Week of June 21, 2021

Jun 21

🔦 Three Quick Highlights

📺 - Watch this: EQPW Presentation on KU's tree cutting

If you haven't noticed, Kentucky Utilities has been cutting down trees across Lexington to prevent winter storm damage and power outages.

Council is weighing adopting an Ordinance requiring KU to bury all utility lines at their own expense if they do not agree to a Memorandum of Understanding with LFUCG to replace removed trees and notify LFUCG before they remove them.

Watch the meeting on Tuesday, June 22 at 1:00pm on LexTV. Read more in our description in the 💡 This week in City Government section.

🏃 - Do this: Give input on No-Knock Warrants

This week, Council will make its final vote on the proposed ban for no-knock warrants. If you want to provide input, this is likely your last chance.

How should you provide input?

The best way is to show up at the meeting. Its at 6:00pm on Thursday, June 24th in City Hall. Here's what you can expect when you give input in person.
If you can't show up in person, take a moment right now to email council your feedback on the issue.

Don't feel like you know enough about the issue to provide good input? Read more in our 🏃 Get engaged section.

🗞 - Read this: Report: 27 percent of Lexington city employees are Black but most hold low-paying jobs

Last week, the General Government and Social Services Committee heard a presentation on the racial and ethnic diversity of city employees and discrepancies in compensation. This article from Beth Musgrave at a the Lexington Herald-Leader does a great job summarizing that meeting and gives you a deeper look at the numbers behind why this issue is important.

💡 This week in City Government

Monday, June 21

No public meetings.

Tuesday, June 22

🏢 - Environmental Quality & Public Works Committee
📺 - 1:00pm on June 22 via LexTV
📍 - Council Chambers
📖 - Read the Agenda
🗣 - Give input in person
🔦 - Highlights:

The Committee will hear a presentation on the city's Street Paving Plan for FY22.
- In FY22, the city will spend just over $13M on road paving.
- $11M of that will be spent on three tiers of roads: Major/Minor arterials ($1.1M), collector streets ($2.8M), and local roads ($7.2M).
- Roads in need of repair will be selected by a criteria called the "Overall Condition Index", or OCI.
- A list of roads in need of repair will be presented to Council next week.
- The Council District with the most need of repairs (most miles under 60 OCI) is District 6, followed by District 9.
- The District with the least need of repair is District 3.
- There appears to be an additional carve-out for repairing Tates Creek Road from Alumni to Landsdowne ($775k).
The Committee will also hear a presentation about Abandoned Shopping Carts.
- Abandoned shopping carts are said to clog storm sewers and drains, impacting stormwater issues.
- The city is considering a regulatory change, which could include requiring businesses to create a shopping cart retention plan and give businesses 24 hours to retrieve lost cars.
- Under this proposed regulation, unattended carts would be given 72 hours' notice via a sticker, after which all belongings would be removed and stored for retrieval.
- More discussion is recommended for this proposed regulation to ensure the city isn't burdening businesses or penalizing the homeless or those without transportation.
Lastly, the Committee is discussing Kentucky Utilities' clear-cutting of Trees near power lines.
- Kentucky Utilities has been aggressively cutting down trees within 15 feet of their power lines across the city.
- This has caused a significant loss in urban canopy coverage.
- Council is weighing adopting an Ordinance requiring KU to bury all utility lines at their own expense if they do not agree to a Memorandum of Understanding with LFUCG.
- The MOU would require KU to consult with the LFUCG Arborist before cutting down any trees. This would have to take place at least one month in advance. The City would also require that KU creates a net zero loss Canopy Plan to replace any urban canopy they remove.

🏢 - Council Work Session
📺 - 3:00pm on June 22 via LexTV
📍 - Council Chambers
📖 - Read the Agenda
🗣 - Give input in person
🔦 - Highlights:

This Council Work Session starts the implementation process for two key new elements of the Mayor's Budget: the creation of a Department of Housing Advocacy and a 3% pay raise for most city workers.
The Council will also report out the city's new Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Statement.
Council will hear a presentation on a significant upgrade to the Shilito Park Pool.
- The upgraded pool is recommended by the 2016 Acquatics Master Plan.
- The upgrade would classify the pool as a "Regional" pool, and would include significant new amenities including: new lap lanes, diving boards, and climbing wall, a warm water pool for senior water aerobics, a lazy river, a shallow water activity pool with interactive play features, a sprayground, and a new pool house.
- The total upgrade cost would be $10M and the project, if approved, would be completed by Early Summer 2023.
Lastly, Council will hear a presentation about making the Mayor's Commission on Racial Justice and Equality permanent.
- One of the recommendations in the Mayor's Commission Report is to make the Commission permanent.
- The proposed permanent Commission will have 15 members who will be appointed for four year terms.
- It won't have power over specific programs, but will be tasked with providing input to the council and Mayor's Office on issues of racial equity, and will be required to create an annual report about racial equity in Lexington each year.

🏘 - Task Force on Neighborhoods in Transition
📺 - 6 :00pm on June 22 via Zoom
📍 - Digital
📖 - No Agenda avaialble
🗣 - Give input via Webinar
🔦 - Highlights:

The Task Force will discuss the results of its public engagement survey, which can be found here.

Wednesday, June 23

🏡 - Planning Technical Committee
📺 - 8 :30am on June 23 via Zoom
(Webinar ID: 918 9417 5074; Password: 948361)
📍 - Digital
📖 - Read the Agenda
🗣 - Give input via Zoom

🏡 - Transportation Policy Committee
📺 - 1 :30pm on June 23 via Zoom
📍 - Digital
📖 - No Agenda available
🗣 - Give input via Webinar

🏡 - Rural Land Management Board
📺 - 3:00pm on June 23 via Zoom (No meeting link available)
📍 - Digital
📖 - No agenda available
🗣 - No input process available

Thursday, June 24

🏗 - Planning Commission Public Hearing - Work Session
📺 - 3:00pm on June 24 via LexTV
📍 - Digital
📖 - Read the agenda
🗣 - Give input via Zoom

💰 - Council Budget Retreat
📺 - 3:00pm on June 24 (no watch link available)
📍 - Council Caucus Room
📖 - Read the agenda
🗣 - No input process available
🔦 - Highlights:

Council will discuss the process of allocating and expending $122M in American Rescue Plan Act Funding. It's a lot of money with a lot of restrictions, so we'll have our eye on the direction council goes. As an aside we're very interested in how they'll include residents in the process.

💰 - Council Meeting
📺 - 6:00pm on June 24 via LexTV
📍 - Council Chambers
📖 - No Agenda available
🗣 - Give input in person
🔦 - Highlights:

While the docket has not been released publicly, we know that the contentious issue of banning No-Knock Warrants will receive its final vote in this meeting.
The ordinance banning the warrants passed through Council Work Session 9-6, but it is unclear (if not unlikely) that it will pass on this vote for a variety of reasons.
If you want to provide your perspective now is to do so at the meeting itself.
Here's some more info:
- The proposed ordinance originally required Police Officers to wait 15 seconds after knocking to enter a home unless there are "exigent" circumstances.
- The ordinance was amended remove the 15 second wait time and instead to allow Police Officers to wait a "reasonable amount of time" before entering someone's home.
- Don't feel like you know enough? Read our primer on the issue or these four articles from the Herald-Leader:

Friday, June 25

No Public Meetings

🏃 Get engaged

🚨 - No-Knock Warrant Ban
🏃 - 6:00pm on June 24 in City Hall

This week, Council will make its final vote on the proposed ban for no-knmock warrants. If you want to provide input, this is likely your last chance.

How should you provide input?

The best way is to show up at the meeting. Its at 6:00pm on Thursday, June 24th in City Hall. Here's what you can expect when you give input in person.
If you can't show up in person, take a moment right now to email council your feedback on the issue.

Don't feel like you know enough about the issue to provide good input? Read our primer on the issue or these four articles from the Herald-Leader:

💰 - Knight Foundation: Building resilient city budgets: a guide for city practitioners
🏃 - 1:00pm on June 25 via Webinar
🙋 - Register here

Want some great info on how we can build a more resilient city budget? Check out this panel from the Knight Foundation and Cityfi.

From Knight:
"This year, Cityfi brought together a cohort of five cities to identify new revenue generation opportunities, cost reduction measures, and inclusive and resilient budget allocation processes. The Budget Resiliency Planning process, supported by Knight Foundation, helped leaders from each city work to leverage equitable frameworks and strategies for the rebuild and reopening of their communities.

On June 25, we’ll hear from leaders from three of these cities — Macon, Ga., St. Paul, Minn, and Philadelphia — as they share their experience, lessons learned and tips for city practitioners in similar situations. We’ll also hear from leaders from Cityfi, who used lessons learned from the Budget Resiliency Planning program to build a playbook for city leaders to use as they approach similar issues in their work."

🏘 - Coalition for Livable Lexington Event

The Coalition for a Livable Lexington is hosting a virtual event on Wednesday, June 30, at 12pm about three zoning laws (ZOTAs) on Parking Reform, Accessory Dwelling Units, and Open Space that are making their way through City Hall. The Coalition will provide information on the details of each ZOTA and will share their perspective on how they could help Lexington work towards a more livable, accessible, and affordable community.

Register for the event at bit.ly/livablelex.

📰 - Media accountability in a world of disinformation
🏃 - June 22 at 7:00pm
🙋 - Register here

Check out this panel from the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists, supported by our friends at the Knight Foundation.

"How can Americans identify and combat the growing amount of misinformation? How can the media be held accountable to address disinformation? In this special session from the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, a panel of experts will explore."

Watch the Panel here.

🍃 - Rethinking Open Space
🏃 - Give input here

Do you have opinions about the quality and availability of open spaces in Lexington? The Division of Planning is helping Lexington 'rethink' how it prioritizes open spaces, and is gathering input after it's proposed change to our Zoning Ordinance was released in May. Learn more here.
🅿️ - Rethinking Parking
The Division of Planning has put out a call for community members to help gather data to evaluate the current parking situation in our city. Learn more and take the Parking Survey here.