Week of March 14, 2022

Mar 13

By: Gillian Stawiszynski

Coffee & Campaign Finance / Lexington Police Department Gets License Plate Readers / Get Engaged / Updates from Last Week / This Week in City Government

🔎 - Big topic this week: Coffee & Campaign Finance

It’s election season - and that means campaigns and candidates are out raising money. We’ve had a number of people ask us about campaign finance in local races, so we’re hosting a workshop on how it works!

Join us in our office this Wednesday morning for fresh coffee, donuts, and all the answers to your campaign financing questions!

Some questions that should be answered during the workshop: Where do candidates get funding? What are they required to tell us about where that funding comes from? How much money is in each campaign? How do they use this in their campaigns? CivicLex’s Director of Programs, Megan Gulla, will be on the fourth floor of the Pam Miller Downtown Arts Center to walk us through the details of campaign financing.

Where & When: Wednesday, March 16 at 8am at the Pam Miller Downtown Arts Center, 141 E Main Street

Head over to Facebook to let us know if you’re coming!

🔎 - This week in City Hall: Lexington Police Department gets License Plate Readers

At this week’s Council Work Session on Tuesday, March 15 from 3-5pm, Assistant Police Chief Eric Lowe will present a new policing technology in Lexington— License Plate Readers (LPR), which Lexington is deploying in partnership with the National Police Foundation and the LPR manufacturer.

LPRs capture photos and collect data from license plates to compare to LPD-approved “Hot Lists”, databases that alert Police Officers about stolen vehicles, known wanted criminals, and repeat DUI offenders. They will not be used for red light detection. Any vehicle on a public road, or that may be seen from a public road, does not have privacy from LPRs.

A new policy will see LPRs placed throughout the city “based on our violent crime patterns.” Lexington’s NAACP, ACLU, and Human Rights Commission expressed concern about the placement of cameras, and the Lexington Police Department took this feedback into account when designing the policy. Privacy is also mentioned multiple times in the policy.

Police officers are forbidden from using LPRs or their associated data for any personal purposes and they must provide a reason for searching the data in a professional capacity. It also states that LPR records are deleted after 30 days.

LPR records may be released under a few conditions: For police officers to use with lawful reason or if there is an open records request. All non-law enforcement requests for records will be released only if there is an applicable law to allow it.

Join this meeting in the Council Chambers of City Hall or via livestream.

Read the full policy in this packet from pages 46-50.

🏃 - Get Engaged

Gallery Hop Data Walk: Systemic Racism in Lexington

This Friday, drop by the CivicLex office during Gallery Hop for a data walk exploring sobering data about the impacts of systemic racial inequities in Lexington. Hosted in partnership with the Lexington Public Library and Blue Grass Community Foundation’s One Book, One Lexington Community Reads featuring “The Sum of Us” by Heather McGhee.

You can RSVP on our Facebook.

When and Where: Friday, March 18, from 5-8pm at 141 E Main Street.

Learn more about On the Table

Do you want to host a table for On the Table, but you're not exactly sure how it will go? Don’t want to host, but want to participate? Join our planning team for a quick virtual conversation about how you can have a role in shaping Lexington’s future.

When: Wednesday, March 16 at 6:00pm.

🗞 - Updates from Last Week

Bipartisan Infrastructure Law

Last week in the Council Work Session, Brandi Peacher, the Mayor's Director of Project Management, presented an overview of how the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law (BIL) applies to Lexington.

The BIL funding will be distributed through three processes: Competitive grants, direct federal spending and formula grants. Formula grants will be automatically distributed to Lexington’s Metropolitan Planning Organization and direct federal spending will go directly to federally designated organizations and projects — but they could later turn into competitive grants that LFUCG can apply for. These two are mostly out of council and administration’s hands. LFUCG will put its primary focus on applying for competitive grants.

Peacher emphasized that this will be an entirely different process than ARPA. LFUCG will not be receiving a pool of money that they must organize and deploy themselves. Instead, as we mentioned last week, council and administration have to work together to create a Capital Improvement Plan. This is a requirement if LFUCG wishes to apply for BIL competitive grants and will be done prior to exploring all of Lexington’s projects.

LFUCG also needs to set aside its own funds for cost matching. Peacher said to apply for any grant, LFUCG is required to cost match at least 20% of the grant, but they must go over that 20% to be competitive.

These applications will only be open for five years. It could take 5-20 years to fully implement improvements, with some grants requiring the funds to be deployed by a specific year. These five years are necessary for council and administration to get organized and create their strategic plan for choosing different programs to fund with competitive grants.

As always, we will keep you all in the loop on LFUCG’s progress on this process.

Overdose Prevention Update

Amy Baker, Substance Use Intervention Program Coordinator and Scott Luallen, Overdose Prevention Coordinator presented their updates on overdose prevention and recovery programs in Lexington at last week’s General Government and Social Services Committee meeting. In our agenda summary from last week, we went through how they’ve done with their program goals and details of its funding.

In addition to applying to the next round of funding from Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA), LFUCG administration will receive money from a settlement with AmerisourceBergen, Cardinal Health, McKesson, and Johnson & Johnson, for their role in manufacturing, selling and distributing opioids.

This settlement totals $26 billion and Kentucky’s portion is $483 million. This money will be spread out over the next 18 years and has to be shared between the Kentucky state government and Kentucky’s local government.

🏢 - This Week in City Government

Monday, March 14, 2022

Board of Adjustment Meeting
⏱ - 1:30 pm on March 14th
📍 - Video Teleconference
📺 - Zoom
🗣 - No public input

———

Tuesday, March 15th

Council Work Session
⏱ - 3:00 pm on March 15th
📍 - Council Chamber — 2nd Floor Government Center
📺 - LexTV
🗣 - In person

———

Wednesday, March 16th

Greenspace Commission and Trust
⏱ - 5:00 pm on March 16th
📍 - 660 Eureka Springs Drive
📺 - No virtual option
🗣 - No public input

———

Thursday, March 17th

Lexington Industrial Authority Board
⏱ - 9:00 am on March 17th
📍 - Conference — 23th Floor Government Center
📺 - No virtual option
🗣 - No public input

Corridors Commission Meeting
⏱ - 12:00 pm on March 17th
📍 - Video Teleconference
📺 - Zoom
🗣 - No public inputd

Planning Commission Work Session
⏱ - 1:30 pm on March 17th
📍 - Phoenix Building — 3rd Floor Conference Room
📺 - No virtual option
🗣 - No public input

Council Meeting
⏱ - 6:00 pm on March 17th
📍 - Council Chamber — 2nd Floor, 200 East Main St.
📺 - LexTV
🗣 - In person

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Friday, March 18th

No meetings

Megan Gulla