Land Development & Transportation Committee - Regular Meeting

thrilled that Louisville is once again hosting the ISCO Championship. Since the ISCO Championship's been coming, back when it was in Lexington and in Louisville, $1.2 million of charity has been left in the Commonwealth for charitable causes. And that's a great thing about the PGA Tour, is the charitable impact they leave in every city they visit. There's only 35 cities in this country that get the honor of doing this, and I'm proud that Louisville is one of them.

I just felt like since it was such a community space, I wanted it to be something that unites us all.

Behind us you'll see Louisville's very first flood wall mural, which is an exciting step for our city. We've seen cities all up and down the Ohio River and other river cities with really successful flood wall mural programs. So we're really excited for the first opportunity to collaborate with MSD Louisville and Waterfront Park. to contract with a local artist to do a composition on this section of the flood wall right next to the new play port. So the river is why we're here.

It goes all the way around Louisville and it is a part of all of our lives.

It is quite an honor and it's much more than just a painting or much more than a mural.

It's been a new view on Louisville and how much damage the flood did and how important these flood walls are. surprised at how far over it's fun to paint them but i really love that they are a solid protection for us there's a lot of greens up there my daughter hannah has been a very key influence in this whole project and she's she's helped me along the way including getting trained on the lift it's been a fun project to do with my daughter it's called a pilot project i've learned what pilot means it means working out all the bumps but um i think that Now that we are on this side of it and the mural's going up, all of the problems that we've come across that we had to solve, I think that that will mean that going forward there will be more opportunities for other artists to also create works on the flood wall of their own choosing. I'm looking forward to that too. There's plenty of flood wall.

In this, we have a warning so that they know before that fine is issued. But at the same time, we didn't want to discourage them from having live music. We are a city of tourism and music, and that is as true in Norton Commons as it is along Bardstown Road, as it is in many other places across our city. And so we really did come to a pretty good consensus around what would make sense from that perspective. One of those pieces is setting a standard or that decibel level that is the standard unit for measurement of sound. What that also enables is for us to begin the process of how we might enforce against vehicles, which during the course of this process we discovered was one of the real issues that happens in all of our city. This bill does not identify the specific mechanisms for doing that enforcement, but does create a legal framework for doing that enforcement. So I'm going to stop talking there, but that's where we came to this is a broadly agreed upon set of rules and regulations by all of the stakeholders after a lot of engagement.

All right. That's helpful. Thank you. Councilwoman Chappell.

Thank you. Just some questions about how this would be carried out. First off, I'm curious in what a sound level measurement device is, how much one of these costs and how many of our Louisville officers will be outfitted with one of these devices. because the legislation says a code enforcement officer, Louisville Metro police officer, ABC control officer, any employee authorized to enforce this code of ordinances, which that last bit seems a little ominous, but given those three previous departments that I mentioned, we're looking at 1,500 people.

So I think, if I can direct it, or do you want to? Unless. OK. So I think, sorry.

Well, I was just going to say, I've got a bunch of questions. But is it OK if he answers this one? Sure. Or do you want me to unload them all? Sure. OK.

OK, so because of the way that this technology is changing and technology is changing in general, we decided to leave the decisions around the specific equipment to be used to the department to decide how those were distributed, what they believe will hold up in court, is really the standard that we should allow them to have with the recognition that there is a decibel level involved. So there are cell phone-based decibel meters, but I think the key piece is, and again, who is actually going to do this enforcement would dictate who gets what pieces of equipment, but again, we have faith in the departments to make that decision for themselves.

All right. but there isn't, so all of our Metro departments will be using a free decibel reader on their iPhone?

That is not in any way what I said.

Well, they exist, but I mean, how much are we talking? One of these costs $20, $100.

There's a wide variety of equipment that we're going to allow the department who we have trust to choose for themselves what pieces of equipment, as long as it is a decibel based system. the department should be able to choose exactly the system. I don't feel like from our perspective, not being experts, we should be the ones to decide that. We just need to say, this is the enforcement threshold, and then they'll decide what pieces of equipment specifically they would want in order to have that hold up in court.

So I have a little experience in the area, and sound is extremely hard to quantify. And measurement devices range anywhere from a free app on an iPhone to tens of thousands of dollars worth of equipment. So I agree, let the people that are doing it decide what level of equipment they feel like they need.

Sure, I just think that that's a really big difference in if we need five of these at ten thousand dollars each that's fifty thousand dollars and does that mean each department gets one and then how do they decide and how that's used i just think that you know of all the things we scrutinize for money i think that this is well deserving of that um the 50 feet is that as the crow flies or based on how you would get there via

A sound wave?

Public right of way.

It would be a straight line.

Straight line. And this does not apply to residential or vehicles.

It does. It does.

Both of those?

Yeah.

Okay.

There's a list of all the stuff it doesn't apply to. So it doesn't apply to events. It doesn't apply to, I mean, there's a lot of pieces that it doesn't apply to, but it does apply to residential and vehicles. Okay.

So one of the things that we're really, that has kind of reared its head, I guess Churchill Downs is doing some sort of construction on their property and they're trying to, as I assume, get it done before the fall meet and the construction has been going on through the night. We've gotten a lot of complaints from neighbors. Page nine, It says, section eight, that noises resulting from any and all transportation, blah, blah, blah, construction operations at any time on right-of-ways and noises from situations which may occur on private real property, including parking lots deemed necessary to serve the best interest of the public and protect the public's health and well-being. And then it continues on. And that looks like it's an exemption. And so, you know, that being private property, and there's a lot of noise coming from it, and I don't know if they have obtained some sort of waiver to bypass noise complaints in the evening, but without understanding how that works, I would be hesitant in understanding how this legislation would help solve that issue.

Yeah, this is, so one of the, that is not an intended exemption to my understanding. So this is, we did not alter that piece of the, so you're looking at,

So it says exemptions in section 99.03, and if you go to the page nine, section eight, it lists that as an exemption. There's actually quite a few exemptions, and so I'm just curious in, you know, how this would address a problem that we're actively dealing with.

Yeah, this is not intended to address that issue. So I'm totally happy to entertain something, but this is not intended to address construction.

Okay, as I understand it, do you want me to get back in?

Councilwoman Chappell, I'm going to ask you to get back in the queue. Okay. Thank you.

Councilman Ratcher. Is this the Highlands Bar issue? Would that be fair to say this is a big part of it?

I'd actually invite my colleague, Councilman Reed, to speak to that, because we also had a discussion about this, if he could speak.

All right, what was the question again?

Can't hear you. Sorry, he said, is this just a Highlands issue? And I was just inviting you to, I guess that's not a very good question.

No, no, no, no. It's not, it's not only a Highlands issue. It's a, it's a Northern commons issue. It's a St. Matthew's issue. It's everywhere.

So, and this will be my last one. I promise. You make, You call the 911 or someone, or hopefully non-emergency police, and they have to bring out a machine and listen. And if they do, they'll go cite the person. Is that how it'll work?

I mean, I think often. Do you want to? You go ahead.

like mr chair if it's okay sure so i'll give you real life experience from my early 20s where i had a bar and we would play live music and a phone call would come in from a neighbor saying hey the music is too loud at xyz bar or establishment party so on lmpd or abc will come out and and do a reading before they even notify the establishment that they are there and determine whether or not to cite or warn the said establishment or residents to the issue, and then we will follow the court's process in that regard. So whether it's, this is on Dixie Highway, so it has, it's not singular to Barstown Road or a singular area. I think this is a holistic issue across the board and how we can accommodate and make sure that our businesses are taken care of as well as our residents, so.

Well, good. I like the bill. Thank you.

That's one of the best.

I just want some clarification on the enforcement. Two examples in my district I'm going to use is we get a lot of calls for illegal... chop shops where they're grinding and cutting and doing this all hours of the night and the other would be someone that i don't know starts music playing at five o'clock in the afternoon but it's blaring and goes all the way till three four in the morning the repeated response that we get is we call the police they never come they never respond so Is this going to be enforced, I guess? I guess we're at the mercy of seeing if they respond.

Yeah, so again, this goes back to making sure that we are in communication with our director of ABC and establishing this, this is what this, this strengthens the noise ordinance complaints that we may have. So in the reference of a chop shop or, or someone blaring their music at a residence until three in the morning. This is to address these issues by ordinance of the noise ordinance with the decimal readings, et cetera. So whether it's somebody welding at midnight or somebody playing rock music. So this helps address that.

So to clarify, the responding party would be police for those two issues, not ABC?

The enforcement mechanism is alcoholic beverage control.

Okay. Okay.

But for the chop shop, it probably would be LMPD. Yeah. Yeah.

Okay, thank you.

Vice Chair Herndon. Yeah, I wanted to follow up on a question about vehicular-based noise. Are you expressing trepidation that this, did I read that correctly, about vehicular-based noise, that you think this can be done?

I do believe that this can be done.

Okay. I'll share a recent experience this past weekend, just to get your opinion. Sitting out at an outdoor bar, having a drink with a friend, and three different times during the hour, we had to stop talking because a loud truck, music, and a motorcycle without a muffler. this would, how would this be applied to address those issues?

So right now, the ordinance reads that there, it's harsh or unreasonable noise at a distance. What we're doing is setting a decibel level to that. What that enables is, the ability to decide how to do that enforcement. One mechanism that is available to us and one that I hope we will utilize is the ability to do automatic enforcement around the noise levels for vehicles. So there's some technologies that are available that let us say at this distance, this car, this time, And then what we choose to do about that is us to decide as a city, but this is the first opportunity for us to enable that even possibility. And I will echo, I was sitting on Bardstown Road late at night. This was a Bardstown Road issue on Saturday, sort of monitoring a lot of other issues. But I'll tell you what, there were a ton of vehicles that were blasting music and racing down neighbor streets that right now we can't do anything about. And this is the enabling legislation for us to be able to begin to do that. And that, when we've talked about this in every part of our city, people are really tired of the vehicles that are disturbing our neighbors.

this was before dark because it was even late so uh but but citizen x and y sitting there as i was can do what at that moment is it how does that how does this kick in and at that moment there's probably not much to be done but if this is an area where this is regularly an issue we can then put a monitor there and then decide okay are we going to issue

warning letters are we going to issue citations they're in violation of the the ordinance at that point and so how we do that enforcement again is up to us but this creates the legal mechanism to begin to do that enforcement which currently we don't have thank you okay just a housekeeping issue we still have one item left on the agenda after this so councilwoman chapel um

To echo what Councilwoman Bast was saying, when we get noise complaints, we hand them over to LMPD, but sometimes they're ABC, but LMPD doesn't really do much with them, and it just turns into a cycle of the person offending, getting a complaint, offending, getting a complaint, and nothing is ever resolved with the issue. And so... I think that where I would like to see this cleaned up is identifying who is responding to noise complaints and how they are handled. I also, the bit about vehicles is so interesting because it sounds like it's gonna be targeted enforcement similar to what's going on right now on Bardstown Road late at night and not to beat up on Bardstown Road, this is a citywide problem. you know, automatic enforcement when it comes to vehicles is a term that was just used and I don't understand if somebody's gonna be sitting on the side of the road like a busker with their little sound measuring device and their camera ready so that when a loud vehicle goes by that they're, oh God, got a 90 decibeler and then they take a picture and then issue a citation and is that person from ABC or are they with LMPD and do they have the capacity to do that and are they doing that at daytime, are they doing that at nighttime? Who gets to decide that and what area of Louisville Metro do they do that? I just think that this doesn't, I think it's well intentioned but it really truly doesn't solve the issues that we get all the time. And with that, I don't feel comfortable with that not being identified, and then also the mysterious nature of these sound measuring devices and identifying what those are, what their capabilities are, and what standards are around them. Because like you said, they vary in price, but I'm sure that they vary in their abilities or their accuracy. And so I would like to motion for a financial impact statement on this legislation.

Does that require a motion? So we have a motion to ask for a financial impact statement.

Second. Can I ask a question about that?

What? I just asked if we needed a motion on that, and it's called yes.

What's the financial impact that we're concerned about?

The cost of the equipment to measure the sound.

And what department will be handling these, how many they'll be handling, and what hours they will be targeting noise suppression.

I mean, there's no requirement in this legislation that anything be done. That's an executive function. It's not our function to, this is not something that has an immediate budgetary requirement. The financial choices around how to buy that equipment sits with the executive.

I'm going to put a pin in that for just a minute. We have a motion. We have a second. So I'm considering this as the debate on just this motion.

Sorry, I should have gotten in the queue.

No, no, no. You're good. Because that directly pertained to this. Did you have anything else?

No, I mean, there's no financial impact of this per se. This ordinance does not obligate us to purchase equipment. It does not obligate us to choose. I mean, it does identify the agencies that have the capacity to enforce this very clearly, but it does not say this one has to do that because that is not the function of the executive or the legislator. The executive has to decide of those agencies, who are they going to equip, how are they going to assign, what they're going to buy.

and they can come to in the budget and to do that but this this ordinance does not directly require any of those things all right councilwoman chapel sure one could also argue that the resolution to accept the louisville metro tree master plan also does not have any actionable items and gives a framework for louisville metro to grow and maintain our tree canopy therefore

Any point of order? Mr. Chair. Oh, sorry.

We're making motions to get a financial impact statement on something. here that has nothing to do with, there's a personal thing going on there about something else in a different committee.

Point of order, I want to make my point because it has relation to financial impact statements in the legislation before us.

I'll allow it, I think it does. But I would ask that you keep it concise.

Absolutely, because I was also going to give another example in a massage ordinance. Yes, it would be appropriate for a department to come in front of us and ask for permission to spend money to enforce legislation that we have passed, yet we didn't see that with the, I think it was $50,000 that was given to it. that ABC decided to dedicate towards the enforcement of that legislation. That did not come before us. That was at the behest of that department head. So I think that it would behoove us to understand what potential implications this law has, even if there are not any forthcoming. And I also don't understand why we would pass something just to give somebody a tool that they may or may not use when we're clearly sitting here saying that this is a problem.

All right, so we have a motion before us to require a financial impact statement. Hold on.

Let me just let you know, it passes unless two-thirds people say it does not.

Okay, it takes a two-thirds majority to pass?

No, two-thirds to stop it.

Okay, two-thirds to stop it. Okay, all right. Yeah, that is written weird. Let's do a roll call.

Councilman Benson, this is on the motion for a financial impact statement. Yes or no, sir?

No.

Councilwoman Bass. I got you. Okay. Mr. Chair, you have two yes votes, six no votes.

So does it pass or not? Okay. That's some weird math. Okay, so we are back to the original motion. I have no one in my queue. So the vote is on the original motion of the amended legislation. Thank you for those words. And let's do a roll call vote on this.

Councilman Benson, this is the final vote for the amended legislation. Yes. Thank you, sir. Councilman Bratcher. Looks like he's thinking hard, okay. Mr. Chair, you have seven yes votes and one no vote.

All right, motion carries. This will go to Old Business. Now do we move to resume? Is that how we get this feedback?

You're going to take a motion to return it to the table.

I need a motion to return. I have a motion. Second. Second. So we're picking back up and Councilman Reed.

Can you hear me? Take a vote on returning it.

Vote to return to the.

Aye.

Everyone say aye. Those opposed? Motion carries. Councilman Reed, you have the floor.

Can you hear me better now?

Yes.

Great. I'm going to let Laura speak to the changes to the ordinance. Thank you.

both at Metro Council and sort of in between Metro Council and today. It does a couple of things and I'll just sort of, because it's in the system, I'll just sort of summarize. It will delete the for commercial purposes that was put in at full council. It'll take that back out so that we're not looking at content. It will put in a requirement that before issuing a citation for a first offense, that there shall be a notice of violation, and then after that, they may be authorized to do a citation, or for future violations, go to a citation or a notice of violation, but for that first one, a notice of violation is required. Another provision is that while section two, which is who can remove the signs, and expands who can remove the signs, would take effect when Metro, the normal way, passage, end up becoming law. Sections two and three would have a delayed effective date of December 1st. And then finally, this was an issue that had been raised at full council. is there's now a definition for a non-profit organization, which is something that would be organized under 501 or 527. Those, if they got to a citation, would have a reduced fine. So instead of the 250 to 500, it would be the 10 to 50. And there's some language that was added about how for these for-profit organizations that mere removal of the sign and the smaller fines is, less of a deterrent. And then to be a nonprofit, that would include political organizations and political campaigns under 527, as well as any number of nonprofits and advocacy groups that are registered under 501. From an implementation purpose, once you go out and do that first notice, the notice doesn't say a fine or an amount, so the officer could consult with our office and we could confirm whether they're registered under 501 or 527. So by the time the citation came, that fine can be determined.

All right. Thank you. It's helpful. Can we have a motion to amend? Someone can move to amend? I have a motion. Do we have a second? I feel like an auctioneer. Second. Thank you. Have a properly formatted move to amend on the floor. Any debate? I don't have anyone in my queue. Anyone online? All right. This is a voice vote. All those in favor of the motion to amend, say aye. All those opposed? Motion to amend.

What is it? Oh.

Okay, motion to amend carries. Back to the original motion. Have anyone to speak? No one in my queue. And this is a roll call vote.

Council Member Benson?

Yes.

Mr. Chair, you have six yes votes. All right.

Motion carries and we'll go to old business.

Oh, I'm sorry. You have six yes vote and one present vote. Sorry.

So we'll go to old business. Yep.

Thank you.

All right. No other items on the agenda. So we will stand adjourned without objection. Thank you.

And I just want to point out that this investment is so critical to so many organizations. These are those organizations that create that