanding that our work has been a continuation of-- of an effort that was three or four years old, and not a re-- a revisiting, but just continuing the effort. Okay. So we're moving actually on down the corridor, basically essentially extending the master plan closer and closer to-- to downtown, which was-- was our goal here. To move it towards the-- the heart of the city. Okay, very good. Thank you. Council Member Beard? Thank you, Mayor. Um, going back to the very first part of your presentation concerning that, the Alexandria Drive, Old Frankford Pike, uh, roundabout. Is there, I couldn't tell from the, uh, artist's, uh, drawing, is there anything in the middle of the roundabout, any kind of structure or? What's proposed right now in the very center of the roundabout, and it was hard to see on that graphic, is a-- is a-- a round stone retaining wall that lifts up several feet. It berms up so it becomes sort of higher than-- than, you know, eye level. And then in the center of that is a large, uh, uh, sculpture. And, uh, if you kind of see that center dot there, that's actually berming up, and then there's a-- a low wall, and then within that planting zone is-- is a freestanding equine sculpture. Which is, again, one and a half to two times larger than life, so it's... Well, uh, you know, that's good news and bad news. It would be very attractive. I-- I'm looking at the trees and then looking at that centerpiece. Mm-hmm. And I'm wondering, uh, anybody that's trying to navigate that, are they going to be able to site the automobiles, uh, properly to, uh, if it's anything like the Reynolds Road, Wellington, uh, uh, they whip around there pretty fast, and, um, if you can't get a good bead on them when they're 180 degrees from you, and you have to wait until they're somewhere between 90 and 180, uh, it could be dangerous. That's-- That's correct. And before any final plans are actually developed, we'll be looking with, uh, the traffic engineers and, uh, other engineers to make sure that our site distances are appropriate, that for the design speed of the turns that we're gonna have great visibility across there. It may ch- it may modify slightly some of the plans, but that's certainly one of the first steps that we would typically take. Uh, you know, it-- it seems to work well in Europe. Uh, for some reason, uh, uh, it hasn't necessarily, for- for some people anyway, worked well o- on Reynolds Road, and, uh, I would hate to have a situation where, uh, uh, we- we can't do more of these in the future. Mm-hmm. Thank you very much. Thank you, Mayor. All right. Thank you. Council Member Henson? Thank you, Mayor. Hi, thank you for coming. I'm excited that this has finally gotten to this point, um, with the Versailles Road corridor 'cause, you know, it's been several years since we first met and looked at the enhancements, and we couldn't do everything we wanted, but this is a very good start. And I just have one quick question, and I- I can't remember the, at the meetings I was at previously, but with the planting of the trees and the hedge on, uh, between Mason Headley, Parkers Mill area, that would be on private property, correct? In some areas, we've had to look each piece of the corridor kind of differently. In some areas, we do have right of way that we can work on. As we move down, say from Alexandria towards, uh, New Circle, we, uh, we have kind of a shared commitment there. We do have right of way that we can work with, but there might be some areas where we would want to use in, with the shrubs planting for screening of parking areas, uh, could potentially be on, uh, be on private property. Marc, do you know specifically on Versailles Road between Alexandria and Newtown or New Circle crossing, the plantings that we showed, do you know specifically? Those are all state right of way. Okay. I was just wondering about the maintenance of those sh- hedges and that they would be properly maintained and... Okay, so. Two years ago, we did have a planting from Alexandria moving towards Red Mile, had a fairly large planting and every one of those plants was put on private property at, again, uh, we went door to door and solicited, uh, homeowners and property owners that would be willing to- to put the plants in and then maintain them. Okay. Well, thank you very much for your work, and I love the flags. Thank you. Council Member Lane. Thank you, Mayor. Yeah, I wanted to get a little bit of more information on the-- the roundabout at Alexandria and Old Frankford Pike for the new gateway. Um, have some of the horsemen that live out that corridor made contributions or helped in setting up the roundabout? Do you have any information about that? Again, uh, Lyle Layton has-- has been the senior landscape architect on the project, and we've just assisted him. Uh, uh, I think he's made contacts with-- with, uh, several, uh, horse farm owners, and I've, I understand that there are others involved as well. And those- Lynda Jones, uh, other folks of that nature. So I haven't personally talked to- I know Dr. Stephens had stepped up, maybe he has some information there. Excuse me. Uh, we've met with the people that live along there, they call it the Corridors Committee of the- ... Old Frankford Pike, it's not part of the corridor committee we're talking about today, but they have pledged to pay for the statue and all the other emoluments that the state doesn't put in. The only obligation of the Irvin County government was that, uh, grant that created, that was created some years ago. It'll be sp- spent on the stone fence. So they're gonna do a lot. Okay. And do you know, um, the, the two people I heard were perhaps Governor Bratton Jones was involved and Tracy Farmer. They're, were they the drivers, or is there lo- a lot of people? Don Ball has been the ma- major person behind it. Okay. All right. Um, you might stay up there, Dr. Stevens, just in case one of you may... I was just curious about the total cost to, uh, do all this, uh, landscaping, trees, and all that were put into this particular proposal today. Do you have a budget on that yet, or? For the roundabout, you mean? No, sir. For all the trees and all the other landscaping. Well, the budgets, uh, for the Versailles Road and the Newtown Pike are both about 250,000, and the stone wall is 125,000 on the roundabout. A- and the source of those funds? Transportation enhancement grants. Okay. All right, I think that's good. Thank you all very much. Mm-hmm. The Corridors Committee did wanna thank the council for putting, and the mayor for giving us, giving to the committee $90,000 for next year. So that'll help a lot. Councilmember Feigel. Thank you, Mayor. Um, I just wanted to ask, is this mic on? Yeah. Um, I happen to drive this route pretty frequently, and I know that, um, on this diagram of the roundabout, that's what I'm looking at, um, on Old Frankford Pike, there's an old stone wall out there. It's, it's, it's in pretty bad shape. But is that going to be restored, or is that gonna be removed? Tha- it's my understanding that the project for the right of way acquisition to develop the roundabout has already been let by the city as, as a project. That project included the relocation of the stone wall. Okay. So, uh, I think that's where we... So- Yes, the state is gonna put that stone wall back, the one on the northwest corner. The one we've been talking about goes on, on, uh, Three Chimneys Farm, who now own the one on the southwest corner. It'll belong there. And it'll be on their property, and they've agreed to maintain it. And, um, I guess the city just bought this, this other corner, where we're gonna put the recycling... facility. I missed too many meetings of the council. I don't know what happened there. I, le- let me, uh, speak to that issue just a little bit. We acquired a portion of that property, but not the corner piece. Not the corner? Oh. Not the corner piece. Okay. Thank you very much. Councilmember Martin. Thank you, Mayor. Before I moved back to Lexington, I lived out in mid, toward Midway on US 62, and I, I've driven Old Frankford Pike more times than I can possibly count. Uh, this is one of the really extremely dangerous intersections in Lexington 'cause you can't really, there's just terrible visibility there. Many, many accidents have been there. I've had family members that have accidents there. And so am, I'm just very, very pleased that a lot of thought is going in to trying to alleviate this very dangerous intes- intersection, and perhaps provide some, uh, uh, some, uh, interest and beauty in our, in our, in our city, and, and have something that's unique here. So, uh, thank you. Thank you, Mayor. Councilmember Lawless. Thank you. Um, so the Versailles Road corridor project is, um, currently going on and... That's correct. It's bid. We have a contractor on board. We have an accepted bid, and, uh, it's moving forward, and the, I suspect trees will be planted as soon as the weather breaks in the fall. I think that's really fabulous 'cause it certainly needs it. Will there be road closures for that? No, ma'am. Okay. And what about the Alexandria and Old Frankford gateway? Again, it looks beautiful, and thank you for all your work on it, but do you know if there'll be road closures with that? I couldn't begin to guess. Um, I wouldn't be sure about that. Could potentially. O- okay. Thank you. Does any other member of the council have questions? Thank you, Mr. Arnold, Dr. Stevens. Appreciate you being here today. The next presentation, uh, on today's agenda is the Lyric presentation, and Ms. Raybold, if you'll step to the podium, please. Good afternoon. Thank you very much for having us back today to talk about the Lyric Theater project. Before we get started today, I just wanted to say a special thanks to all of the people who are here today who've come to support the Lyric, especially those who have been involved much, much longer than I have, over the past 20 years, including the Lyric Theater Task Force members. Um, to give a little perspective of why we're here today, I think you will recall that after, um, AMS, the professional consultan- consultants that we hired to develop the business plan, um, th- after they gave their presentation, we still had some questions about how the Lyric would operate, where the money would come from, and additional questions about programming. So, the vice-mayor appointed a work group to take AMS's report and make it better, essentially. And so, uh, the members of that work group include Dr. Everett McCorvey, who's here today, Juanita Betts Peterson, who's also the chair of the Lyric Theatre Task Force, Gene Woods from Saint Joe, who was ama- unable to be here today, but wanted me to make sure you all know he's very supportive of the project, uh, Jim Clark from LexArts, Council Member Andrea James, Council Member Ed Lane, and then two other people who participated, um, but were not official members of the work group were, um, Joan ... Brannan. ... Brannan , I just completely lost it, and Charlie Bolin. So thanks to all of them. What I wanna do today is not go over, in detail, all 14 of the points that the vice-mayor asked our group to do, because hopefully, you have found the answers to those in the information you received last Thursday. But I do wanna focus on the mission of the Lyric, the programming and the partnerships, the operating costs that will be required each year, the capital cost, and then the management overview. So, I ask now that you join me in imagining the possibilities for the Lyric Theatre into the future. If I can figure out how to get this thing to work. If I can get over that. . Yeah. You like it? Okay. I was a political science major, not a technology major. I apologize. Um, the mission of the Lyric is very clear. The mission of the Lyric Theatre and Cultural Arts Center is to preserve, promote, present, and celebrate diverse cultures with special emphasis on African American cultural heritage through artistic presentations of the highest quality, educational programming and outreach, film, and opportunities for in c- community inclusion. And you may note that the name of the center has changed slightly from the Lyric Theatre to the Lyric Theatre and Cultural Arts Center. We collectively made this decision because we felt that it, um, better informed the programming that would be possible at the Lyric. Um, the Lyric is much more than just a theater. The vision for the Lyric is much broader than this, but a vision statement is, "The Lyric will uplift and inspire the community by being a leading American arts and cultural center informed by the African American experience and inspired predominately by the stories of Lexington's African Americans." The programming approach, I believe we've talked about before, but what I wanna do over the next few slides is kind of help us all visualize what it will really look like. Of course, it will be inspired by the mission, and it will be centered around the theme of telling our stories, the stories of African Americans within Lexington, around the country, and throughout the world, and how their stories tie into everyone else's stories, especially as it relates to making Lexington's collective story. The theater, excuse me, the center was designed on purpose with a three-pronged approach, a performance theater with 558 seats, a gallery space, which you have heard referred to in the past as a museum, and also a multipurpose space that will allow for performances and rehearsals, but also allow the community to use it for, um, wedding receptions, family reunions, neighborhood associations. Businesses can use it for, um, meetings or so forth. But the general idea of the concept for programming is that the events that are happening, the exhibits that are happening in the gallery will help inform what happens on the stage in the theater. And I wanna read this really quickly 'cause I think it's important. "By telling the stories of African Americans in this community, we will tell the complete tale of the city. By telling the stories of African Americans in general, we may be able to rediscover the strong sense of community that has kept the stories alive. By experiencing firsthand the programming and educational opportunities envisioned for the Lyric, many more people of all races and ethnicities will be able to say the Lyric is part of their story too." So, what will Lyric programming really look like and how will it work? In your, council members, in your report, I gave you several examples and, and this presentation, I'll give you two. The first is a, a jazz example. Let's imagine that the gallery is featuring one of the traveling exhibits that is available from the Smithsonian or elsewhere, and this exhibit features African Americans, um, musical history of African-Americans alongside of the history of the Lyric Theater, especially with the performers that performed at the Lyric. Uh, the theater space, at the same time, would feature a jazz series, and one of the artists we could invite to perform would be the Preservation Hall Jazz Band out of New Orleans. If you have not heard them before, you certainly need to. If you haven't seen them live, you definitely need to. And if you wanna bor- borrow my personal CD, you can. Um, the multi- the multi-purpose space can be used for musical classes for, um, for adults and for children. It can be used during the day and in evenings. And then a film series on the role of jazz produced by Jazz at the Lincoln Center is also available, and that can be used both for schoolchildren and for adults as well. And that's just a very brief example of how the gallery space works with the theater space. Another example is a dance example. There's a, um, exhibit, a Smithsonian exhibit called The Dancer Within, and it shows lots of different images of, uh, various types of dance, much of them African American-inspired, and there's, uh, text and audio involved with that exhibit. At the same time that exhibit would be in the gallery space, the theater space would be used to feature local and national dancers, including what we see here on the screen. This is a group called the Students of the Asphalt Jungle. They're out of Birmingham, Alabama, and our own Jim Clark actually knows some of them. Um, and then the multipurpose space could be used, of course, for dance classes. And the quote at the bottom here is from the Smithsonian. I think it's important. "Of special interest to museums, university galleries, and performing arts centers, The Dancer Within offers exciting opportunities to reach new visitors, solidify special audiences, and form creative programming partnerships with local arts organizations." That's exactly what we're trying to do here with the Lyric. By having the gallery space, it allows us to broaden what the theater can do, and it allows us to expand our partnership abilities and do more education. Um, we have lots of potential for partners, and I'm gonna have Jim Clark come up here and, and run through these, um, kinda quickly. There's performing arts partners, fine arts partners, local partners such as Lexarts. We really appreciate the, um, time and effort Jim, on behalf of Lexarts, has given this project. Certainly, the universities, Dr. McCorvey has already participated very much. And one area that, um, we have not explored, but we would like to, I didn't write it properly up here, but it's an artist in residence program. Artists can come and locate at the Lyric, and part of the program is that they have to do so many seminars or trainings with, with, um, the community. So now I'll have Jim Clark take over briefly. ... keep doing that. Okay. Um, I think there's lots of opportunities here for partnerships with other nonprofit arts organizations across the country, and the core thinking there is that we don't have to reinvent the wheel. 651 Arts based in Brooklyn is dedicated to performance based on the African diaspora, which interjects an international component into that. It helps us understand how African, um, arts and cultural heritage has informed European culture, Caribbean and North American. Most recently, they did a dance performance that celebrated the work of five, um, choreographers. And when you look at American choreography today, it is, um, heavily influenced by African American choreographers. They gave this performance a few weeks ago in Brooklyn. I spoke to the woman who choreo- who curated the program, and they're very excited about the concept of the Lyric, and would like to come here, um, and perhaps do a performance at the Opera House or the Downtown Arts Center to show what could be possible. The fine arts partnerships are with local and regional groups and national groups, Kentucky Folk Art Center, Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, and the National Center of Afro-American Artists. And currently at the Kentucky Folk Art Center is an incredible exhibition of a Lexington artist, Lavon Williams, and we recently have had discussions with them to bring that exhibit to the Lyric for its opening. Richard Hunt is a sculptor from Chicago who is internationally known and respected. He has been here to UK to lead master classes and workshops, and has been a part of our distinguished speaker series. Ed Hamilton is based in Louisville. He, he was one of the first featured exhibits at Arts Place when I arrived here, and has been ver- very influential in, um, sculpture throughout America. Mildred Howard is a artist based in Oakland, California. She'll be coming here in September to work with us on community-based arts programming, and one of her main concepts that she's been exploring for 20 years is incorporating the stories of communities and individuals into public artwork. And Faith Greengold is another well-known artist, um, out of Brooklyn, who her work also deals with the particular stories of individuals and how that shapes community. The community engagement part is loo- part of this, looks at... ... arts organizations and artists in particular that have woven themselves into a particular community. And of note, the Village of Arts and Humanities in Philadelphia is an incredible model of an entire, it's about four or five block area that, in and of itself, has become artwork. Uh, artist from New York, Dawoud Bey, is very well known for going into communities and creating photography work based on the essence and character of community. And Big Davis is just up the road in Dayton. He'll be coming down in September as well to work with some of our youth and developing projects that help them become engaged in public art and finding their voice within art. I hate to rush through this, but we only have 15 minutes. So some of the issues such as parking and others might be covered in the question portion, but this is probably what you're most interested in is the numbers. On the top here, and this is in your packet as well, I believe, on page 13, um, but the operating expenses for year one total about $447,000. The operating revenue is 315,000. That leaves us with a deficit of about $131,000. So the bottom portion of this chart, you will see how we, um, anticipate making up that revenue and then some. We are needing a direct financial allocation in years one and two of $150,000 from Urban County Government. We are hoping that Urban County Government will take on the cost of occupancy, like we do for many of our government-owned facilities. Then we are looking at memberships, either 25 or $50 for individuals. Presenting sponsorships for all of the shows that we're planning on having. Uh, difference between our business plan and AMS's business plan is we are focusing much more on the Lyric-presenting shows, as opposed to relying on people renting our facility, especially in the beginning years. So we will be looking to corporate partners to present a show, much like they do for the opera house for the Broadway series. In year one, we are not anticipating any grants. Based on expert opinions from the arts community, there are no, uh, or little agencies that will give grants in the first year to a beginning organization. And then we think that we can raise $100,000 in the first year, and there may be some possible naming opportunities from, for corporations for the gallery and other components. And that leaves us with a surplus of $470,000. That seems really high, but if you think about it, we may, we may not be able to reach all of our assumptions. But it does give us some realistic padding to break even at least, and hopefully have some more for the end. The next important thing- You have about 30 mini- seconds. Thirty seconds. This is the cost. The cost of construction, $5.5 million, plus all of the other things that are associated with construction. You will see in the first column, it equals 6 million. That's what we're asking in, asking to be bonded. The next column under other costs include the additional equipment and furnishings that aren't included in the bond, and parking needs. We believe we can make up that $225,000 other needs with the remaining balance we have from the Lyric Fund and assuming that we only use half of construction contingency. Um, and that makes a total project from 1993 of $7.2 million. Coun- Councilmember Meyers. Thank you, Mayor. I move that we give them another five to seven minutes to finish up their presentation. Second. We have a motion and second to suspend the rules for purposes of allowing five additional minutes for the presentation. Any discussion? All in favor of suspending the rules for five additional minutes, please indicate, uh, by saying "aye." Opposed, "no." Motion carries. I'll be happy to go back to those numbers during the questions. I'm sure there will be. I wanna keep moving though. The Lyric board, and this is just a suggestion, but what we have suggested is a 15-member board appointed initially by the mayor, um, with staggered terms, and there will sli- certainly need to be professional expertise and community involvement on this. We'll be looking for people that, um, have strong financial strengths, creative fundraising strengths, legal, accounting, marketing, and then the community at large. We will then create a, immediately a 501(c)(3) organization that will assume the management of the Lyric Theatre, and from then on, the board will be appointed by the board itself. This is much like how Partners for Youth was developed under Mayor Miller as a 501(c)(3). There will also be the opportunity for Friends of the Lyric, much like friends of any other organization you might be aware of, the farmers market. In order to be a friend, you would donate, we're suggesting, $25, and that, those people will help, be worker bees, if you will, help with receptions, help work, um, the concession stands if needed, help, uh, drive artists around or pick 'em up at the airport. But it's a way of getting people involved who may not be on the official board. Parking is a very big deal, I know. Uh, we've heard... Mr. Lane say many times, "For a facility this size, we need 150 parking spots." And guess what? We actually agree with him. We have, uh, spoken with some parking experts and for a 550-seat theater, they estimated 150 parking spots. So we worked very hard to come up with these spots. Um, I'm gonna put up a board really fast. Where's my sh- my assistant has no longer come here. If you can, this one on the end, and just put it on the easel. Let me orient everyone. This is l- looking north. There's an easel on the bottom. The green is the Lyric Theatre. The green with slash marks is, uh, the expansion. Directly north, on, um, Elm Tree, the yellow is a dedicated Lyric lot that will provide approximately 20 spots. If you move, uh, west on 3rd Street, going towards the fire station, you'll see another yellow lot. That's also owned by Urban County co- uh, government. It was used by the Health Department, and that will yield about 40 spots. If you see the purple shaded areas, that is owned... We own part of it, but it's really owned, most of it, by the University of Kentucky, um, Health Clinic. And that's a shared-use spot, uh, resulting i- in ab- about 46 more spots. And then if you look at the red lines running up and down between 3rd Street and 4th Street, as you know, Elm Tree has two lanes running both ways, and I met with traffic engineering and we collectively agreed that we have two options. We can do evening off-peak parking on the farthest lanes, um, that would be 4:30 on and on weekends. That's called off-peak parking. Or, because the volume of traffic is so low in that area, we could actually take away a lane permanently, keep a bike lane there, and have permanent parking along that area. That would result in 50 parking spots. We cannot say that it's dedicated to the Lyric 'cause it's street parking, but certainly with what's around there, there's not much to go to other than homes. It would definitely be used by the Lyric. There's also street parking along, um, 3rd Street, another eight spots there. Collectively, that's a little over 150 spots. If you move southward and see the blue areas, that's so- those are some areas that were under conversations with the owners and leasers to see if we can use those spots as well. May expand to a valet service if people don't wanna walk that far, and there's certainly, uh, more on-street parking. And that completes my presentation. I also wanna note that we do have Susan Hill here from Tate Hill Jacobs if there's any questions about the design or construction, um, and I'm happy to go back to any of the points I made, 'cause I'm sure I forgot to make many of them. Thank you. Um, Council Member Beard? Thank you, Mayor. Ms. Sheay, I know you're behind there. You can't hide. When I start to forget something. If you remember, uh, the last time we visited, the question of costs, there was a $2,900,000 number, and, um, some discussion about the complete fitting-out of, uh, the Lyric Theatre, and the, the museum, and, and the community center ar- area with emphasis on things like sound boards and, uh, spotlights and movie theater cameras and, and s- some of the heavier, uh, cost items. And I had suggested that we get bids so we would actually know what those numbers were. Now, I don't know whether that has happened or not, but, um, is there a number in there that represents all that? I, uh, it does- it doesn't look like there is, but maybe that'll happen. Well, there is. Um, several of the components for equipment were included in the actual bid, $5.5 million. Um, there is some lighting and some sound. Let me tell you what's included in that. Um, there's lighting instruments, drapes and rigging, and various other components in the 5.5 number. The other costs are reflected on the bottom of where it says capital costs. It says equipment and furnishings, 80,000, and then the remainder is equipment and furnishings not included in the bo- in the bond, 50,000, and then community network, 20,000. So these are all very good numbers. There's one that, the- really the only major component of equipment that the theater would need to operate is a, um, digital projector. That's not included in the bid, and we have a price for that, and it's about $25,000. Is that correct? Yes. That's correct. The other components of equipment are necessities, but they're the tables, the desks, the, um, filing cabinets, the things that we can either... ... find here from, um, s- our surplus or find it elsewhere at better prices. Uh, well, that's a backward leap from two mi- I meant $2,900,000, I- Well, the, that's why I really regret that that sheet was circulated around, because it was an estimate that was just an estimate. These are the hard numbers we have now. We've got a hard number for construction. We know what our other costs are, the best we can. And we know how much we've spent to date. Right. So we're looking at a total, total from 1993 project of 7.2 million, not the 900 that was once envisioned. So that's... You said 900, and you mean 9 million. 9 million. Nine million. Numbers. Na- na- What? I- imp- important numbers. Very important numbers. Yes. Okay, um- I c- I can say I re- I recall from that May 12th evening, one of the reasons why some of the numbers were high is because, uh, we had a lot of things being counted almost twice. There were land purchases in that number that had already been encumbered, and I can't remember all the details, but we've scrubbed the numbers. We're very confident with what we're presenting here in terms of the bid numbers, construction contingency, and the fees, and the estimates for, um, parking and elsewhere. And then we know how much we've spent to date. Th- there will be no other personnel costs other than the interim programming director? There will be other personnel costs, and this is just in our, um, capital number. The personnel cost will be in our operating. On annual basis, we are estimating 146,000. That is less than what AMS suggested, and that is because we are, um, hoping our econo- I mean, excuse me, our e- executive director will be able to undertake the development and marketing role, at least initially. And we're also going to be sharing employees with Lexarts, in particular, their technical director. We pay part-time, and the Lexarts folks would pay part-time. And- And, and let me, let me say again why the temporary project manager is 7,600. Um, Charlie Milward, who everyone knows, has graciously, um, been willing to serve as our project manager for the next several months. Under our general services department, we are anticipating hiring a new administrative officer, hopefully by the end of August or September, and that person, through transition with Charlie, would then, um, undertake the project management for the rest of the period, be paid for by Irvin County Government, and will not cost the project any additional dollars. And you feel confident about the, uh, the revenue side? Th- the grants, the 100,000 here and the 100,000 there, that, uh, the three 100,000 numbers, I guess? There was certainly some debate on the, uh, work group about whether these numbers were too low. Some people thought they were too high. Some people thought they were too low. I felt that with, f- under presenting sponsorships, for example, we are shooting to have 24 Lyric presentations throughout the calendar year. That's two a month. So what I was basing it on is assuming we could get corporations to put up $10,000 apiece, and that's for only 10 shows. So if we were able to get them to break it down into s- if they needed to break it down into smaller, um, sponsorships, I definitely think that is doable. Under the general fundraising, as Jim Clark mentioned, he had an excellent idea that throughout this coming year, while we're under construction, we have what we will call a Lyric Presents series, and we will partner with evil- either the downtown art center or opera house or any other performing arts facility and bring in big artist that we can, whether they're through relationships we already have, like Jim Clark has or others, and promote those to the entire community to give examples of what The Lyric will have. And then all, or certainly a large percentage of the proceeds, will go to benefit The Lyric and will go into that fundraising pot of money. Hm. And one last question. The naming opportunities, I am hoping that included in that is not to be able to tag something over in, in front of The Lyric. Uh, that would be up to the board and the executive director at some point. But I think we would all probably advise against that, unless someone came in and wanted to endow us for, you know, $50 million, we might reconsider, but, but I'm thinking more along the lines of the gallery space, which is gonna have a heavy educational component. We've got it fixed up now where it'll have various video screens, interactive capabilities. We think, in talking with some of the arts experts, that this will really help us get, um, national funders to give to The Lyric Theater because of our programming, artistic and educational combinations. And I, and I think we've heard from many organizations, corporations in this community who've talked about wanting to retain, recruit and retain minorities, minority employees. And I think that there will be a definite interest from many in wanting to have their name associated with this project. Okay. Thank you very much. Very good presentation, Shay. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, Mayor. Thank you. Council Member Stinnet. Thank you, Mayor. Shay, thank you for, uh, coming before us today and sharing the work group. And thank you for all the members who took time out to, uh, to bring this to us 'cause it was a lot of work and, uh, we appreciate your timeliness in getting this bid to us. One, I have a couple questions on your numbers. Uh, one glaring thing that stands out is, or is missing is what is the bond payment that LFUCG will be required to make, um, based on the 6 million? Is it in there? I don't have it in here. Um, that would be an annual- ... expense. Right, for too many years. I believe it was estimated to be 490,000. Does that ring any bells to anybody? Yes. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Bill O'Mara is coming up here. Sorry, they were talking to me. The question is? Six million, what would that service be? About 450,000 a year. Better news. 450, not 490. So in addition to your operating numbers of about 300,000 the first year from LFUCG in form of a subsidy, we're gonna talk about an additional $450,000 total for first year cost once we get the facility open from LFUCG's budget, correct? That's correct. Just like many, actually all of our capital-funded buildings. Yes. Okay. So since this is a capital-funded building, are we not going to bond the entire $7.2 million? Well, I think this, I might need some help from, um, Mary Pfister on this. To give some perspective, and again, this is a long project. This is much... This is unlike many of our projects we've done. But the sources of the original money came from three sources. One was $750,000 back in, I believe, 1990 or '93. That was when Urban County government had a whole lot of money and we paid for a whole lot of projects out of cash. And a lot of the projects that were on the memorandum of understanding, um, were all the, the government gave each of those projects money, including $4 million to the Downtown Arts Center that we paid for with cash back in 2003, believe it or not. Uh, the Lyric got 750,000 in a pot. The other two sources were bonded already. Right. 250 from a public facilities corporation revenue bond and 250 from a neighborhood development bond. So I'm unclear, first of all, whether or not we can rebond that 500,000 again. And then there's some debate as to whether or not we can go back and bond funds that were already spent prior to a reimbursement resolution. And Bill is coming up here. See you then. I talked to bond counsel and we have a 60-day window. The reimbursement resolution has to be within 60 days before the project is started. So we're too late to do a reimbursement resolution for that 750 that was spent back in 2004. It wasn't spent 2004. It was like years before that. Well, more than 60 days ago. I was gonna say, a long time ago. Yeah. We, as far as the other existing bonds, we would look at those as any others, whether it's, it makes sense to refinance or not. That's what I was gonna ask you. Where are we at? Do we have any idea where we're at on existing bonds? How many years we've paid into them and... I do not know the details of those. I have talked to, uh, financial advisors as to which bonds that we have outstanding that might be candidates that would make sense to reissue, whether they were included in that bond issue. I don't know the answer to that. And Bill, are we still looking at if we bond this $6 million, are we looking at waiting till, uh, January of 2010 to even contemplate bonding the money? Well, that was our original- Right. ... plan. We need to see how much everybody wants us to spend between then and now. So we can stay on that. So we may not have enough money. The point is we may not have enough money in this year's budget to cash flow that until... We're doing that analysis between now and, and September. But, but you don't look very, uh, optimistic in terms of... Are you saying we may move that- I can prove my optimistic case on. We may move that up? I'm just trying to figure out the impact on our general fund. I don't know the answer. We have intended not for this to be a 2010 budget impact. And so we're assessing that as we look at revenues coming in and the commitments that the 2010 budget has. So it'd be safe to say we're on a month-to-month decision on this. We may have to bond it sooner? But it's not this, it's the total bond package. Right. We're trying to do the 20, the 2009, this October, we're trying to cash flow the 2010 CIP into next fiscal year. That's the question that's on us, whether we can afford to do that. Well, I mean, so you're lumping this in with every other bond. There's no opportunity to go ahead and bond this separately to get the project moving so we can get it done by our deadline? That is an option. We just need to see whether that's the best option or not. Okay. I'm sure we'll have this discussion again. Thank you. Thank you, Mayor. Council Member Martin. Thank you, Mayor. Thanks to Shay and the work group who worked so hard for so long to put this together. Um, I have a question for Dr. Everett McCorvey, and I slipped back to make sure I wasn't springing anything on Dr. McCorvey. Dr. McCorvey is a professor at UK School of Music who is in large part responsible for the Grand Night for Singing and the Our Lincoln program and many, many other Metropolitan Opera auditions and things. He is a one-man walking arts community. So I... ... I wanted to, uh, uh, uh, to, to talk to him a little bit. Uh, Dr. McCorvey, w- would you mind telling us what you think that the Lyric Theater... W- the impact it'll have on the Lexington arts and music scene, but also the national Lex- um, th- the national scene? Well, I think that the, um, the most important impact it, that it will have is that it will bring a pride to the, uh, Lexington community that's been waiting on this project for quite a long time. And, uh, I think that it has the opportunity to be the, a cultural center, uh, that the community could take pride in. Uh, not only celebrating African American culture, but celebrating all cultures. And, um, I have come to be a, involved in the project, um, late as well, um, but I must say that I've, I, I've become very excited about the project because of the community that it could serve and the purpose that it could serve within, um, in the arts community. And especially, w- w- w- we don't have a place now that if we, uh, if we wanna concentrate on, uh, and celebrate African American culture, we don't have a, a, a place really that we can bring, um, those different art forms to, um, Lexington, and also a place that is dedicated to trying to find those different art forms and bring them to Lexington to celebrate. And so I think that's what it's gonna, that's the role that it'll play. So d- do you think this will help us connect to the national scene and the international scene as well? Well, it'll help us connect in that we will have a, uh, uh, a venue where these art forms can travel. I mean, they, they will go to different places around the country that have, uh, African American centers, and I think that Lexington will now be one of those places that those, um, types of, of, um, presentations can consider. Uh, I'm gonna put you on the spot a little bit here. D- Can we pull this off? Well, I think it's a, it's g- it's gotta be a community effort. Uh, I think that, um, it has to have a way that it can sustain itself over a period of time, and I think that getting the right people involved, um, and especially if the businesses and community, uh, come on board and support it, I think that... I was one of the ones that thought that the number that Shay put together in terms of the sponsorships was probably a little low. I think that w- with the commun- with the businesses that we have in the community, if they, uh, see this as, uh, a worthwhile project, that they will hopefully come in and, uh, support it. And I think we have to have something for our African American community, and our, uh, especially people who, uh, who enjoy the arts and enjoy, enjoy having an arts scene. The African American community wants a place that they can also be proud of, that is theirs, and that, uh, they see as a place that they can bring, um, uh, different types of arts events in. I was in Louisville a few months ago to hear the Alvin Ailey Dance Theater, and I was sitting there, and it was, uh, probably my first meeting, uh, after the, uh, the, the, the workforce started, and, um, and I was sitting there envisioning not the Alvin Ailey Theater, 'cause we don't have a big enough space, but Alvin Ailey Two could come to the Lyric and present a performance there. Or many of us had the opportunity a few months ago to attend the Wynton Marsalis concert that was at Single Terrace Center, and it would be great to have a place like that, um, that we could bring artists of that, um, statue into a place and celebrate, um, the, the Lyric Center. So it, it's gonna be a, it'll be a challenge for everyone, but I think it's an investment well worth, uh, making. Well, Dr. McCorvey, thank you, Len, for letting me, putting you on the spot. Uh, Dr. McCorvey's involvement in it I think is very important. He, uh... I, I was just blown away by Gloria and I for singing that we would have something a- as internationally, uh, uh, professional and, uh, it w- would be, uh, a, a success anywhere in the world, and to have that amount of expertise and talent here in Lexington's amazing and his involvement in the Lyric Theater I think is very, very important and, and I appreciate it. Thank you, sir. Well, thank you. Thank you, your grace. Thank you, Ma'am. Council member Court. Thank you, Mayor. Thank you so much, Shay, and to all the work group who, uh, took time to work on this. I have just a couple, um, personnel questions. On the summary pro forma page, um, I believe I heard you say this represents year one. I'll let you get to the page first. Ours doesn't have a page number on it, so I... This is essentially year one and two because of the- Okay. ... $150,000, um, subsidy from urban county government. But, uh, on, in your packet, the Lyric packet, on page 13 is the pro forma, and somewhere in here, page 18 is the staffing. It has the staffing. I apologize. I don't have that, so I'm not looking at it. Okay. Um, but I heard you say that, um, under personnel that the Lyric would share a technical director with Lexarts. Correct. Is that currently, and Jim, this may be a question for you, a full time position at Lexarts? No. Is it -- is it a position at all? Yes, um, at the Downtown Art Center, we have a part-time, um, 50%, um- Okay. ... and this gives us a real opportunity to share that expense and have somebody who could work full-time and operate between the two facilities. They would be working with younger talent, perhaps students from UK or Transy in the theater departments, who would be able to carry on when they're working at a different facility. So we could use it as internship training, which is another opportunity that this project brings, is a way to provide internships and residencies for students at UK and Transy. I think that's a great idea to share a position like that. And is there, um, a... When we talked about this quite a while ago, one of my concerns was, uh, the curator for the museum. What's the thinking about that? It- Will that be shared with someone, or contracted, or where is that? It would be a combination. We would not have a full-time curator hired by, or b- I mean, by the Lyric. Uh, many of the exhibits that will come through will be rotating. The instructions are there of what you need to do. Um, what we will do is either hire a consultant or con- contract with someone for that particular exhibit, or work in partnership with the University of Kentucky or an- another organization for that particular exhibit. Okay. And then for any permanent exhibit we may have, that will fall under the, uh, responsibility of the executive director. Okay. So this 146,330, it represents several positions. Now, are you imagining all of these will be in place immediately since this is year one and two, or is there any kind of a phase-in- Well, the executive- ... for the personnel? ... director would have to be hired immediately. Um, the technical director, which is important to understand the components and what, of the facility and what it's capable of, that will be a, probably a logical second step in partnering with Lexarts. The other components are the event services manager, and these are all part-time or hourly, and then the front-of-house manager, those are the people who do the sound boards, um, and then the box office staff and administrative staff, that will be combined. Those people could be hired as funds become available. Mm-hmm. Um, we'd like to have as many people hired as early as possible so we can get the programming up and running as soon as possible as well. Right, right. What we have envisioned for this coming year is to use some of the available fund balance from the Lyric to hire a consultant, if you will, to start helping us, and when I say us, I also mean the board, once it's up in place, get, start contacting and reaching out to the, um, performers that may come and perform or exhibit their work, and then transit- transition into, while we're doing the search for the executive director, go ahead and have someone up and running. And we have that number reflected here as the interim programming director. Okay. Um, one kind of general question. Um, is this plan something that was, uh, pretty much agreed to by the entire work group? I'm presuming it is. Well- Has the support of everyone? ... nobody said, "Don't send this to the council." Okay. But I will tell you that Ed Lane was certainly a, um, devil's advocate on purpose, and we appreciate that, asking the tough questions, um, about everything, and we really do appreciate that 'cause it made us think harder. But there were no objections to sending this to the council. So it's not like the Supreme Court where we'll have a minority report coming. I, I hope we will not. To say- There w- there was conversation, I will say this, there was conversation about, "Are we ready to come forward to the council?" Okay. "Do we need more information about this or that?" The answer's always going to be yes, we need more information. Mm-hmm. But the reality is we have bids in for construction. We have a 60-day window from the time we open those bids- Mm-hmm. ... to begin, or else we lose those numbers. I do not think that we can come back to you with any better information than we have right now that will help make, a- allow you all to make a decision any differently than you would today. So we felt now was the time, given our best effort. Okay. Very good. That's fair enough. I'm very excited about this, that we keep taking steps forward, and I appreciate all the hard work on everybody's part. Thanks. So thank you. Council member Lawless. Um, I'm very excited about this. I'm familiar with several of the artists and performers that you mentioned in here, and it's really, really exciting, and I hope this turns out to be just one of the most wonderful things that has ever come to Lexington and to Kentucky, and I think it has that potential. Um- My only comment about it is, I hope that there will be, uh, that you will allow for ample salary to get an extraordinary executive director who knows how to write grants and knows business. And that's the last place I think s- you need to skimp. So, uh, that being said, just, I hope that you will, you know, not be- I was getting ready to make an inappropriate joke about executive director salaries and I decided that wouldn't be a good thing. Um, this- I don't think we need that high. I will say- But maybe if they had a jet too, it would work. I will say, um, Council Member Lawless, we certainly agree with you and in, in consultation with, um, Everett and Jim, they felt that a $50,000 s- base salary and, and then with the benefits, was a pretty competitive salary for the Lexington, um, area in particular. Um, and they could speak more about that. You know, if eventually we find that we're not able to hire someone at that salary, the board certainly has the authority to up that salary, but we feel like a 50,000... Actually we were down at a 40,000 area and we bumped it up to 50,000. Yeah, I, I really think, uh, having been an executive director myself, it's wise to be, not to be, um, penny wise and pound foolish. Right. So that's my, you know, get good personnel in there- Right. ... and, um, yeah, probably not 200 or $300,000. Right. Thank you very much and it's a wonderful presentation and I can't wait for it to be finished. Council Member Lane. Thank you, Mayor. Uh, just call me the devil's advocate today. Uh, first I'd like to say that I think Shay has done a really good job on this. Uh, there's a lot of historical information that had to be reviewed and I, I attended, I think, almost all the meetings except when I was on a trip and I was out of town one week. And, um, you know, Jim Clark and Everett McCorvey, Juanita Peterson particular, uh, put a lot of effort into the, uh, meetings and putting the information together and I feel that a great deal of progress has been made. And so, that's very encouraging to me. Um, but at the same time, since I'm on the council and I do, um, feel that I needed to point out a few things that I have concerns about to sort of tie in with what we're doing here today and not necessarily for any other reason than just to raise the awareness of this, these issues. And s- just some suggestions that maybe it will be constructive and help make this project even better and maybe move along a lot more f- uh, quickly. Um, the f- the first thing I wanted to touch on, um, was the cost. And I think this is just an area that needs to be aired out, but I, I believe there was the impression that most council members that our total investment would be six million dollars and some issues have come up where there was overdulation funding early on or what have you, that would not be eligible to be, uh, reimbursed in the, in the bond that's coming up. But we are gonna be at 7.25 million approximately when you add up all the money we've invested. Um, the other concern that I have is I w- I think it would be very, very helpful if we could go ahead immediately and find out who's gonna serve on the board because that is the management. Those are the, the folks that are gonna put their arms around a project and make decisions on where to go, what needs to be done and I think it's also an indicator of the amount of support from the community that will be supporting the Lyric and it's something that needs to be done right away. I would have preferred had we brought in these 15 people have volunteered to serve on the board and the mayor could then nominate them and the council could have approved them and we would have the board in place because I think this is absolutely critical. And I would suggest to people that if you were a business and you came to the bank and you said, "I want to borrow six million." We're gonna name our board later and our manager later and you don't know who's gonna be running the show, yet we're still asking to fund this. I think that's something that needs to be done immediately. Um, the other, uh, concern that I have is we have made a lot of, uh, progress on the parking, but I feel that m- another issue is we should try to get letters of intent from the people that own property to say we could park on it in the evenings for free or whatever fee and to also look at whatever costs may be incurred by the Lyric in order to get additional parking. Uh, I know you've got a small amount in the budget, but until we had some drawings and estimates of cost, I don't know that we can totally rely on those numbers as being accurate. Uh, another area that I would like to see a bit more emphasis on is that in our meetings, uh, a couple of ideas came up about how maybe to improve the theater to give it a little bit more versatility, to be more adaptable to different types of performances and, uh, and I want to thank Everett McCorvey, uh, in particular for his input and Jim Clark's input too, because they are the experts in these areas. And I, before we pull the trigger and go onto construction on this, I would like to know that the people involved in the arts that are familiar with putting the performances on and know what the requirements are, you know, at least have a final review and say so on the design issue. Uh, let's see if there's any other point I would like to make here. Um, I think those are the, the key components, but I, I would like, again, not to congratulate myself, but to thank the other members of the committee 'cause I think y'all have worked diligently and I see this has moved forward substantially and I'm very encouraged by that. Thank you. I- And the issue of the management and the board I think should be of the highest priority and it needs to be addressed immediately. Thank you very much, Mayor. Thank you. Council Member Meyers. Thank you, Mayor. I -- I would like to yield. It looked like Shay was getting ready to respond to something. I -- if you want to do that, that's fine. I was just quickly gonna say that Dr. McCorvey and Susan Hill from Tate Hill Jacobs have had a meeting and discussed the design and some potential, um, adjustments that might be possible that won't have a major impact on the -- on the numbers. Am I accurate with that? Okay. Anything else? Okay. That's it. Thank -- thank you, ma'am. Um, I guess I... My first question is... This is on the docket for second reading Thursday. When we... Should we pass that, to go back to Councilman... Member Lane's questions about the board and the director. In passing that, do we... Are you asking us to also pass this document sort of as a structure for how the board's gonna be set up or is that still something that's... That's up to the council on what they would like to do. This is our recommendation and we're... We will move for... The administration will move forward with putting together a 15-member board to bring back to the council as soon as possible. Okay. But- And I... And I wanna see it move forward Thursday. The reason I ask that question was 'cause I'm trying to understand if by passing that Thursday, do we lock ourselves into the way that this is set up or is- No. And in fact, if you... In the beginning of it, it, it, it clearly states that this is just a template for the board and the executive director to use as our... As the community, the urban county government, and the various task forces best effort with the expertise we have to say, "Here's what we have in mind, now make it better," basically. Okay. Um, I just have a couple concerns with respect to the board. One, and I don't know if this is the time to do it or if... Is, is that document gonna come to us later to approve the management structure of the... Of the, of the center. I guess it's... Because if it is gonna come later, then I can adjust these things later. Well, our... What we would like is for the council to approve the contract for construction on Thursday. And whether or not the council approves a board at that time or you wait until the first meeting back, that's up to you all. And, you know, one of the things that I'm reluctant to do is move really fast to put a board together. I completely understand what Councilmember Lane is talking about, needing a board in place quickly, but if there's input from the council that you don't like the way we proposed it and then we bring it forward and so then you don't pass, you know, what, what position does that put us in, basically? I would prefer to not appoint the board until we come back from break, but if that's gonna put the construction up in the air, then we'll appoint a board tomorrow. No, no. I'm, I'm with you 100%. I don't wanna put the board in place today or tomorrow. I can wait until we get back. M-my questions are more about some of the structure that's in here and whether or not by passing that Thursday, we lock ourselves into that structure. Are you talking about the board structure? Right, and just some of the... I, I have concerns. One, I think I'd like to see term limits on the... My concern is once the... Once the mayor's no longer appointing to the board, how things really work. Yeah. The, um, the 501(c)(3) would have to pass their own bylaws and, you know, we could strongly recommend that they have term limits. But what this report is, is, is simply a, um, response to the request by Councilmember Lane, Councilmember DeCamp, and others along the way to have a business plan in place before they would allow construction to move forward. So there is no... Um, no one is asking for this plan to be adopted or codified or anything like that, but rather, it was a, um, effort to make the council and the community- Sure. ... more comfortable with the project. I'm c- I'm comfortable with the project. No doubt about that. So it sounds like we're not codifying this structure at this time, so I'm good to go, um, and we'll just talk about my questions later on. Okay. Thank you. Thanks. Vice Mayor Gray. Thank you, Mayor. Um, I too will share the same sentiments that others have already expressed in terms of the thanks to the committee, Juanita, to your group, Shay for the heavy lifting here, Councilmember James for the passion that you've brought to this. You know, sometimes in the... In the course of these, um, in the course of these deliberations, I suspect that we've all learned that, um, often that we need to give the soufflé time to rise and sometimes it takes a little while. And that in the course of doing that, we examine some of the issues more carefully, we confirm the numbers, and that relieves some of the anxiety and allows us to then translate the, the real meaning and the spirit of a project like this, the passion of it at the pro- at the right time, uh, in a really passionate way, in an inspired way, and that seems to be where we are. And for that, I wanna thank all of you all who have worked so hard with such a high level of commitment to the project. Um, there was a little sidebar conversation between Councilmembers Gorton and, um, Ehlinger and I which I think Councilmember Myers was just really representing in terms of the structure and composition, in terms of the number of board members, and I think that's what we... What we were hearing is that that can be worked through as we continue downstream, right? I do not object to that. All right. Thank you, Mayor. Council member Lane. Yeah. Just as a, uh, follow-up thought, I think, uh, if we're going to vote on this on the next council meeting, I think it would be helpful if you could have the, you know, the bond debt calculated for the 20-year period, and we can see what the debt service for the 20-year period would be and then, uh, perhaps have some kind of projected estimate of what the, uh, operating cost and the supporting cost that you're proposing ... Right. ... the Lyric and if there's no objection, I thought now might be an appropriate time. Um, Griffin Van Meter, Van Meter, if you could, uh, step to the podium. You'll have three minutes. I would just like to use my three minutes to voice my support, uh, for the Lyric Theater. Um, I'm a resident of the area, a business owner in the area that has, um, a lot of money invested in the area, a lot of time, and I think with the public, this is a great opportunity for the, for a public-private partnership for you guys, for the city to invest in the area. And I think what will happen is a huge catalyst in terms of economic development, revitalization for this 3rd Street corridor, East End, central sector. Um, one business that I'm a partner in is Al's Bar, which is on the corner of Lime and Six. And it's a huge success. Uh, there's zero parking, but people come to it day in and day out. Some of the council members have come to it. And it's served as a economic catalyst for people to move down into the area, to get exposed to the area, for people to g- buy houses in the area. And I think the Lyric, um, would be like Al's Bar tenfold in terms of, of economics for the area and revitalization. And I think if the city is serious about wanting to invest in people and to see this, um, see Lexington transform into the city that we all want it to be, this is, uh, the opportunity for it. This is, this is the starting point and w- it'll be a home run, I think. And I think that's s- through the support here, through the work that's done, uh, by this committee to get this thing pushed forward, and I hope on Thursday night, you guys will, um, see that this is a huge, huge opportunity for this area, for this city, uh, for our people. It's not, it's not just an African American thing. It's, it's really, um, it's a whole city thing. It's a Lexington thing. And it's, um, it, it really gives us, um, something to, to embrace and something that we can say is, is our legacy and something to hold onto. So, um, vote yes on Thursday night. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Van Meter. Any other member of the council have any questions or comments? Well, let me, uh, add my own words of appreciation to many of you who are here with regard to the, to the Lyric. Um, I think your presence speaks volumes and, uh, Juanita and several of you, you've, you've done yeoman's work for a long, long time and I'm very appreciative of the effort that you and the other members of the taskforce have, uh, put in to the project to get us where we are today. I gotta say a special word of thanks to Shay Raybold for her efforts, because she has, uh, worked very diligently to pull all of this together and, uh, she's done it with a great deal of passion, which I appreciate. So thank you. And, uh, if there's nothing further, we'll move on to our next presentation. Thank you very much for being here today. Mr. Tate, if you'll, uh, come forward and visit with us about the, um, downtown master plan. Third time today for you. Third time today for you to get with me. Good afternoon. Appreciate you having me here today. And I'm gonna give you a update in terms of the downtown master plan. Woop. Yeah, I told you. All righty. I think you have this handout in, in your pocket as well. And unfortunately, I believe it's in black and white. But the first recommendation they had was to change land use. And one of the things that, um, for some of you all who were at our meeting this morning, which was the joint meeting between the Planning Commission and the council, uh, as Chris King and I were indicating at that point, this is a process that's gonna be ongoing in, in terms of what we need to do to create new categories that allow different types of uses in the downtown area. And to date, we have been quite successful in creating quite a few new, uh, categories for land use and for zoning. It's also allowed us to make some changes within our ordinance in terms of the sign ordinance, how it works downtown. And the Planning Commission has, uh, approved some measures that will be becoming before you, that were a result of the Enfield Redevelopment Report, that allows some flexibility within, not just the downtown area, but the areas surrounding downtown as well. So, as I said, we, we see this recommendation, one, that's gonna be ongoing. It will not come to an end at any time because we wanna be able to cr- continue that flexibility and that creativity to allow downtown to develop in the type of downtown that we all want. Um, the next one we had was to establish form-based guidelines. Once again, not to repeat, but this morning you saw a presentation that Chris King did on form-based guidelines, what it is, how it can be established, the different types of, uh, form-based guidelines you could have. So I think we've taken the first step, uh, this morning, by talking about what these guidelines could be, where they could be, and the type of information that could be within the guidelines themselves. So, uh, s- once again, I see this as one, as we are now in the process of reviewing to determine, uh, through the Planning Commission, through the council, and through the DDA, if we do de- need to move forward with this recommendation. Uh, convert all one-way streets to two-way. Wanna report that on, uh, as a result of Streetscape, you all asked us to go back and look at the one-way versus two-way process. We came back to you all on April 28th with a process as to, in terms of how the one-way streets would be converted into two-way. Uh, at that meeting you did, uh, review, ask questions, and, uh, told us to move forward with that, this process. So we are doing it as we speak with the Short and 2nd Street, and we'll be coming back to you with the help of Mike Webb and his staff in terms of the 2nd and Short Street conversion. Rec- uh, recommendation four, increase residential development. Uh, with the economy the way it is, it's, it's kinda hard to do this one right now, but we're still moving forward. Over the last three years, uh, an additional 900 units, residential units, have been produced in the downtown area. That does not include what is done through single family detached homes, as they do rehabs. Uh, but this will be a continuing process. Last week, you heard a presentation from George Akhorian in terms of this mixed-use project on Angliana and South Broadway, where he will have a component of residential comp- uh, residential units as well. So this is an ongoing goal as well, or recommendation. Uh, fifth recommendation was to establish a parking authority. We were fortunate, and we were able to do that, uh, some time ago. Uh, you all have had the experience of working with them. Uh, they've made quite a few recommendations, quite a few changes. They've kinda brought the city back into the 21st century, uh, by adding different, uh, methods for parking meters to be everything from solar powered, uh, parking stations to pay-by-phone. So, in the future, you'll be able to pay your parking meter by phone call, and that will be very, very convenient for a lot of people who are in a meeting who know their meter's about ready to stop and they need to add some time on that. So the parking authority has been created and is underway. Recommendation six is maximize density, uh, in vacant sites. We are averaging about 50 units per acre in the downtown area versus the 3.75 units per acre in the suburbs. Uh, so we see this recommendation, once again, being something that will continue on and, uh, be, uh, encouraged throughout our development of the downtown area. Recommendation seven, celebrate the urban entrances. Uh, this is one we're starting the process on. Streetscape Plan, when it was done, it did address some key areas where we needed to start looking at this, in terms of letting people know when they're into the urban core of our downtown area. Uh, Jim Clark, uh, Jim Clark's not here, but Jim Clark ha- has been working with, uh, Lexar, with the DDA, in terms of some ideas of what we can do. And I think on the Streetscape Plan you'll see, uh, quite a few, uh, changes that will be addressed next year as we moved forwards on the implementation. Recommendation eight, investig- a- investigate in pedestrian network. Once again, back to streetscape. This is one that you, as the council, felt it was, um, very important that we move forward. So you all are ones who, uh, approved the, um, RFP to allow us to do the Streetscape Plan. Uh, and we are now in the process of, uh, starting on phase one, as some of you all are aware of. And, uh, this is a long-term process that will work. But what it does, it starts adding methods to connect... ... neighborhoods to downtown, downtown to the university, downtown to Transylvania, uh, and to other, uh, entities as, that surround the downtown area. So, recommendation eight is underway as we speak. Uh, recommendation nine, integrate Rupp Arena into the urban fabric. Uh, this process is one that is under investigation, uh, with, uh, the Lexington Center Board, in terms of, how does a new arena fit within the area? And also reflects another recommendation I'll get to in a minute that, uh, deals with the Cock Street parking lot as well. Uh, develop Vine Street, back again to streetscape plan. Uh, KKG has developed some, uh, corridor along Vine Street that does not reflect this pattern here, but does reflect a pattern that brings pedestrian movement, bike traffic. It shrinks the street as public art into the Vine Street corridor. So once again, through the streetscape plan, we're working on recommendation number 10. Recommendation 11 is to create the amphitheater. Well, Lexington Center looks like they're taking another step farther by looking at all of the Cock Street parking lot now. As you saw in the paper a couple of weeks ago, Mr. Korman is interested in integrating into the Cock Street parking area as well. And I believe Lexington Center is looking at doing a small area plan for the entire Cock Street area. To me, that is extremely important because what that does, it provides that tie between Lexington Center, Manchester Street, the Town Branch Trail, other activities that are occurring in that area. So, this is a very important, uh, recommendation, and we're, and excited and encouraged that the, uh, Lexington Center Board is moving forward with this. Create a community center, uh, museum site. This kinda reflects just what you just heard. Uh, when this master plan was being developed, uh, at the time, it was George Brown who was the councilperson. He had enabled us, many meetings to go down into the East End neighborhood. And we were absolutely amazed with the history that was in that neighborhood that reflects not just the horse industry, but the neighborhood itself. So, we felt it was very important that we look at some way to establish some type of center to identify that. And at that time, Milton Dehoney was, uh, the CAO. He took this, uh, recommendation, embraced it, added it to the Lyric Theater, and this is something that, uh, Charlie Bolin and now Shea are working forward with, as you just heard from the presentation. Recommendation 13 is to look at defining the spatial character, um, along Main Street. This is an intersection of Midland and Main. Uh, as you can see, Thoroughbred Park at the top, and that is the Herald Leader parking lot behind it. This is something that the consultant and the committee just felt that we need to stabilize that intersection by, uh, by providing, as you can see in the sketch below, to help start bringing that intersection together, give it more of an urban feel that it has instead of a surface parking lot. Uh, wanted to look at creating urban spaces within the downtown. This is an example on Rose Street. Once again, through the streetscape pa- plan, KKG has gone through to look at what we can do to green our streets up in the downtown area. Uh, this recommendation was to look at the parking lot at Americans Founders Bank and then also green up the area in front of the Senior Citizen Building, uh, in between, uh, Vine and Main Street. Make, uh, farmer's market a permanent amenity to downtown. We looked at five sites in the downtown area, or six sites, I'm sorry. Uh, one was along Vine Street itself. The second one was, uh, there at the intersection of Main and Cock Street. A second... Yep. Sorry about that. Um, I thought this had a pointer on it. Doesn't. The second one was, uh, within the Manchester Street area. The third was located at Maxwell and Broadway. Uh, thank you. Uh, that's Cock Street and, uh, Main Street, and then this is the Manchester Street area. This would be, uh, Maxwell, Broadway. Uh, we, we looked at the area along Vine Street itself. We looked at the Cheapside Park area, and then we looked at the Charles Young area. A final recommendation never was made from the consulting team, but they felt that these were six sites that, that we should look at to go ahead and move forward in terms of finding a permanent location. Currently, we're working on, as you know, the Cheapside area as an area for the farmer's market. The last recommendation was to, what we could do to bring Town Branch, is make it part of a entity of the downtown, uh, especially in terms of historic aspect to the community itself. This is a sketch showing, uh, High Street. Yep. Kind of hard to see. And then this is t- going down to the Cock Street parking lot. This would be a new building that they had sketched. And what this would do is take the entity that VanMeter Pettit and his group had been working on out the Masterson Station and bring that trail into the downtown area. As you know, that part of the trail is under construction. ... part of the, um, Manchester Street TIF project was to move this, uh, project forward and at the current state, that is what the, uh, TIF plan will be, uh, using some funds for. What we tried to do is create a plan that would allow us flexibility, it could change over time, and we wanted to be able to not be site-specific. As you can see, we were pretty limited in terms of the areas that we were site-specific. We wanted to be able to come f- up with ideas and recommendation that the city itself, not just the DDA, but the planning staff, the planning commission, engineering, other people could work with as well, to move, make our downtown much more enjoyable, pedestrian, entertainment, residential area. Thank you very much. Any questions for Mr. Tate? All right. Uh, Council Member Lane. Eh, well, all right. Let's move on- Yeah, I did have one question. ... to Council Member Lane. You mentioned something about 900 housing units. Uh, is, are those ones that are currently being developed at this time or was that a cumulative number over a couple of years? Cumulative over time. Okay. Well, we have the 524 development and the LEX development. About how many units are those, uh, due- The LEX project itself? Yes, sir. It's about 500 beds, I believe. Somewhere around in that area. All right. The, what they do on a lot of the, quote, "college-related projects," they go by bed they don't go by bedroom. So- So you would have bedrooms with the shared common areas- Yep. ... and all that? Right. Uh, well, how about the 524? W- what type of development is that? Over on Angliana? Uh, that one is very minimal. I believe it's, uh, it, right now they're looking at about 100 units. Okay. All right. Thank you. Council Member Beard? Thank you, Mayor. Harold, you were talking about site-specific and of course you mentioned one site which, uh, uh, somewhat dear to my heart. Uh, w- why would anybody ever conceive that a bank would wanna give up a 50 car, uh, parking lot? Uh, I think the concept behind that was to kinda help green that project. One thing we talked about with parking itself, surface parkings aren't always the best use in the downtown area. Uh, we should look at surface parking as being areas for development or in this opportunity, a green space since we have limited green space in the downtown area. I- i- it just depends on whose ox is getting gored I think, uh, is, is really the situation 'cause, uh, not that I wanna speak necessarily for American Founders, but, uh, if it was still First Security Bank of Lexington, uh, I'd be, sorry about your luck. Uh. Right. Thank you. Anything further for Mr. Tate? All right. Thank you very much. We appreciate you being here. We're now ready for, uh, council reports. Council Member Martin? Thank you, Mayor. Wanted to announce that the Harrods Hill Neighborhood Association is sponsoring two events for the 4th of July at 10:00 AM. Uh, they will, uh, bring your decorated wagons and bikes, strollers, and even pets for a parade beginning at Fort Harrods and Mantilla. Prizes will be awarded to the most patriotic bike or wagon or stroller. Uh, later that day, the neighborhood will have a potluck dinner at 6:00 PM followed by live music from the Victor English Band at 7:00 PM. Uh, also tonight at, uh, 7:00 is the Southland Jamboree continues at the Southland Bowling Lanes. Uh, please come out for great food and bluegrass music. Uh, Mayor, I also have a, uh, a walk-on at the request of the administration. I move to place in the docket for July 2nd, 2009 Council meeting, an ordinance amending the salary schedules to provide non-bargaining employees with a 1% pay increase and to adjust the salary structure for bargaining unit members in the Division of Community Corrections and Fire Majors in the Division of Fire and Emergency Services. This pay increase does not include seasonal employees in account 332 or Parks and Recreation employees in accounts 333 and 334. So moved. Do I hear a second? Second. Have a motion by Council Member Martin and a second by Council Member Myers to add that item to the docket. Uh, Council Member Gordon? Uh, Mayor, um, I'm not sure of the significance of this. I thought that we had put the, put that in the budget. It, can someone give us a little detail? I will call on Bill O'Mara to do just that. Bill, can you talk to us on this? I may have missed some of the nuance as you were reading it, so. Mayor, would... While he's walking down, would you like me to read it again? That would be good, yes. So this is the motion. I move to place on the docket for July 2nd, 2009 Council meeting, an ordinance amending the salary schedules to provide non-bargaining employees with a 1% pay increase and to adjust the salary structure for bargaining unit members in the Division of Community Corrections and Fire Majors in the Division of Fire and Emergency Services. This pay increase does not include seasonal employees in the account 332 or Parks and Recreation Employees in accounts 333 and 334. Exactly correct. Uh, y- you gave second reading to the 2010 budget. This is updating our, our ordinance schedule to match the raise that you approved in the 2010 budget. So it's nothing different. It's not something we didn't mean to do? But, but it has to be done in order for us- Yes, I understand. ... for it to be on the paycheck. Okay, thank you. And Council Member James. Thank you, Mayor. In, um, regards to this motion, the fact that we're passing that, is it an ordinance that we're doing or is it resolution? It's a resolution, Council Member Martin? I think it's an ordinance because the pay scales are in the Book of Ordinance. Okay. So all the discussion we had about personnel and where if council had made a request to include, um, to include certain personnel additional, um... I'm sorry, I'm not getting my words together here. Um, the add- additional positions that we've put in the budget, is this the similar process that we need to go to, go through for that? So we talked about, you know, is it appropriate for council to pass an ordinance basically stamping what it is that we intend to have happen. This seems very familiar to what we were asking that we were told this is not what we're supposed to do as council. Do, do you understand what I'm saying, what I'm asking? U- com- not completely. Okay. Let, let me give it a shot and see if we're on the same wavelength. Okay. In the budget, there was a 1% raise for non-sworn. Mm-hmm. As well as incorporated what was already contractually obligated for FY 2010, those people that are under different contracts. There i- there is, in our code of ordinance, if you're a, a, um, scale of, uh, of a 107, here's the min, the mid, and the max. Mm-hmm. And if you're a 112 and if you're a 115, that all has to raise up by 1%- Mm-hmm. ... in order for the code of ordinance to be updated to what the 2010 budget approved. Okay. So the budget is approved by ordinance and now we're coming, after the budget has been approved, we're updating the code of ordinance that has each of those, um, they're not called steps anymore, they're... I'm, I'm, I'm at a loss as to the proper terminology, but, but the- Levels or something like that? Yes. Okay. And I hope I'm not totally messing that up in the explanation. Okay. So we're not really approving a certain personnel, personnel dollar amount, we're just approving the increase for those different levels. The, the amount was approved in the budget. Now, we're getting the individual listing in sync with what was approved in the budget. And the amount, the amount that was approved in the budget includes the personnel positions that the council asked to be included. Yes, if you, if you added position, two positions in internal audit- Mm-hmm. ... then that's, that was approved with the budget. Now, we're approving what is the pay scale for the internal audit. Okay. And so then once we approve that, then that is then done. So then the 1% a- automatically starts from July 1. With this paycheck. And then- Actually, it's the first pay period in July. Okay. All right, thank you. Thanks, Mayor. Any further discussion on Council Member Martin's motion? Seeing none, we'll proceed to vote. Those in favor of placing that item on the docket for July 2nd, please indicate by saying aye. Opposed, no. Motion carries. Thank you, Mayor, that's all I have. All right. I think it's Council Member Gordon. Thank you, Mayor. I have two items. Um, I wanted to update the council. This morning, uh, we held our joint planning commission, planning committee workshop, and it was very well attended. We had, um, almost all of the council planning committee members and a good representation from the planning commission. And we had a very, um, I thought a very good discussion. The first hour, we spent with Bob Wiseman from the University of Kentucky, and he gave a presentation of the UK master plan. And, and, uh, we saw, uh, what they're intending on, uh, among other things, student housing. And it was, uh, extremely good and gave council members an opportunity to ask questions of Bob Wiseman. And then the second hour, uh, we spent talking about a form-based, uh, code, which you heard is one of the recommendations of the downtown master plan. And we'll, we have scheduled our next joint workshop on September 29th, at which time we will take the form-based code discussion to the next level. And then the second item is, I've been asked by the administration to move an item onto the docket. Um, council members, you'll remember during all of the stormwater fee task force, uh, meetings, and subsequently, the water quality fee, um, discussions that one of the items is that the urban county government needed to negotiate with Kentucky American Water to do the billing, accounting, and collecting of this new fee. And so, um, our folks from, uh, finance have been, uh, undertaking that negotiation, and you probably had help . Um, so I, with that said, I have this motion. They have completed their negotiations. I move to place on the docket for Thursday night's council meeting, a resolution authorizing and directing the mayor to enter into an agreement with Kentucky American Water Company for the billing, accounting, and collecting of the water quality management fee at a cost not to exceed $0.3623 cents per month for each account billed. So moved. A motion by Council Member Gorton and a second by Council Member McCord to add that item to Thursday night's docket. Is there any discussion? Council Member Lane. Uh, is there someone here that can speak to that fee? Bill O'Mara. Uh, Bill O'Mara- Bill O'Mara, okay. ... would be the appropriate person. Again, we may just have to reserve him a front row seat here for the duration. Yes, sir. Uh, s- since Kentucky American's already sending out bills, and this would be basically collecting the data and putting it on the line item on the current invoice, do you feel that the fee being proposed is, um, reasonable, I guess is my question? Yes, I do. Um, I, I think that it's a, it's a good contract. It is, um, l- it, it is below their market with other, um, municipalities that they do the same similar, uh, work for. It does include more than what they've done for us before. If there's someone without a water bill, they will s- they will- ... create an account and bill that person. Um, and it is, uh, very competitive with what we're already paying them for the same services for the landfill user fee. When you translate that into total number of households or businesses that will be billed, can you give me an idea of what the- About 100,000. ... per year or per month? Per month. Okay. All right. Okay. Thank you. Any other questions with regard to this motion? Council Member Beard. Thank you, Mayor. That's in addition to what they're already billing for, um, uh, the sewer, which is roughly 600,000, as I remember, something- The- ... in that ballpark. Um, uh, the sewer is, uh, Council Member Gorton has the exact amount. It's ab- it's about 69 cents. They're taking their water volume, calculating it, uh, having exclusions and credits, and servicing those people that are in the Seward area- Right. ... which is not the entire Fayette County. The landfill is a per-unit charge, $4.50 per container, uh, and that is for the area where those services are contained. This is going to be for the entire Fayette County, regardless of whether there is a current water account or not. U- understand, but what I'm, just what I'm try- uh, driving at is, we're going to be giving Kentucky American how much in total? It's 400 and some odd thousand on an annual basis. For FY2010, I think it's 217,000 for the six months. Oh. Okay. Thank you. Any further discussion on Council Member Gorton's motion? Council Member Lane? Yeah, um, you know, I'm not saying this is a high fee or a low fee, but I, it was the first time I was aware of it and, um, you know, it's on a short notice. I feel like when we're approving these kind of contract, which are fairly substantial, maybe we should have a little more notice. We could at least look at the numbers. I mean, it may be a bargain, but getting it just at the last minute here, I, I don't know whether, you know, I'm happy or not. Um- I ... Well, and ... Go ahead. I, I was just gonna comment. I just got this today, and, uh, of course, we've all known, uh, if you've been reading the minutes and followed the meetings that they were in negotiations. So, um, uh, I think everything is kind of like a, a domino effect, and, and as soon as we can approve this, and it is very good. It, it, this f- uh, fee to Kentucky American is much lower than the sewer, Sanitary Sewer, uh, fee. And then the, uh, it's just a hair above the landfill user fee. And I think once we can get this in place, then they can do the next step to get the water quality fee in place. So. Could, could I just follow up with one question? Are we gonna be billed monthly or every other month for this fee? Monthly. So, uh, the water bills, they're billed monthly now too, so everything will be on a monthly cycle. All right. Yes, sir. Okay. I, I would also add that the negotiations concluded on Friday- Correct. ... if I recall correctly. Right. Y- I don't mean to, um, you know, pick on anybody, but- I'm sure. ... I'm just saying, you know, we're here representing the people, and to throw this at us with no advance notice, we haven't had a chance to review it, I don't think that I'm doing a good job representing my constituents by not having time to at least review the numbers. That's all I'm saying. And, but I understand how the wheels of progress are, and, you know, the bureaucracy pumps it out when it can. And but I ... When ... Will this fee be effective at the first of the year? So- Right. ... k- why do we need to approve it immediately? Why couldn't we wait for another period of time to have time- You- ... to review these numbers a little bit more in detail? The, I, I nodded my head too quickly, Council Member. Uh- Okay. It, it's effective, um, in July. It will be implemented in January, but the significance for the approval now is they have to do a lot of programming in the month of July and August- ... in order to meet our development requirements for the total- Yeah. ... system to be in place- Right. ... in January. So it's, it's a domino effect- Okay. ... where each key fits in. If I could just, uh, put it in perspective, there was an extended conversation of what vehicle would be best to use for collection. And, and the sub-committee and the council agreed that Kentucky American Water would be the best i- interest as far as efficiencies and total cost. ... and the amount that you're about to g- uh, agree to is less than the budget we used when we put together the first year, um, projections. All right. Well, my, um, you know, I think, I like Kentucky American and they send me my bill every month and it's usually correct. And, well, there was one month when there was a mistake on it and they immediately got it fixed. And I believe in outsourcing and I'm not recommending that the government hire any more people and do our own billing, but I just thought since we're already doing these bills already and it's, it's gonna be the same postage, same envelope, same invoice, we're just gonna add more line items in, that, you know, perhaps, you know, maybe the fee would be less than that. But as I said, because I just got the information, I haven't had a chance to really evaluate it. I can't really tell one way or the other. Yeah. I don't wanna belabor this- No, but y- ... so let me say thank you- ... n- ... and I'll sign off on that. There's no belaboring about it at all, because th- the issues you raise are, are legitimate ones. However, we're only voting today to put it on the docket for a first reading on Thursday and a second reading and final approval next Tuesday, and certainly in the meantime, whatever information you'd like to get about the process, the details, feel free to contact Mr. O'Mara 'cause he can, he can fill you in. Thank you, Mayor. Uh, maybe- Question- ... just a short memo explaining the fee arrangement would be helpful. If y- we'll get that squared away for you then. Uh, Vice Mayor Gray. Um, I don't know that much about this, but I, I do know that 1.2 million a year, I, I would share Council Member Lane's concerns that we need to dig into it a, a little bit more. Uh, again, is it one point, is that correct, $100,000 a month? Is that what I heard correctly or not? What's the number? Well, 100,000 households- 100,000, okay, so what's the- ... times 30, 36 cents. May I... Yeah, may I jump in? The fiscal year, the annual impact is $434,760. That's the annual. Okay. The, so, all right, so the, the original programming cost is where significant cost would occur. There will be- And then after that, it would be an, a, a essentially an annuity income. I, I, I wouldn't go that far. Th- there is care and maintenance. We're going to be sharing information back and forth on a regular basis. All right. They'll be notifying us of new accounts. We'll be notifying them of changes and, and, um, so, so there is ongoing expense. Okay. Well, I think what the, the, the issue here, in my view at least, is the extent to which we have any level of competition or a, a, a, an adequate due diligence on developing the criteria and then measuring the cost going forward. And I believe that if... Am I translating your question, th- that issue, Council Member Lane, correctly? Yeah, I, I think if the memorandum could just explain the, how they determine the fee, I would presume they've estimated how many people would have to work on it- Right. ... what the payroll would be and, you know, the additional mailing cost and, you know, overhead for the facilities and computers and stuff. I mean, there's a lot of expense involved in this I believe. Yeah. But I think just to give us an i- idea what it is, that would be- May- ... be good. ... the, the, um, from a, really from a conceptual point of view, I'm always concerned whenever I hear that we are lower than our budget. Our budget may be higher than what it oughta be, so finding a competitive level of service is what we're talking about here and being confident that what we vote on res- relate, what we vote on reflects that competitive level of service, and especially when we're talking about annuity service contracts. Thank you. Council Member Myers. Thank you, Mayor. Um, my question is on the same lines. Um, and I'll start backing up. A- a while back we had a closed session about collecting of certain taxes and I guess my question is have we, as a government, looked at the aggregate of all the different fees like this that we're paying, we're outsourcing to have someone else collect, what it would take for us to do that in-house if we did them all, and would there be, would it be cost effective for us to do that? In, in regards to this issue, we, we covered that pretty extensively in the stormwater, um, task force and I'll be glad to reiterate that in this memo. And, and collection rate is a key component on defining what is the most efficient use of, of a billing service. Right, I under- understand that, but if you look at, well, how many different fees are we collecting as a government that we're outsourced the collection of? I would have to get back to you that- Okay. ... I can think of four right now, three of which are Kentucky American. If you ma- if you, you look at the sanitary, landfill, and now water quality, we also use an outsource, uh, uh, service on, uh, ambulance billing. Okay. I- just, in your spare time, could you take a look at all those and then see if it would be cost-effective if we took all of them in-house, not just one individual? We have done that numerous times, but I, I'll be glad- It still comes back- ... to look at it. ... it's more cost-effective to do it outsourced? Yes, it is. Okay. Thank you. Further discussion? Seeing none, we'll proceed to vote. Those in favor of adding to Thursday night's docket, a resolution, uh, authorizing an agreement with Kentucky American, please indicate by saying, "Aye." Aye. Oppose, no. Motion carries. That concludes my report . Okay, thank you. Councilmember Stennet. Thank you, Mayor. I just have one item, and unfortunately it has to do with our, uh, recently passed FY 2010 budget. There was an error in the funding for the Animal Care and Control office, at least in the intentions of what was recommended for the changing, uh, to keep their budget so that we can have 10 officers. There was $12,000 that was, uh, inadvertently left out of the final budget once we approved it, uh, which would go towards either keeping the, the 10th officer or funding their vehicle maintenance line item, which was part of the money, I think, of the confusion that was left out. So I'll make a motion to add tw- $12,000 to the animal care and controls, FY 2000, 2000, no, excuse me, 2010 budget. The funds will be taken from council-approved budget fund balance for FY 2010. So moved. Second. Any discussion? The motion then is to place that item on the docket for- First reading Thursday night, Mayor. All right. All those in... Councilmember Martin. W- Councilmember Stennet, exactly where would the money come in from? I... That went by fast. It was coming from the council-approved FY 2010 fund balance. Okay. Thank you. Thank you. And then- Lot of words there, sorry. Huh. My budget. Not, not, not your... The 10th District budget, no. C- Could you restate that one more time, please? Sure. I make a motion to add $12,000 to the Animal Care and Controls FY 2010 budget. That's it. Again, this money was in there last year. It just, it, it w- when we added it all up, it, it was left out. Okay. Call the motion. But, but again, the motion is to add a... an ordinance or resolution, I'm not sure. Budget amendment, uh, to the docket for first reading on Thursday. Right. Yes, sir. Those in favor of adding that item to Thursday's docket, please indicate by saying, "Aye." Aye. Oppose, no. Motion carries. Councilmember Wallace. Um, I have one, just, quick announcement, because I think a lot of people in the community will be interested, uh, and then I have a motion. Um, the... At the July 8th, um, Courthouse Area Review Board, Design Review Board , July 8th, uh, at 2:00 PM in council chambers, um, there's been an application by, um, the Center Point folks to renew their, um, permission to move forward. Um, y- it will expire November 10th and building permits have to be issued by then, and they're asking that it be moved up to July 15th. And that hearing will be on July 8th in council chambers at 2:00 PM. It will have to be over at 7:00 because we have a council meeting, I think . Um, secondly, I have a motion. I move to amend item 22 under First Reading Resolutions of the Work Copy to change item 22 from a resolution to an ordinance, and to include budget amendment schedule number 29 in the amount of $14,260,916. So moved. Second. Have a motion by Councilmember Wallis and a second by Councilmember Blues to amend item number 22 under resolutions as specified. Any discussion? Yes. Councilmember Wallace. Um, this is to accep- uh, it would be the first reading of an ordinance to accept a bid from ATS Construction in the amount of $13,146,000... 46,557 for the South Limestone Streetscape. Um, and I wanna start by saying I am, um, extremely excited and supportive of the streetscape projects. Um, I think Cleet has done a wonderful and incredible job, and, uh, lots of other folks in the city have also worked very hard on it. However, my concern with this one is that we don't... uh, and, and I've sat in on the, um, interviews with the, um, only viable bidder on the construction. Um, I've gone through the documents, I've talked to business owners and lots and lots of folks. My problem with this is that, um, this, while it was listed in phase one, um, has been given an arbitrary and deadline of July of 2010. And, as a result, I don't feel like we are going to be able to have all the information we need to make an informed decision about moving forward in a way that will be the least costly and disruptive, not only to that area and the business owners, but the entire community. I asked for a list of all the street and road projects that are going on. Um, and there doesn't seem to really be a comprehensive list. So, the Maxwell Street project with the bicycles will be going on this summer. Um, UKe- UK is closing part of Liter Avenue. Um, the Newtown Pike extension will be in process, I assume. Um, the Cox to Boulevard, um, area will be part of that. We talked about two-way streets on Short and Second. Apparently, uh, as of today, I found out that with meetings with the Newtown Pike folks, they said not to do that while they're doing Newtown Pike because it would create problems with detour. Um, there's the Alexandria and Old Frankfurt Pike project. And so one of my big concerns is that if we don't do this well, and we don't do it efficiently, that this will be the only bite we have at the streetscape apple. And that it is so important to our downtown and our economic development and a vibrant community, a green community, stormer water, et cetera, that we need to take our time to find out what all street and road projects are going on by different folks, what street closures will be impacted while this street is closed, and are we gonna create a huge gridlock in our city where nobody can get in or out for anything? So, that's my, one of my primary concerns. Um, the other concern is that we have Main and Short Street, or Main and Bond Street, and the courthouse, or I'm sorry, the History Museum plaza, Cheapside Park, that, um, will be a much easier project and low-hanging fruit, so to speak, that will have such a major impact on our community. Um, so what I'd like to do is, while I made the motion to change it to an ordinance, um, I do have grave concerns and I'm hoping that we can slow this process down a- a bit to get all the information we need, maybe find, uh, make it more of an attractive to bi- other bidders, um, because of the timeline and, and the technical problems and et cetera. So, that's what I have to say. Thank you. Well, the motion on the floor is to make that modification to the docket for Thursday evening. And, um, we have a second by Council Member Blue, so the, the issue on the floor is whether or not to approve that modification to the docket. Any further discussion? I want to speak to this. No. I'm sorry. Vice Mayor Fell. Oh, yeah, go ahead. Go ahead. That's fine. Council Member James. My question is just, just for clarification for anybody watching is what's the significance of changing it from an ordinance to resolution? That's what the ma- um, modification is, right? It's because it would require a budget amendment. Okay. Thank you. Vice Mayor Gray. Is it, is it appropriate to speak to the issues that Council Member Lawless spoke to now or not? Well, I guess it goes to the question of whether or not we ought to modify the docket. I- if, if there's comments with regard to whether or not we ought to modify the docket, that's germane. If it's, you know, some philosophical discussion about, on the other hand, whether we should or shouldn't be doing streetscapes, that would be better for another time. Okay, so I think mine's probably specific to this. Um, I would... I'd begin by saying exactly what Council Member Lawless had to say in terms of the significance of this project and how much, um, how important it is. Um, my concerns have to do with, um, uh, similarly with the significance of this particular piece of the project and its, uh, influence on the rest, on the rest of the project, on the continuing political will that we'll need to have for the rest of the project. And I think we're probably... Clete, you're here, you probably want to speak to this. Is that why you're here today, to speak to this at this particular time? Okay. Let me make my points first and then you can tell me if I'm way off base. My understanding is that the... we received two bids and of the two- Point of order, Mayor. Okay, Council Member Figal, your point? The issue at hand is whether this is going to be an ordinance or a resolution, is my understanding. Hmm. That- that- The issue is whether or not to put it on the docket. It can't be a resolution 'cause there's a budget impact. But, but your amendment is to change it to an ordinance rather than a resolution. Okay, that's, that's the question on the floor. And, and I think that point is well taken. The procedural issue at hand is whether or not to amend the docket. This kind of discussion would be entirely appropriate once we get to the point at which we're debating these particular, uh, items on the agenda. All right. Anything further? All right. Those then in favor of amending the docket as reflected in Council Member Lawless's motion, please indicate by saying aye. Aye. Oppose no. Motion carries. Okay. Anything further, Council Member Lawless? No, thank you. Well, I'm having trouble with my machine today. It does not want to stay put, so, uh, forgive me, but it looks like Council Member Myers is next. Thank you, Mayor. Um, for the council members, I had circulated a motion that I spoke about last week that I said that I'll be bringing forward today. It has to do with the public library being gracious enough to be willing to hire a volunteer coordinator for the Gainesway Community Center. And so, um, we need to get this done so that they can go ahead, they have to have this resolution passed by us so that they can go ahead and hire that person. So, it's at no cost to Irving County Government. Uh, there's a full copy of the resolution or the agreement here. The agreement was written by our law department, so it's been vetted properly. And so I'm going to place on the docket for Thursday night's council meeting, the resolution authorizing and directing the mayor to enter into an agreement with the Board of Trustees of the Lexington Public Library to provide a part... Oh, let me finish. I like that though. To provide a part-time community development coordinator for the Gainesway Community Center for FY 2010 at no cost to the, urban County Government. So moved. Second. All right. Council Member Myers has, uh, moved to add that item to the docket. Council Member, um, Lawless has seconded that motion. Is there any discussion? All in favor please say aye. Oppose, no. Motion carries. Thank you, Mayor. That concludes my report. Thank you. Council Member Blues. Thank you, Mayor. Uh, please bear with me, I have four motions. Uh, and the first refers back to, uh, the, uh, the email I sent, uh, yesterday along with, uh, along with the, uh, uh, the proposed ordinance to convert the, uh, Corridors Committee to a commission. Uh, and therefore the motion is to place on the docket for the Thursday, July 2, 2009 council meeting, an ordinance creating article 44 in chapter two of the Code of Ordinance to establish the Corridors Commission. So moved. Second. Is, uh, there any discussion on the motion? Those then in favor of adding that item to the docket, please indicate by saying aye. Aye. Oppose, no. Motion carries. The following two motions are at the request of the administration. I move to place on the docket for the July 2 council meeting an ordinance authorizing and directing the mayor to accept the grant in the amount of $113,154 from the Kentucky Energy and Environment Cabinet to support a one-day household hazardous waste recycling event. Acceptance of the grant obligates the Irving County Government for the expenditure of $29,481 as a local match. So moved. Second. I have a motion and a second by Council Member Blues... Uh, I have a motion by Council Member Blues, a second by Council Member Gordon to add that item to the docket. Any discussion? All in favor please say aye. Aye. Oppose, no. Motion carries. Motion number three. To place on the docket for the July 2 council meeting an ordinance authorizing and directing the mayor to accept the grant in the amount of $14,035 from the Kentucky Energy and Environment Cabinet to support a partnership with Lexington Habitat for Humanity, to establish a program to collect, bulk, and resell leftover latex based paint to generate revenue and reduce hazardous landfill bound waste. Acceptance of the grant obligates the Irving County Government for the expenditure of $4,678 as a local match, which will be provided in-kind by Lexington Habitat for Humanity. So moved. I have a motion and second. Any discussion? All in favor please say aye. Aye. Oppose, no. The motion carries. And I have two announcements. Uh, Monday, July 6th, the Georgetown Street Neighborhood Association meet, uh, will meet at 6:00 PM in the O'Heir Center in Douglas Park. And on the same evening, the Green Acres Hollow Creek Breckenridge Neighborhood Association will meet at 7:00 PM in the community center in Green Acres Park. Thank you, Mayor. Thank you very much. Council Member Lane. Uh, thank you, Mayor. I'm going to make a motion here in a moment, but I thought I would explain it before I make it. This is related to, uh, Mary Pfister, who is the Director of Accounting and is currently serving as the Senior Advisor for Policy and Budget. That position was abolished by the council and the budget this year, so she will now be serving as the Director of Accounting and the Acting Director of Budgeting. Uh, the reason for the motion is that she's receiving, um- ... additional compensation for taking on the additional responsibilities until we have a replacement t- for the position that's open. And so we, because we've changed the positions, we just have to reauthorize the continuation of the additional compensation. Having explained this, I'm now making the motion. I move to place on the docket for the Thursday, July 2, 2009 council meeting, a resolution approving continuation of the 16.77% acting assignment pay for Mary Fister. Ms. Fister is the Director of Accounting and was serving as the Acting Senior Advisor for Policy and Budget. She is now serving as the Director of Accounting and the Acting Director of Budgeting. This increase of greater than 10% is due to market demands and in recognition of the experience, exceptional qualifications of the employee. So aga- Second. ...ain, as I understand this, this is also a continuation. So moved. Second. Have a motion by Council Member Lane- Yeah. ... second by Council Member Martin. Any discussion? All in favor, please say, "Aye." Aye. Oppose, "No." Motion carries. Council Member Lane? Thank you. Council Member Figal. Thank you, Mayor. I just wanted to announce that, uh, tonight is the Big Band and Jazz Festival at Ecton Park that begins at 7:00. Bring a picnic basket and a blanket and a chair, and enjoy the music. It's free of charge. Great. Vice Mayor Gray. Thank you, Mayor. Ahem. Uh, I'd like to pick up on the, on the, uh, south line. There's no objection to that, is there? Huh? Yeah. Okay. All right. Well, y'all, y- you may wanna, you may wanna- Before 8:00. ... pick it back up then, um, when we're... before, um, b-before the vote. My concern on the, what we need to be thinking about is just, you know, hold this in your thoughts. The estimate for the scope that were bid, the estimate was roughly $9 million. And the bid, the low, the bid that's being, um, actively considered that we've just, um, passed the resolution on is 13 million. And , this project is being undertaken on a, in an unusual way for a project like this. It's being undertaken on a design build basis. And design build is a great method. It's one I'm very familiar with it, but for this sort c- this sort of project, with the uncertainties of this project, it can lead to prices that are unusually, um, th- or that reflect the higher risk. So I think we really need to take a page out of the lyric that we've just gone through and step back and look at this carefully, at the project, and examine the method of engineering and consider continuing with the detail engineering, which is a normal method for a project like this. And then, with the more detailed engineering, we'd be able to get more prices on the project. So, uh, if y'all wanna hear from Clete today or hear from, um, Mike, that's up to you. I'll take, you know, we can catch it later. All right. If there's nothing further, council, vice, uh, Council Member Lane. Thank you, Mayor. I, I'm, um... We don't, we don't walk in lockstep very often, but this particular case, I think that I agree with, uh, Vice Mayor Gray. It might be a good idea to slow down this project slightly, take another look at it. Uh, one of the concerns that I have is that the complexity and scope of the work may be to the extent that, um, the job could be delayed. And it would be terrible if we were under construction on this when the games came in and I, I, I... Here again, I'm not an expert on the scope of this, and, uh, maybe I need to be briefed f- more fully on this, but I, you know, I'm a little concerned about it. And I, I think that perhaps we could spend this money in a couple other areas downtown and get m-more going, uh, for the games than we could for this project. Council Member Beard. Thank you, Mayor. Is there not a, a time dependency on, on this as relates to winter time? There's a, a se-a segment of this has to be done by winter time. And I don't know what you're proposing, Vice Mayor, but, uh, uh, as far as slowing things down, but, uh, w- I don't know whether we wanna slow it down to the point where we would be falling on our sword and not, and not get it done, uh, by September, October of 2010. Commissioner Webb can speak to the weather-related issue. There, uh, there definitely are weather considerations on, uh, concerning this project. And truthfully, that's why we were trying to get this done prior to the council break, uh, trying to, to get the contract approved to all- to allow that construction to start. Uh, the contractor that was selected and we're requesting approval for provided detailed Gantt charts on how the project would proceed. And the intent is to have the underground construction completed by November 15th. That would be the storm sewer, the sanitary sewer, and the duck banks that would take care of the electric and the communication cable that comes up through the corridor. Uh- There would be some construction with the water line that we think that would continue, but we-would allow for opening at least a lane of Limestone until that was completed. That would be completed prior to the end of the year and billed out. And during the winter, what would take place is the wiring of the conduit that was installed. Uh, not nearly as weather-dependent, not that it can be done in an ice storm by any means, or in a snow storm, but not as dependent on weather as underground construction is, and concrete work. Uh, the intent was to have that completed and all the, uh, properties along the corridor that will get their s- new services off those underground conduits to be tied into the new system, where a complete conversion can take place, and by March 31st, the poles can come down. When the poles come down, then the sidewalk work can begin, the final sidewalk work and the final street, street work, final curbs, final soli- sidewalks, and permanent road bays. And the, the, uh, contract that we bid had, has penalties and bonuses in it. The penalties occur whenever certain targets are not met. And, and specifically, the main specific is opening up the road to through traffic, and then there's bonuses for coming in early. Hopefully we'll have businesses to hook the telephone lines and electric lines too. Let me- let me speak to the, the question, I think you were asking about weather conditions. Um, I don't wanna be flip about this, but I think that's a red herring. Um, this is a confined area. The base under this has been there for 100, 200 years. You can't find a better project to do in the winter than a project like this. Um, now, somebody might dispute that, but weather conditions are e- e- I just don't think that's an issue. What I'm concerned about is, we've got a 50% difference between what we estimated this project to be and what the bids are. A- and I guess what my concern was , uh, during the building of the courthouses, the stretch from Vine Street un- to Main Street, there was a hole big enough to drop the moon in, and, um, a bunch of idle equipment that sat there for months and months and months through the cold weather, and so th- that's wha- , I would not want that to happen again. All right, so if I could speak- Well- ... as to the South Lime, that was one of the things, we have been working on this, uh, with the, with the utilities, keeping them, we've, we've had monthly meetings, uh, we've had, we're having biweekly meetings as we've gotten closer to the, the potential for the project to start. Uh, during our discussions, one of the things that we discussed were the long holdups and the issues on the North Lime piece, which is much shorter than this. And one of the issues and one of the things that added a lot of length of time to that was the fact that each utility, the, the government hired an excavator to excavate a ditch, and then each utility came in one by one and put their conduit in. That, all that takes scheduling time to e- to get a contractor from the job they're doing, come over, lay your conduit. I know it seems like a simple thing, but they're like, they're really like government. They don't keep people on the shelf just to go do your job. They have to be scheduled in, queued in, queued out. And the coordination to get the conduit in took a long time. Once it was all backfilled and ready, then each utility came in one by one and wired up their contr- conduit. We, we discussed those issues with a group of overhead utilities, how can we get past this one conduit at a time? And what, uh, the answer we were given, or what I think we came up to it as a group, what the answer is that rather than have an excavator dig a ditch that stays open while we try to schedule all these different contractors in there, we'd have one contractor do all the conduit work. And since we were doing a contract for the corridor, we included the con- the conduit in our contract, so when the ditch goes up there, whatever conduit is needed goes in at one time. Nobody has to wait, and the ditch can be backfilled. Council Member Lawless. Um, first of all, I wanna compliment Commissioner Webb and CLEET, and, um, the folks that, uh, from the contract company. I met with them, and they worked hard. Again, m- I, I don't see the, and I don't have a problem with it being done in a coordinated fashion that it expedites it, but without knowing a lot of things that we don't know, I can't imagine the weather is gonna be that much of a deterrent between, say, November 15th and January 1st. You know, um, it, we rarely have a white Christmas. So that being said, um, I, I think there, there's just too many unknowns, and what other projects are gonna be going on? What other streets are gonna be closed? Thank you. All right. Council Member Gordon. Uh, I just have a quick question, which is probably for Charlie Martin, but you might know it, just for my satisfaction. If w- if this project is delayed, is there any consent decree deadline that's impacted by the sewer work? No? Okay, thank you. All right. Any further council member wished to- Yeah. ... report? I just wanna summarize what, so it's clear what it is that I've been talking about. We're talking about the procurement method here. The difference between completing design engineering so that the scope is clear and bidders bid on that scope. That is not what we have done in this project. That is highly unusual in this sort of work and as a result, my hypothesis is that the bids are higher. It's no fault to anybody's. It's just that's the nature of a project like this, where the scope is not defined, it's not clear, then the risk is greater and the bids are gonna be higher. And the likelihood of changes is higher as well. And my suggestion is that we take a page out of what we just did with The Lyric, step back, examine the process, ask whether or not we can spend the money to finish the engineering, the detailed engineering and then bid the project again and get prices that would more than likely, at least in my view, be lower, save us money. Okay? Thank you. Council Member Lane, did you, uh, wish to speak? Yeah, I just had a couple que- for you, Commissioner Webb. Uh, one of the questions I have is, is it difficult to determine the scope of the work, because you're gonna have to dig this up to see what's under there to determine it or do you know exactly where all the utility lines are and everything? Whenever you're talking about replacement work as it, as it compares to greenfield work, it is always, it always comes with a risk. Because that road was built n- how many years ago? I mean, that road has been here for a long time. There can be fire cisterns in it, there will be old utilities that we don't know where they are. We're gonna encounter those. It's the same for every... Anytime that you dig into a street that's been there for a long time, you might think of it as prior to mapping, uh, when, when things were mapped that were underground, you're gonna run into a lot of unknowns. Uh, and there, and there is an un- unknown with the rock. The one thing that I would say is, you can, you can limit those unknowns by doing additional work. We could do additional rock sounding. You could get a better feel for how much rock is out there. You could, uh, do additional engineering work that we have put in the contract for the, the contra- the general contractor for this project. And you, you may be able to save a certain amount of money. What that amount is, I don't know. I believe that when you ask for a good product, and that's what we asked for, a good product done in a quick manner, a manner that, that this city is not accustomed to doing that work in. When you ask for that, you're gonna get a higher price for that. Were gonna get, this price, the, the sewer replacement, the conduit, it would be more expensive in this spot than it would be on South View Drive, be, just because of the age and the uncertainty and the, the issues that, that go with this. I believe that it is the proper process. I, I do have concerns for the folks on those cor- in that corridor, and I believe that trying to get this done in a very, a relatively quick amount of time, and for them, it won't be quick. But for a project that has this much construction on it, it would be quick. A relatively quick amount of time is the best we can do for them. You can, you can do a lot of engineering work, you can do a lot of study, and you can stage the construction and you can do it over a period of time and what you have is one that comes very close to budget, one that has a very good final project, and one that's done over a long period of time. I, I think a, a great example is Louden Avenue. You know, there was a lot of utility work done there, it was done one utility at a time. It, it, wha- four years, I didn't work here when that started, I was just, worked here when it was ended, it caused a lot of issues for those folks. And that's one thing that we really did consider was, what's the best for these folks in that corridor? And selecting when to start, uh, we wanted to get as much work out of the way before UK got their students back in there. That will add a lot of confusion to that corridor, and that's really when those businesses become the most active, I believe. And it, it wa- we felt it was a big benefit to start this job as quickly as we could, to take advantage of the construction season with all of those phase one projects, as the project manager on those and part of the team, we have always felt- ... that whenever we were given design money for those projects, and when, every time we've been in discussions that we, it was intended that we provide an opportunity to get these projects done by July 1. That was the date that was always given. And we looked at all those different things as we worked through this project with the utilities to try to come up with the best package we could to allow what we thought we were hearing from council. Well, you're, uh, talking about $4 million over your estimated cost. Mm-hmm. Uh, did that surprise you when the bid came in, or? I thought, uh, it did not surprise me to a great deal on the utility package piece of it. Uh, I, it was m- it was my feeling that it was underestimated from the very beginning. Uh, those estimates were, were based on some information from KU. Each of these utilities have, have ro- been very upfront about saying that, "Difficult for us to give you a price because we don't do this type of work. This is not our bread and butter." Did you feel that you can timely complete it? I mean, we've got 450, 450 days before the World Games. You think you'll be buttoned up, uh, or do you foresee, you know, stuff like you gotta get an easement, somebody won't give. It to you and you gotta take the legal proceedings and all that. Do you see any issues like that out there? The b- in my opinion, the largest risk factor, there's two big risk factors to being done in my opinion. And believe me, it's my opinion, you're, I would r- ask you to ask anyone about this, is weather. We can't control the weather. We have penalties built in, and I think we have prior higher prices because we have def- a very defined timeline to get this done. We have penalties built in, but if we get weather that you can't do construction work in, that does not count against the contract. Right. We have to be reasonable. So that is a risk. We cannot hold weather that you can't do construction, again, again, in against them. My other concern is the final connections of the property owners so that the poles can come down. Uh, I believe we have a commitment from the utilities. We don't have a signed contract on their wire up yet. We have working estimates, but I believe those are the two things, and I believe they can be m- we can manage the, the hookup of the utilities, but I, the, that we can't control the weather. All right. As, this is my last question. Would you strongly recommend to the council that we go forward with this at this time, or do you feel that we ought to delay the project? What's your recommendation? I, I think we have a contractor that can perform the work and get it done for us. I think they understood the job. They did a good job of preparing. I believe that there is risk in escalation of price. And I can show that, show you areas where I think that may be in. Uh, I think there's some risks there. I believe it comes down to a matter of, how important is this to the council, to the community, and, uh, to get this project done. I, I, there's no way I can predict without going out and bidding each of those engineering pieces, and, um, and seeing what the difference is, you know, and working through that. If it's, if it's a matter of cost savings for you, you would have to do that. You'd have to bid out every piece and do a comparison, and estimate the time, and, and all the other expenses that go along with the timeline to do that. And I have not looked at it that way. Uh... Have, uh, taken care of the property owners. We can't, uh, close their business down for months after month after month. We need to be sensitive to their, their requirements to be in the business. I understand that, and if you did a Loudoun Avenue project, what you would do is you'd be impacting them during the construction season over a much longer period of time. I have, believe me, I do have concerns for the folks who have businesses and who own property on that corridor. And I believe that, uh, what we said and heard from the contractor, we asked for a plan that would, would give access to sidewalks, and they were very honest in the meeting. They said, "We cannot guarantee 100% access 'cause there's construction on the, will be on those sidewalks. What we will commit to is scheduling work with each one of those businesses along there." Uh, I don't often f- share my feelings on certain items with the council, but I would like to about supporting those businesses. The, the government has to do projects in front of businesses on a continuing basis. And I know there, there has been, uh, there has been people who have asked, "Well, can we pay a part of the..." you know, if they can identify losses or whatever. We do projects all the time. This is significant because it's in a very busy corridor, there's a lot of small businesses there, and we're gonna be in front of them. We're gonna try to impact them for the shortest amount of time. I don't... Doing anything like that would create risk anywhere else. But I believe... ... from the support I've seen from stakeholders, from the council for this, that if folks want to see these type of projects done, then they have to step up and they have to help support those businesses. I think it's all of our responsibility to go up there and have dinner and stop into those shops, frequent those shops during the project. We've talked about getting advertisement out on a website dedicated just to the South Lime project. But I... I truly believe, and I apologize for throwing my opinion out there, but that's what it is. If you want these types of projects, we can't pay people to redo the road and the sewer in front of them, but we can get together as a community and support these folks while we do it for a shorter- the shortest period of time that we can... we can make the project happen. Sorry for editorializing. Well, thank you for your candor. Appreciate it. Thank you. Anything further? Council Member Lawless? Again, I... I want to say that, uh, the people I've worked with on this have been really great, uh, Commissioner Webb. Um, and I really appreciate your plug for those businesses, 'cause it is gonna hurt, and I fully support the streetscape projects. I fully support doing this as quickly and painlessly as possible, and I think a lot of this is about doing that. Do you have any concerns about what other street projects will be going on at the same time and what other street closures might be going on at the same time and that gridlock? And I... I did get a note from you earlier today. We have a master list, but I thought... and we also had a staff meeting and I asked Marwan to get together what he felt the significant ones were. There are some projects going on that are not LFUCG projects. Right. UK has a bridge project- Right. ... for the hospital. And what I wanted to do, and if it would be okay- Yeah. ... I could bring that back Thursday, uh, and we can take a look at that. Mm-hmm. There's one thing I would say is this is... is this not a typical year in Lexington? Uh, there's a lot of construction goes on here all the time. I don't know that there is ever going to be a really a good time because you can't shut private projects down. And I think we're going to manage better, but there's always going to be a lot of projects. And if we do this, like it'll be hard to get downtown. There'll be a New Town Pike project. It'll be hard to get in from the north. Uh, we'll certainly look at what else is going on and make that available to you. I think all that plays in, and we can also kind of put together what our estimates are for the rest of the streetscape projects. Will this slow down or keep Main and Vine and Cheapside and the pavilion from getting done? Are we choosing between Main, Vine, and Cheapside, Pavilion? I think what... what would be the best thing for me to do is bring back- Okay. ... a spreadsheet that we've worked off of that... that shows the estimates of what those would cost, uh, and present those to you. I... I... I understood from the beginning that would be a part of the entire picture for the council since all the projects were phase one. Uh, we... we did just get a grant. We have not received the letter, but at the meeting they said... they said we were approved for a KIA, uh, loan, low-interest loan with 50% forgiveness, uh, for the streetscape project. Uh, Commissioner Taylor has checked. We didn't think we could use it for the sewers on South Lime, the storm sewer, but she has checked and we now believe that that money, although it was for the whole entire project, could go to the green infrastructure and the sewer on South Lime. So we're... we're... we're trying to do some final checking on that. Okay. I would just... I'd really appreciate on Thursday if you could let us know what the schedule is for Main, Vine, Cheapside, and the pavilion and- And what we'll give you is the cost estimates too. And we'll look at- Okay. ... the funding packages. Thank you so much. You're welcome. Thank you. Thank you, Mayor. All right. Any further reports from the council? All right. Uh, contrary to the indication on the agenda, there is no mayor's report today. The only other person I had who had signed up to speak was Miss Hanna, and I believe she has already left. Does anyone else wish to address the council? All right. Um, Mister- Excuse me. We had scheduled a closed session that needs to be deferred. Mr. Wright needed to be here and he's been called away to a... a special called meeting of the health board. I'm sure that breaks everyone's heart, but- Excuse me, the Housing Authority, not the health board. Yeah. All right. Do I hear a motion to adjourn? So moved. Second. Uh, I'm sorry. I... I apologize. Mr. Cobb wished to speak, so before we get away from public comment. Thank you, Mayor. First, giving honor to the most High. I feel like Howard Cosell today when he stood up for Muhammad Ali. He said, "I do what is right. What is right may not always be popular. What is popular may not always be right." So out of respect to the mayor, the council, and you, I apologize for the words I said last week, the tone I said it in. After talking to Miss Lawless, Councilwoman Lawless, she pointed out that that was my personal opinion, and I'm being a bigger man today. Anybody that was offended by my comments last week, I do apologize, but we still got work to do. I still have a righteous indignation. I still need your help. We talking about the Lyric and it's yet to be constructed, but I want to see the manifestation of unity before we build the building. Just because we construct the building, it's not going to cure the wounds in our community. We have nothing, Mayor. We have nothing exclusively Black in the city. And that's the brunt of my frustration. Y'all have Hamburg, Transylvania, Downtown, South Side, Tuskany, Heartland. Just put things into perspective. Peace. Thank you. Now do I hear a motion to adjourn? Councilmember Stennut has moved to adjourn. Councilmember Myers has seconded the motion. All in favor, please say aye. Opposed, no. Motion carries.