City Council - Regular Meeting

If everyone will stand, we will call this city council meeting to order.

We will ask Councilwoman Ms. Brent to lead us in the pledge. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. You may be seated. Council, I want to remind you that your mics are, it's live now, so just make sure you got that. Be careful when you're breathing, sneezing, so on, it picks up. So this will be the last time we have to use this press. Good evening and welcome to Georgetown City Council and the new renovated Georgetown City Council. It's the first council meeting we've had here in three years. So it was good that we'd be back home and I'm glad to be out of jail and actually be up here somewhere safe. So that being said, we're here to conduct business for the city of Georgetown. And we'll go with the, uh, agenda as written and madam clerk, if you will call the roll.

Yes, sir. This is welcome sprint here. Mr. Chris here. This is Hamburg present. Mr. Hampton here. Mr. Minky present. This is Leslie Mitchell here. This is tingle same same. Mr. Stump here.

Thank you, Madam Clerk. Item number three, on the approval of minutes, August 10th, 2026, special city council meeting. At this time, council, I will entertain a motion to approve the minutes.

So moved.

All right, motion made by Ms. Hamrick, second by Mr. Hampton. Are there further questions and no comments? All those in favor of this motion signify by saying aye. Those opposed say nay. Item number four is going to be the receipts of the check registry. Councilor, you should have received it electronically. If you have received that, please show by raising your hands. Let the record reflect that all has received. Next item five is public comments. On public comments, you will be able to come to the podium here. Please say your name for the record. You will have four minutes in which to express your concern to this council. Madam Clerk will time you at three minutes. She will let you know that one minute is left, and then you will have one minute to finish that up, and then at that time, she will tell you time's up. We ask that you, at that time, take your seat and be respectful so others can actually do that. Uh, according to the sheet here listed, uh, Theo vinegar, uh, number nine agenda.

Uh, so good afternoon council.

Uh, I want to speak about item nine and the reason why I feel that this needs to be addressed. Um, I am, and I do support affordable housing, and I'm not against it, the development, but I'm against the city using taxpayers' money for it without significant input from the citizens here in Georgetown. I know for a fact, I went out last night in that area, spoke to some individuals, and they're not aware of any of this going on, so that concerns me tremendously because we as city council individuals, our whole platform is that We support the people of Georgetown, right? They're taxpayers. They pay us. That's the reason why we sit on council. We answer to them, to the taxpayers. So that being said, the other thing is that secondly, I believe our focus should be on creating opportunities for affordable single family homes. That's what our citizens want. And that's what we need in our communities. I know that for a fact, I mean door knocking probably on 10,000 plus homes. Since March. So, yeah. I mean, since May. So I'm sure that this is what the people in Georgetown want. And I feel that we still need to table this, not to make a decision on this tonight, until in some form or way that we do better communication with our citizens here in Georgetown. Because that's the whole thing. They're the taxpayers. They're our constituents, your constituents, who you should be representing and listening to. And I feel that needs to be done. And it's not communicated properly because they're still saying, in this area, they know nothing about this. Some of our individuals in this area are elderly or they do not. They're not social media swabby. How are we going to communicate with them better? Why can't we send a letter out to them to communicate? Or we go to their homes, knock on their doors, talk to them about this and what's going on in the community. So I'm just asking you all as council that you all table this. Let's look at this a little bit further before we make a decision on this and move forward tonight.

Thank you. Thank you. I am. This is Kathleen Adams.

I moved into the tradition apartments at 80 Falls Creek Drive in 2018. At that time, the apartment complex was owned by a sole proprietor who lived on premises. Unfortunately, the complex was sold to Park 12 management out of Louisville in mid-June of 2026. The point of my story is housing affordability for renters. The sole proprietor accepted personal checks for payment. In other words, renters had a free option to pay rent. The new managers have no presence at the facility. There is no on-site office. and all rent must be paid via a third party at a cost to the renter. It's $2.95 for a check and $8.95 for debit card. Now $8.95 a month amounts to a rent increase, unofficially, of $107 a year. I brought this affordability issue to the attention of Cadence Whitehouse, City Director of Affordable Housing. She listened. She said she'd look into it. She took my number and never called me back. So I called her twice and left voicemail messages and still never heard back. from her, okay. As Georgetown and Scott County continues to grow, and apartments spring up in this area around town, just like fast food joints everywhere here, the city council has an opportunity to do something unique in Kentucky. pass an ordinance requiring landlords to offer renters at least one free option to pay rent. Seven states, including California, Texas, Illinois, New York, Connecticut, Washington, and Virginia require a free option to be available to renters. In the coming weeks, I will be reaching out to all of you regarding the best way to move this issue forward. I hope I will have your support. There are a lot of voters in my apartment complex. Thanks.

Dan Holman, uh, affordable housing strategy.

Dan Holman, Georgetown. Yeah. So also related to affordable housing and this agenda specifically number nine tonight. Um, and also related to communication and, strategy and talking about things. So this project has come up that you all are being asked to decide about on a deadline. And so there's a couple primary questions. Like one, just from a communications standpoint, why did we not have this conversation months and months ago? There really is no reason. And could they explain that? Why was it so secretive? And kind of at the expense, it was discussed about other projects that other people wanted to talk about, other strategies. were literally kind of shut out, like certain people. A council member indicated that last time. The housing authority director, he can speak for himself, but I spoke to him any time. He kind of felt shut out. And I mean, other people feel shut out, like the lady who just spoke before me can't get hold of the affordable housing director to talk about a simple question. So do you all feel shut out? Do you all feel like you have stakeholdership in affordable housing strategy? What would you like to see? Okay, then specifically just about this project, I think something that came up last time, you all need to make sure that you understand what you're voting on. There were some things that maybe weren't fully communicated accurately regarding this donation. It was kind of painted, and it seemed to be a selling point to many of you all that, oh, well, there's a benefactor developer willing to just give a philanthropy donation. And I think some of you all last time were convinced that there's this donation going on. It seems like this is not a donation. There's nobody giving away money. The developer in question will make... This is a very profitable... Low-income housing tax credit developments are profitable ventures for developers to do. Sometimes it's more profitable to do these than... So yeah, I think you all need to understand about... donations and look at the contracts. What are the contractual things that's going on? There's multiple nonprofits being set up, something in Ohio, something in Indiana. Who's going to be on the board of directors of these nonprofits? It kind of seems like one strategy is. These two developers were given this inside treatment to Georgetown City employees. And just by the way, the city employee, Devin Golden, who kind of gave this inside conversation over the past year without letting you all know, did used to literally, while she was a city employee and while this other gentleman was on the city council, she was living in his house, like his family home, where he grew up. and where his daughter currently lives. And some people have said Devin Golden almost views David Lesby as a second father. So there's sort of an appearance. That needs to just be cleared up. We don't want appearances that one developer was given an unfair treatment in order to get a foothold into the affordable housing market in Georgetown. Because that's what they'll get, like Woda and Lesby Wells will get a foothold as being the developers who do this, and they'll do it again and again, where other developers weren't invited into the conversation. So the cleanest way to handle this, and David in fact said himself he thought the city should have bought this land from the beginning. The cleanest way to handle this, buy the land from David Lesby, then the city owns the land. $300,000 that you're being asked to give to this project through the sewer. And that would be your purchase of the land by the land for $300,000. If David is so generous, he only paid two 50 for it. That would be a good deal for him. And then you all could donate the land or that would be the cleanest way. So why can we not just do that? And I'll leave, I'll leave it at that. Thank you. Donna Christopher.

Thank you for your time. Kind of left my notes, so I'm going to go off the top of my head. I think the affordable housing thing is a good thing. And my thing is, do the people from Georgetown be recipients of it? Because I see as people flood through the Boston area, they coming from everywhere. So do the people of Georgetown be recipients of this? And my thing is, why has everything got to be back over in the Boston area? You can't flood Boston area, and we see all type of people. different, all kinds of, I ain't never seen the likes of people in all my life, so you think you're gonna stick them over in our neighborhood and Georgetown's not gonna have to deal with it? They're gonna end up on your front doors, your back porches. So I think that the whole thing need to be screened for different type of people. I know we're trying to help the unfortunate and this, that, and the other, but I don't think it's good to stick them all over in our area because we deal with it every day. So my thing is how y'all going to deal with it in y'all's backyard. So, you know, it's on that. But also is how can a person sit on some boards and know the banks and know the loan officers and sit in places and be able to have authority, seem like to me it's a Ponzi scheme or something. How can a person do that? Sit on the great boards and know the builders and know the loan officers and just critique what all goes in Georgetown. What goes on in Boston affects Georgetown. So we've been asking for a community center over a recreation center for years. Ain't no money, but we got money to do all of this. We can help people with drug addictions. We can help people homeless. But what about our teenage kids? What can we do for them? That's my thing. Can we do something for the teenage kids? I mean, basically, y'all going to turn our center into a daycare. So we're still leaving out the generation. I mean, we're really trying to help somebody, help from the heart. It's not about making money off of something. some person that's at a disadvantage, help them. Don't, I mean, you do it from your heart. It's a business. Georgetown belongs to us as citizens, as taxpayers. We ask for things. It ain't nothing happening, but you can come and set all this other stuff over here, and we got to deal with it. So, like I say, I think it's a positive scheme. I really think it's against the law, really. But, It goes on and nobody says nothing about it. So I'm just saying, when we gonna get in on the game? When we gonna, I remember Boston being a community that we didn't have to leave our community to do nothing. We had grocery stores, we had clubs, we had restaurants, we had all different kind of things. Now it's just a housing market. It's more to Boston than that. We was a sub. Okay, it was a sub economical development. it is not just a housing market institute housing there we want to see the business to we'd like restaurants we'd like gas stations we'd like all this stuff too well where can we get in on the game s that's my thing so i'ma sit down that's all i got all right

Thank you. Next is on the events calendar for fin application. The first one is 6A, the Georgetown College Community Involvement Fair. Nobody here to talk about that? All right. 6B, Thrill to Give.

Good evening. I'm here to represent the Parks and Rec Dance Program. Tonight is the first night for dance, so here I am. You get me to answer questions. But it's the annual Thrill to Give Parade. You probably know it as the Thriller Parade or the dance down Main Street. It goes to benefit the Amen House. Again, it's through our Parks and Rec Dance Program. The proposed date is October 17th, with a rain date of the 18th. The setup time was 4.30, and we'll have it torn down by 9. The dance itself and the music will be from 6 to 9 p.m., so it won't go later than that. We're expecting... 1,000 people to be there. It usually has a really good crowd between the participants and the spectators. So a few booths of vendors that won't compete with the downtown businesses, no alcohol, any of those things. So I'll answer any questions you have.

All right. You have heard the request. At this time, I will entertain a motion.

Motion made.

Motion made by Ms. Mitchell. Do I have a second?

I'll second.

Second made by Ms. Brent. Are there further questions and or comments? All those in favor of the motion signify by saying aye. Aye. Those opposed say nay. Thank you. Item number seven, mayor comments. I have a couple of items to talk about. And then first of all is 7A, the fire chief Seth Johnson's is 20 years of service. And I've got something for him here. And I'll come out here and I'll read it here. The opinion here says, this certificate of achievement, this certificate is proudly presented for the honorable achievement of 20 years of service. Chief Seth Johnson awarded this 24th day of August, 2026, and it's signed by me. So 20 years of service, and I got a pen to give me. Thank you. I appreciate that.

I'll say something real quick. Thank you for that recognition. I'm not great with public recognition, but I do want to say, I appreciate everything, all the opportunities that the city of Georgetown has provided to me and my family. So thank you very much. I think we're next up if we want to.

Yeah, I was looking forward to sticking you, but I guess I can't wait until next time. All right. Next on the agenda is the fire extinguisher prop presentation.

Uh, yes, sir. Mayor counsel. Thank you again for this opportunity this evening. Uh, so I'm going to turn it over to our fire prevention team here in just a second, but yes, this is our newest fire extinguisher prop. And the reason why we're here tonight is this is a tool for our community. It's a resource for our community and we're just trying to get this out and about. And so with that said, like I said, our fire prevention chief assistant chief of fire prevention and will it, we have our fire Marshall, Corey Thomas and fire inspector, Billy Calvert, and I'm going to hand it over to them.

much said everything I was going to say. So our old fire extinguisher prop was falling apart. It took propane. It didn't always work. We weren't able to get out to the community, the schools, businesses. So we purchased this with the idea that we can take this anywhere indoors and teach people about fire extinguisher safety. So as you can see, it's burning. It doesn't create any heat, but it does act as a You guys can see it. He can actually change it to different types of fires digitally, and then Fire Marshal will demonstrate how we use the fire extinguisher. Pass, pull, aim, squeeze, sweep.

Now he stops. It took him 64 seconds.

Try it again. Reset it. Try it again. And then don't put it all the way out. So this can be real life. Like if somebody doesn't put it out correctly, it will actually flare up again. So we can really teach people how to use it correctly. How to... Or, and this thing will actually run out of stuff, too. So we can say, hey, you've already used one extinguisher. It's probably time to get out. Call 911. Always call 911 first. So it's not heat. It's not smoke. It's as real life as we can get. We can bring this to the community. We've already brought it to the college. And we're going to try to bring it out to some businesses. We'll teach some of the city entities. And anybody here that wants fire extinguisher training, please give us a call. Thank you.

Thank you, Council.

Okay, next is Council Committee Report Finance. Thank you, Mayor.

The Finance Committee met in a special Finance Committee meeting on August 17th, 2026 at the Georgetown Police Department Community Room. The Finance Committee was all present as well as the Mayor's staff. The minutes from the July 2026 meeting were read and passed unanimously. The third item on the agenda was the Stockyards Bank Certificate Bank renewal, deposit renewal, sorry. Finance Director Clark reminded the committee about a certificate deposit set to mature on September 14th and presented options for renewal recommended by the bank. Motion to recommend renewing the CD for 15 months at a projected rate of 4% APY was made by Committee Member Leslie Mitchell, seconded by Committee Member Jenkins, and it passed unanimously. We received a revenue update for the top three sources of revenue, payroll, net profits, and insurance premium. Shared information with the committee about 10-year major revenue trends from 2017 to 2026. Payroll tax revenue for 25-26 appear to be trending around 5% ahead of 24-25. Net profits appear to have come in under... projections by around 900,000 in insurance premium collections are relatively flat from 24-25. Committee Member Jenkins, we talked about employee compensation discussion. Committee Member Jenkins proposed a higher pay for our 911 dispatchers to improve staffing and retention based on recent feedback with other city salaries in review for staff feedback. Committee Chair Hampton inquired about exit interviews as a tool for staff feedback. Committee Member Lesby Mitchell identified the need to review benefits as part of the total compensation package. We discussed the capital projects update for 25-26, and Finance Director Clark walked the committee through the 2026 capital project list. Number seven on the agenda, the finance department updates. We talked about transition of duties and the 2026-27 goals for the finance director and our new assistant finance director, which Stacy will talk more about tonight. Thank you. And we adjourned at 9.04.

Thank you. Next we have the next will be public works.

Thank you, Mayor. We called the meeting. that was at the Public Works Department out on West Houston Way. All members were present. The minutes from the July 15th meeting were passed. We then went into the engineering department updates. West Main Street sidewalks, the TAP grant out to Elizabeth Drive is in the design phase, which will amount to public meetings and obtaining right-of-ways. The Washington Street sidewalk projects and preliminaries plans and will be sent out for bids. The Main Street sidewalk, which we are on the last block working on it now, which is across the street in front of Cravens, that section of Main Street there. Next was the Sims Road landfill, which I believe is on our agenda for tonight. To give you a heads up on that, there was an attempt to clear some of the piping out there and There's issues with it, so we're going to wind up having to replace approximately 900 feet. Excuse me. As street paving and city hall paving, which city hall parking lot has been paved, and the street list for paving is out. 503 storm channel, the easements are out, and they're in negotiation for easements. Stormwater, Indian Hills project Public Works is taking on several of those projects and in the process of completing those the speed tables for traffic issues on the identified streets is going out to bid process as is the Lexus sorry Royal Springs stormwater which is New drains, storm drains in the park need to be moved and there will be a change order coming on that. And then the CCTV clean out contract is going out to bid. The next thing that we discussed was two parts. One was the leaf compost and salt storage. We will be looking at building areas out there at the Public Works Department. One on the south side of the office in which the wood chips and leaf compost can be stored out there. Rather than searching around for a new place, we have a spot right there that can work and do just fine there. And then we discussed possible salt storage building on the north side of the office out there, which most of the trucks will be leaving out of there anyway, so they can leave out of there and not have to drag equipment all the way across town. to Jackson Street. We'll potentially still keep salt there but we'll be looking at a building. There was a motion that was made to go ahead with Eddie or to allow Eddie and Robert Bruin to go ahead and start working on some designs for that and it passed and we adjourned at 5.05.

Thank you. I'm going to alter the agenda tonight. I'm going to now take up item number 11 on your agenda, and that's the Lanes Run Business Part Joint Resolution, and A, and then also going to do B also, too. Thank you very much.

Good evening. I'm Mike Hockensmith, President of Scott County United. I want to give you a little background first. Scott County United has invested in the development of three pad-ready sites on Enterprise Way at the Lane Runs Business Park. The purpose is to have site-ready and infrastructure-ready land for prospective clients. The expenditures of our Scott United funds is part of our strategic plan to be sure we have a product for both new and existing projects. To continue the overall process for the short and long term, it is imperative that we recycle these funds for the future. Scott County United is respectfully asking for reimbursement of our actual expenditure and infrastructure cost, which was $283,749. This reimbursement will come from the sale of these pad ready sites. These sites are all in phase two, which any sales in that phase go into a fund for future maintenance of the business park. So these do not come out of general fund budgets for the city and the county. I have one example. We do have a contract on one of the pad ready sites, 35,000 an acre for 154,000. The employment using current estimates is 100 employees at $40 an hour. which is a payroll number of $8,320,000, which would mean $83,200 to the city and $83,200 to the county for occupational tax. There'll also be property tax, and we don't know at this point what net profits may be, but there may be some net profits there too in the future, I would assume. There'd also be a small amount of ad valorem taxes. We're all aware that doesn't generate a lot income for the city or the county. So this is just the first site. What we have talked about over since we did this was that as these sites sold we would be refunded this money. So we would hope to be refunded from this first sale $154,000 minus any expenses for the closing. Any questions?

Yes. First, let's get a motion first on here. Do you mind taking a motion? Second. Second by Mr. Stone. Now, is there any questions?

Yes. The $40 an hour figure you gave, does that include benefits? No. No. No.

I'm not in a position to discuss where the numbers came from, but no, that was straight hourly wage. That's straight hourly wage.

Okay.

And generally, in these companies that we are presenting, This one here, if we can already see the contract, at $40 per hour with benefits at 60. So it kind of tells you about the declines we're getting right now as a result of some major changes, certainly at the plantings and other places.

Okay, thank you. All right, are there any other questions? Mr. Crisp.

Yeah, well, first off, good evening, Mike. Thanks for joining us. How does repayment to Scott County United look if the lots were sold individually instead of all together?

They are being sold. We have three sites, and this is just one of the three. So the second one, we'll repay everything owed to Scott United, about half of that second one, basically. And then the other half and the third one will be free to go back into the funds for maintenance of the business park and future development. Yeah. You will come up here, please, sir.

Thank you.

For informational purposes, I think in your package, you did anyway put in a drawing map. You now have a map. And so the first one we sold was 4.4 acres. We have another 20,000 square feet that's right around 4.4. There's another one that's 40,000 square feet that's on Scott would like to purchase at some point in time. It was not original. And the road there would be to access that land as well as go back onto Enterprise. So that's about 12 acres. Take off the road, another 4, 4.8, something like that. So does that help you?

Sure does. Thank you.

Are there any other questions? Thank you. OK. All right. Motion's been made. Properly second. Any other questions? All those in favor of this motion for this joint resolution, signify by saying aye. Aye. Those opposed, say nay. Item 11b, municipal order.

Sorry. Just for clarification, so this will now be referred to the Scott County Fiscal Court, and they will take up a vote at their next meeting.

Thank you. Adam 11B, municipal order, land sale contract, NAICS code 238290, ringing, tentative pending, outcome. Okay, so anyway.

So, Jack Connor with Scott County United. I'm going to give a copy of the contract that's signed and the earnest check in the amount of $13,800. This is for 13.8 acres. You should have a map in your packet. I'm going to give you another map here in just a second. It's going to show you almost all of it. This is in Phase 3. So as you all know, phase three is not complete yet, but our timeline is that it will be finished by October. We had a meeting on site last week, so October is the date. This is two proposed 80,000 square foot buildings on that 13.8 acres. It is, as the NICS code said, it's a rigor. So let me, what I'd like to do is I'm gonna read to you from the NICS code, just so that we have a clarity on what's going on here. The client proposes, provides comprehensive solutions for relocation, installation, and position of industrial machinery and equipment. The company regularly supplies new equipment installations, facility expansions, production line changes, production modifications, and other capital improvement projects. Now I think those two paragraphs I want to kind of tell you what this is. Development of a new facility in Georgetown is being designed to accommodate their current operations while providing the infrastructure necessary for future expansion. One building 80, second building 80 is the expansion. What I just read to you is that this company is not located here. This company will be located into our community. They will maintain their operations where they are right now. I'm going to go on and read. The shop areas will provide dedicated space for company-owned equipment, tools, rigging equipment to move material, equipment, et cetera, project materials and other resources used to support field activities. The facility will also accommodate project preparation, equipment staging, pre-assembly of machinery and equipment before installation at customer locations. That's really what they do. This company has been doing this for 29 years. So they're well accustomed. They not only work locally at a large manufacturer, but they also work in other locations. The company that we presented to you the last time, LG Fox, also is one of those that do things locally, but also work in other places like Volkswagen, et cetera. This is a Kentucky incentive program, which is why we do the NICS code to try to give you a, because of the but for clause. The application, excuse me, the contract was approved by the Business Park Authority last Friday unanimously, which is a part of our process. Then we go to the City Council for approval of the contract. KITVA will be meeting on Thursday. I've seen the application two or three, four times. It's my hope that it will be on Thursday. In that case, it becomes public, who the company is, the job creation, et cetera. I can tell you this. As I said to Mr. Hampton, we're in the same range there. Now, just a little brevity here.

I'm doing this on purpose to let you know a couple of things. To the audience, I'm sorry.

Thank you.

What you have here, other than that, this is phase three. So you'll see that I footprinted for the client the two 80,000 square foot pads. You'll notice below that, on the south end, I've padded a footprint of additional 55,000, 55,000. So we have an active client looking at that site right now.

The one on the far left, the 250,000 plus a 50, I also have an active client there.

I'll hear something on the 250, I'm comfortable sometime in September. The other one... I've been in communication with them as of Friday and, um, I feel like the presentation, we, we did a joint presentation with commerce Lexington to this client and they had a site and I had a site right now. We're, we're the only site that that's, uh, that's crappy. The point I wanna make is that we have active sites. We have active customers. We're doing the best we can to create. as we were instructed to do, is to create jobs, create good jobs, good, well-paying jobs for the purpose of not just for Toyota, but for others. This 55, these two 55,000s, not automotive. So I'd be more than happy to answer, and I could go on forever, as you well know, but I know you have a longer agenda. I'd be more than happy to answer your questions.

So two quick questions, Jack. Sure. First on the two 80,000 surfeet, will that come off of Enterprise or Endeavor?

My intent is to forecome. We haven't named that cork, by the way. Yeah. It ain't Connor Gord. So it ain't. My hope is that it will come off of Enterprise. And on those two, the plan that I have seen is go to the second one, come back around to the back, and they would load in and out of the back. The landscaping and offices would be in the front and down the new road site. If you'll notice also on the bigger map you have, because we have a residential neighborhood, we have a 100-foot setback, not just the normal 50. So we want to be very, very cognizant of that. Those trees will remain. There's like 100 feet of trees. But that is my intent not to, even though I know core controls, UPI, top tier has entrance off. We're trying to stay away from that.

Then the second point I just wanted to make was given the activity that you're seeing and the potential that you're already showing with Phase 3, that we're very quickly running out of available land. for continued growth in manufacturing-related businesses.

I ran the numbers this morning again. If you take out the 32 acres where Blue Run Spirits was gonna go, which we consider more of office technology, et cetera, leaves about 110 acres. That's about it.

110? That's it, yeah.

Wow. And we are, Mike, myself, others are looking at other options to see what we can do. Thank you. Yes, sir.

All right. You have heard the request. At this point in time, I would motion. Motion. Go ahead. You got it. Okay. Motion made by Mr. Hampton. Second made by Mr. Stone. Are there any questions and or other comments?

Yes, sir. Yeah. Just one quick one, Jack. After these three lots are set, what's the plan for selling the rest of the lots? Just, is there a general, you know, are they all being advertised now? You're already, okay.

Yes, Commerce Lexington in particular, the regional, and second, but more importantly, thinkkentucky.com. Think Kentucky is where everything is on. I don't care whether it's Georgetown or, it doesn't make any difference. If you go on thinkkentucky.com, go to building insights, you'll see the three pad readies, you'll see Lane's Run Business Park, you'll see C.J. May's property. That's the best way. Almost everything I get, 90% comes through the economic development cabinet.

Okay. Okay. So you probably do that 90% plus, uh, do you ever list with like crack C and some of these other national, no, usually don't have to probably. That's correct. Okay. Great. All right. Thank you. This map's great too. Thank you.

All right. Any other questions, no comments, all those in favor of this municipal order for the land sale contract. signify by saying aye. Aye. Those opposed say nay. Now we're going to get back to the regular agenda. We're going to get on item number 9A, affordable housing and homeless prevention. Now, what we're gonna do here is a little bit is that we had a work session on last Thursday and talked a little bit about it. And the reason why we put it back on the agenda, because I think more discussion needs to be taking place on this particular item, as you well, we have people got up to speak about this and you heard from Walter Cooper and you also heard from Mr. Lusby and you hear some other people that's on this particular project. So at this point in time, I ask that some people from my staff to actually give some information so that more information that was not maybe given to you on Thursday to kind of enhance a little bit. So Candace, it's only going to come up to give you information only, maybe some new information, maybe that was found out or whatever. And then after that, I'm gonna ask that Chase gonna come up because he's gonna talk about the, maybe hopefully about what GMSS with the, on their issue or what their concerns or actually just talking about what their input is gonna be on this. Ms. Whitehouse.

Mayor, would it be appropriate now for me to recuse myself? Thank you.

All right.

Same here, Mr. Mayor. Okay.

Can we use this door?

Yeah. That's the scapegoat. I mean, that's the scapegoat. if you want to make sure that door is shut or something. Hopefully they're not in the way. Okay, Ms. Whitehouse, go ahead. Thank you.

Okay, thank you all. I appreciate you all's time and energy last Thursday night and all the questions. Definitely helped me know what I needed to look into. I did want to start off just by kind of briefly going over the ask one more time. I think... Sometimes we can get lost in a big project and not exactly focus in on what the ask is. What is the step that we are on right now? And so I wanna go over again that Woda Cooper and Northern Elkhorn Investments are coming to us to help support a grant application essentially. So they are going to apply for the low income housing tax credit And they are asking us to support a piece of this development. And while it is hopefully going to be a three-phase development in the full extent of its life, we are only speaking about phase one today. That's the only one that they can move forward with at this time. And phase one is those 60 apartments. and I did email out the numbers of those apartments to you. I know one of the things that some folks asked about was the breakdown of what those apartments look like, and so hopefully you got that. If not, I know that wasn't that long ago. Thursday was not that long ago, but we do have a variety of one bedroom, two bedroom, and three bedroom, and then each of those have a breakdown of 50, 60, and 70% AMI, so the average median incomes. So there will be a sort of guarantee that that income range is being served by that development. And then they also will include 10% of their units will be disability accessible. This is something that they're required to do. They're actually only required to have 5% of those units be disability accessible, but they, as Woda Cooper set a standard of 10%, 2% of those units are gonna be used for communication accessible for individuals with hearing and vision impairments. So that's the breakdown of the units that I think was asked for, and it was sort of given during the meeting, but I wanted to make sure you all had it in front of you so that way you could reference that. But again, the 60 units is what we're talking about right now. And the ask of the city is to support this grant application and give the 300,000 towards the pump station that Chase will tell you more about in a minute. And so after this step, whether you vote, well, I guess it doesn't matter whether you vote, but if you hypothetically voted yes, it would not then break ground tomorrow. The application would have to be submitted, well, Georgetown Municipal Water would have to also support the grant application. Then the fiscal court would also have to support the grant application. And then they would put in the low income housing tax credit application. We would hopefully receive that. And then that development would walk through all of the normal steps that developments walk through. They would go through the planning and zoning processes and everything that Woda Cooper typically does. If they were to come into this community without asking us for assistance, they would go through all the steps as if, as they are a developer. And so I wanted to lay that out there because I know one of the concerns last Thursday was traffic and roads. And that is something that's part of the planning and zoning process is evaluating, do they need a traffic study? Will this be able to, will this development be supported by the roads that are already in place? That is all a part of that process that they will be walking through. And I know Holden's here and has told me he's happy to clarify on that if you all need clarification on those steps as well. Another piece of information that was talked about last Thursday that I wanted to talk more about was a tenant moving into these apartments has to be in the 50 to 70% AMI range so that their income has to meet this range. And it technically can't be lower than this because then we don't want them to not be able to afford their rent and set them up for failure. So income meaning that it could be a voucher or any kind of assistance they're receiving, but they can in some way afford this rent. And they cannot be over this medium income because we are servicing this range of income. once that person moves in and is qualified they can better themselves they can get a better job they can get another job or go back to school whatever that looks like and they will not then be penalized for bettering themselves i think maybe it was lost maybe in the communication last week This is a really big positive for folks who are trying to better themselves. Something that I have learned a lot about in my work day to day but then also research is there's something called a cliff effect and folks who are on different assistance programs like maybe they are in the Housing Authority or maybe they are on food stamps or childcare assistance or whatever that assistance is, they start to better themselves, they start to get raises at work. They, those assistances fall out from underneath of them. And sometimes it is detrimental to the way they can pay bills. And so I know personally in my last life, my last job, I've sat with a few clients who have denied a raise because they would end up making less money and not be able to pay their bills if they were to accept that race. And so to feed their families or to, um, be able to afford their rent, they have stayed at that job at that level. to avoid the cliff. And so by not penalizing someone for bettering themselves, we are helping them to move forwards and to not experience, at least on the housing level, that cliff of, well, I made more money, but now I don't make enough money to afford this rent increase or whatever the cliff is. And so I did wanna speak to that a little bit. I do believe that when people better themselves, they want to look for a newer apartment or maybe start looking into purchasing a home because they can save up money or save up for their kids to go to school, whatever that thing is that they are now getting out of that cycle. And so I think it's a big positive that that is the way that the low-income housing tax credit program is set up, that it benefits people to better themselves. I also sent you the lease that Woda Cooper uses. It is, I think, 90 pages, so I did not print those out, but I'm happy to print those out. You should have to give me a heads up, my printer does not love large documents like that. So if you would like to review that, I reviewed it and it does look like a typical apartment complex application process. And so that is in your inboxes as well. I think I would like to just challenge you to think about, uh, this affordable housing project. Alone a standalone that this project is one of many that we can do. Um, there are lots of ideas on how to move forward in growing our affordable housing units here in Scott county. And we, um, will hopefully have lots of projects going on soon in the near future. but when you're thinking about just this project and looking at what can benefit our community in 60 very nice affordable housing units, I think would be a benefit to the deficit that we have in rental units here in our community. I think Chase wants to talk about the pump station.

and I sent you all those documents. I have them to you late this afternoon, but I gave them to you. And if you want a hard copy, just email me that you want a hard copy and I'll get that to you. Now, I asked Chase to come up and he's gonna talk about the station that's there and some of the issues with that and that you're talking about and how this project will help aid that particular project, correct?

That's correct. Thank you, Mayor. I'll do my best to answer any technical questions about the sewer component of this project, which is, I think, as I understand it from our discussion Thursday night, it's a critical component of the application. Candace, please correct me if I state anything wrong here. But to kind of give you that, let's start with just a little bit of background, and let's go back seven years ago, 2019. The utility completed a capital improvements program, and we identified two projects. They're really one, but we split them apart. We identified two projects in this area. One would be an upgrade of the construction Billy Perkins pump station, which is very old, very small. It's a one site only service area pump station. And that serves the, I don't know what the, I guess, complex or property with rental units at the end of Payne Avenue. And so that would be the northeast end of Payne Avenue. And then, so that would be an upgraded pump station that was identified. Then we also have a another pump station that we could eliminate one street over again just a pump station that serves only one site not the most efficient thing but both of these pump stations are very old really they need a complete comprehensive overhaul so the pump station that serves the elm street apartments we would eliminate that pump station reroute that flow to gravity by a gravity sewer to the Billy Perkins pump station then we would upgrade that so those are two identified projects that need to happen those are going to happen within our next few budget cycles if I can keep them running that long it may be that I can't and I have to bring you an unbudgeted project but that's the age and the wear on those pump stations that we're seeing so Now I'll try to tie that to what's being discussed tonight. Last Thursday is the city has this decision before you, and it is on this property that you're aware of the property, the North Elkhorn Investments. and that is in that same area, but currently I cannot serve that property with sewer. It would be an un-sewered property. I cannot tie any flow from that property into these older pump stations. I can't do it. They're already at that point that I'm, I'm already worried. I've already got a collection supervisor that's after me over, uh, the fact that they're not in the current budget, but I can't add any flow to those. So I believe as the application, what what's being discussed is if we went ahead and committed to those is that, um, that we would fund a third. And I guess the ask was put out that as part of the participation to make the application more. uh, attractive as I'm sorry, there's not a better term. Um, uh, but if we're more competitive that, um, the County and the city would participate, uh, each funding roughly a third and, and, um, the developer, uh, as we treat every other development, They said, you know, how do we cost this? And I said, well, as any other developer would have to do, you'd have to pay for an engineering analysis. So they did a preliminary, a planning level opinion of cost, and that's been shared with us. And I think that is what is in the application that we would fund as kind of the community contribution. think I understood from Thursday night from the presentation is that funding from the fiscal court, the City Council, and from the utility is repaid, is paid back over a term. And I would That's what I think I took away from it, but I would ask you to check that with the project representatives and Candace Whitehouse to make sure. I believe that's kind of a high level explanation. I wish we had screens that I could show you the mapping. essentially is our identified project is elimination of one pump station with a gravity sewer and upgrade of another pump station. And if the city chose that they wanted to be a part of this to add this to the service area of this property, what we would end up with is eliminating both of these older pump stations via gravity sewer and build one new pump station in a location that could serve all three of the service areas, the new area and the two previous currently served areas. So with that said, I'll stop talking, and I'm happy to answer questions.

Questions? So one of the questions that I had asked Thursday was, what about water supply infrastructure for this site?

Water supply on the, I'll say the bottom of the property kind of does this, and on the southeast side edge of the property, we have a 16-inch main that parallels the property, and then on the southwest, we have an eight-inch line, so water will not be an issue.

Any other questions?

Yes, Mayor. Chase, could you go over the costs associated with this? If the project doesn't go ahead, you say you'll upgrade one,

and replace the other okay can you can you talk about the cost of doing that versus the cost of the third third share so the project that we identified in 2019 i said we broke it up into two costs and we had those sorry i'm Shifting through here. The rebuild of the Billy Perkins Station, and this was just for new pumps and a new panel. We had that at $91,000. Then the gravity sewer to eliminate Elm Street Pump Station, we had that, I believe it, ninety six thousand dollars and that's twenty nineteen dollars less change since then especially in all of our materials uh... and those were kind of bare bones what could we do that's just a pump station a pump up upgrade in a panel upgrade and then it is 215 feet of gravity sewer. What I think we'd be looking now, six, seven years later, is that we would require, just because of the degradation of the infrastructure, we would require a more comprehensive project than just those two. We have not done that cost estimate, just if we wanted to keep this just to serve those two existing service areas. I don't really have a number for that, but I would guess that it'd be in the vicinity Let me jump ‑‑ if we wanted to build a new pump station to serve the expanded area for this project, the engineer, their estimate came back at $996,000. I think you could ‑‑ if we ‑‑ and that's a July 2026 estimate versus a 2019 estimate. $996,000, just under a million dollars. I think if we were doing this project by ourselves, we would eliminate some of the gravity, sewer, and force main costs. We'd be looking at a smaller pump station because we wouldn't be servicing that additional acreage. I'm just a total guess. I guess you'd take off $250,000, $300,000 for us to do that project on our own.

That is correct.

That would come out of our rate revenue.

Any other questions? Yes.

I want to ask Candace some questions.

Before you go to Candace, I've got one for Chase. So with the other potential property that's around this area that's not been developed, what impact or what future impact would be necessary to develop that area? Would it flow towards this pump station or does it go a different direction? It's the property across the railroad track.

That would go a different direction. My mapping cuts off right at the railroad, I apologize. Because it's an island. I could look at that and I could get you some information on where that flow would go, but it would not go this way.

Because I guess that's kind of the whole point is, okay, what about any other future development in that or redevelopment in that area that would impact the pump station?

I'm guessing... that that would flow a different direction, and even if it didn't, a railroad bore is so costly that I would have to believe bringing flow from that side via a jack and bore under the railroad, it would be cost prohibitive.

And then there's property going the other direction as well, along the creek.

I believe that could be served by the existing gravity sewer on Payne Avenue.

Mayor, I have a question. You said Candace is going to talk about the payback details.

I think somebody. No, they will talk. I can give you project specific details. I can't. I don't really know as much on the application.

They will talk about the payback. That's why they're here. Okay.

Thank you, Jason. Candace, the other night it was mentioned that you and Devin have been on this from the get-go. How long have you all been talking about this?

I met Woda Cooper a couple of years ago.

February of when? 24. 24. Okay. Not saying it's your fault or anybody's fault, but why wasn't we given a heads up? Something says, hey, this project may be coming. Why were we not? Because we were hit with it last week, and now we've got to make a decision a week later. There's not a whole lot of time in there for doing our due diligence. How come we weren't given a heads up?

And not lastly, I'm going to, I'm going to answer that right there. I'm going to talk about that. Like I said, you know, their job was to go out and look to do due diligence, looking for housing there. This wasn't the only group of people they talked to. They've been talking about housing all for the last two years on different aspects. Now, uh, judge coverage and I had. had a conversation with them when they introduced Walter Cooper to us. And from that point on, that was the last of the conversation. Now, they brought this to us on Friday. And I agree, the timing's not very good. But we didn't find out to everything until they brought it to us. And for me just to say, OK, water coop was talking to us about a possibility of a housing but there was other people with and also came to us to talk about housing too but i want to make sure that they had information that we could share if they could answer any questions or if there was questions to be asked the they could answer it at that point in time so yes the timing is not very good i get that but that's what happened it was not the is not on our staff or anything, okay?

Like I said, I'm not blaming anybody. I'm just trying to figure out, you know, if we could have had just, hey, We've got several that are looking at projects that may be building here, here, here.

Once again, though, I could come to you and say, okay, we've got somebody we're talking to. We're talking to this group here. We're talking to this group here. All I'm telling you is I'm talking to somebody. I don't have information to give you that you can say, hey, here's what they'll bring to the table. This is the information that's being brought.

Was the Housing Authority consulted on this at all?

Um, I, so Rick Tony left, if you know that, but, um, yes, I had been meeting with him and we'd been keeping each other updated on projects that we were working on. Um, but then he left kind of suddenly a few months ago. Um, so, uh, but yes, I've always, I'm trying to stay in contact. I've met Malia now. Um, and she seems very knowledgeable and will hopefully take the housing authority to the next step. But I do try to stay in frequent contact with them so that way we can be on the same page. While we're not, we don't work for each other, we work together on a common goal.

And one thing to contact about the housing tour, you talk about two different entities here because the government right here and there are certain requirements that you have to meet with HUD before HUD lets you do anything. And so that's what the thing is. So you just can't go out and say, I'm going to build onto the Georgetown Housing Authority. You have to make sure that it's OK, it meets the parameters of what HUD requirements are. And their requirements, as you know, when you deal with the government, is very extensive, and it's sometimes painstaking, and it's long. And so we have to wait for them to give us, and I'm on that board, okay? So I'm one of the commissioners. And I do know it takes a long time. And we have to make sure that we're trying to ensure that everything with Georgetown Housing Authority is in, what we're doing is correct, and then we're able to one day hopefully be able to expand more using this and products like this.

Mayor, can I expand just a little bit more for clarification on the, what else, what suddenly allowed all the pieces to come together was a legislative act. Is that correct?

I'll let them come on up and talk about that. Okay. So I think that's a question they can answer.

Tammy Stansbury, senior vice president, world of Cooper companies. Uh, yes, we did have these talks two years ago. And at that time it was just a concept. We didn't have a plan in place or anything. We just came, presented ourselves to Devin and Candace and said, look, we're very interested in building affordable housing in your community. Here's a little bit about us. They did their homework. They vetted us out. I think it took them six months and they vetted us out. We came back again the following year. And I think again, at that time we met with mayor Jenkins and the other County judge executive. And again, we just had a concept. We didn't have a plan in place. Uh, as I explained Thursday night, we started putting our, our plan in place back in April. Kentucky housing corporation can make last minute changes on a dime. They last minute told us that now we have to have a pre application. We wasn't expecting the pre application that was due within two weeks. So we quickly sent in our site. Then after that, we have to get a capacity application done. And that is a capacity application on who the developers are and the individuals that's going to be submitting the application. David Lesby and Matt Welch had to fill out a capacity application. It's a very thorough application as well as Woda Cooper because ours had expired. So we went.

When was that exactly?

When was that? That was due in June 14th. That was due June 14th. Once we found out now our site has been scored and our capacity applications have been approved, now we start putting... money into the actual development. We immediately had a phase one ordered a geotech because we have to find out information about the site first. Then we started talking about the sewer. We knew that there was a sewer issue and we want to talk to the sewer company. We went ahead and hired a third party to look at what the current state is of the two pump stations. And we was like, Hey, we can help with that. But it was up until right before I asked to be presented to you all last Thursday, KHC made another change. So they were asking for just donated land. Donated land was a separate scoring item that was 20 points. That was huge. That's why Devin and Candace was looking for donated land here. And there's like we as the city don't have any land. They found David Lesby and Matt Welch, who owned some property, and was like, look, we want to do some affordable housing. We'll donate the land. So we thought, OK, we've got our donated land. Like I said, then KHC came back, and with below permanent market resources, and made some changes there, and said, now we're going to include the donated land in those permanent below market resources. So that gave us a little bit more money. Well, what we need to do is because these are so competitive. I mean, I think I told you all last week they'll probably they'll probably receive over 40 some on applications and 14 to 16 applications will get awarded. It's because they KC wants cities and communities to have some teeth in the development. They say, if you all want the affordable housing and need it, then we want you all have a stake in it. So that's when they created that below permanent market resources. So then we looked at first, we thought we was going to have to have grants. and we were gonna talk to y'all about grants, but then last minute we found out that we can do this as a loan, a 2% loan for a 30-year term, and then we will pay that back through excess cash flows. So then we start, that's when we had all of our ducks in a row, and we came and met with the mayor and the county judge uh, the Friday before last was like, okay, we now have our plan in place. Here's our site plan. Here's what we want to build. We know what the geo tech's like. We know what the phase one is like. We've had our, uh, We hired to have the pump stations looked at. We have all of our pieces together. We realize this is last minute and in a perfect world, normally we presenting to you all at least four months in advance, but we was hit with these last minute deadlines through the state housing agency that was out of our control. I didn't want to come to you all with only half answers. I mean, that wouldn't look good at all. So I waited until we had all of our answers in our ducks in a row. So just to go over what the capital stack is, We are asking for 300,000 from fiscal court, 300,000 from the city, and 300,000 from the Georgetown Water and Sewer District. That's gonna be paid back in a loan that is a 30-year term with 2% interest rate. Whereas what Chase said earlier, they would have to take that money themselves to pay for these pump stations because they know they're needed. Now they're actually going to loan us money, but we're going to pay them back for that. So they're not going to be out. I think he's around $700,000. They're going to get that money back, and that's money they can go back and do other projects. So that's what we're doing here. And just to clarify what somebody said about the donated land, the donated land is also included in the below market resources. David and Matt are still donating the land. We had to have it appraised because that's part of KHC's requirements to have it appraised so that they can come up with a termination of what that land is valued, and it came back at 176,000. So now we're looking at 300,000 from fiscal court, the 300,000 from the city, the 300,000 from Georgetown, the 176 donated land, and if we are able to get wave tap fees we're looking at 1.2 million dollars that the city of georgetown is now saying we need affordable housing here here's what we're willing to do kentucky housing corporation to get this done that's going to be huge in the scoring process because a lot of communities in the rural they don't have the wherewithal to do that And I brought up last week an example, like I just did a development in Louisville. They have city home funds. They have affordable housing trust funds. They have all kinds of funds to contribute towards affordable housing, but rural communities do not. So that's why we came to you all. We wouldn't make sure we had everything in order before we presented again, we apologize. It was so late. That is not how we normally operate at all. Uh, but there was things that was just taken out of our hands.

Question? Yes. So when the Kentucky Housing Corporation changed their structure of loan versus donation, up to that point, what was the plan moving forward and when?

So our plan was to come and ask for a grant from everybody because that's how we had perceived, uh, the scoring criteria to be when that changed was like, this is perfect because now we're not asking for grant money. We're actually, we're asking for money that we're going to be able to pay back because we know a lot of communities, smaller communities, that's a big ask. So I was actually relieved to see that now we're coming in asking as this as just a loan that we're going to pay back. When, when, uh, that was three weeks ago that we found out that we can do this as a loan.

So you found that out three weeks ago. So, but that was still for the application here next week. Period.

application next week September oh the September 11th yes when we found that out that's when we I said we've got to meet with the county judge and the mayor and that's when that was on a Tuesday we met with them on a Friday and that's when they said okay we got to get this in front of fiscal court and City Council I guess I really don't understand

why we weren't having those conversations earlier and then with this recent change, that would be a great win, right? And if that's your normal process of that much advance notice, four months advance notice, I think everybody would be a whole lot more open to this and would have had a lot more opportunity for community involvement and understanding and all of that. I'm just having a real hard time understanding the whys and the timing on this.

I just want to ask about the phases. Phase one, phase two, phase three, if this was to pass. Phase three is what I'm really interested in, the home ownership. How many homes may be in?

So right now, and like I said, we just divided it quickly because... someone in planning and zoning wanted to see what the full site could potentially be but we know that there's going to be changes because we realized that after we got phase one we want to come back to the city to find out what your all's needs are right now it's 12 homes 12 single family homes but that you know none of that is set in stone for the second phase of the third phase you have to start with the apartment units you can't start building homes you can't No, because you can't build single family homes through Kentucky, uh, housing corporations, low income housing, uh, program. We are an affordable housing developer only. We don't go out and do single family homes. We build apartment complexes through this program. So that's the first phase is to get the low income housing tax credits to get this development done and then to come back and do phase two and then phase three.

Phase two is townhomes, correct?

Right now, phase two is townhomes, but like I said, if the city comes back and says we need seniors, we can do seniors. We can do whatever. The phase two and three is not carved in stone.

Okay. Mr. Stone. How did you arrive at the $42,000 limit on salary?

That is dictated to us from HUD Washington on the housing credit, low income housing credit program. Those are the fair market rents.

Okay. So if we have a lot of people that don't make that much money in a year's time, they're just out of luck? Is that the way I'm understanding this?

In a year's time.

Yearly salary is less than $42,000. They can't apply.

Not unless they have rental assistance. If they have rental assistance, then they've got that voucher to help them pay the rent. But, yeah, the starting salary, I think it was $42,000. Yes, because this is workforce housing. This is not Section 8. This is not public housing. It's workforce housing.

Workforce, not housing. It's under the guise of the housing corporation. It is low income, but it's really workforce. It's workforce. Not true low income housing.

Well, they consider it low-income workforce. I mean, because you've got a range here of your rents to go up to the 70% AMI because a lot of people that may work at Georgetown, I mean Toyota, I'm sure their salary is more than $42,000 annually.

It's not been that long ago that I retired from being a city employee after 20 years. I made $40,000 a year. And that was as a police sergeant. So there's a lot of people that would fall under that mark.

And I'm sure there is, and that's where you have the Section 8 and you have the public housing. Again, this is a different, you know, we're doing the 50, the 60, and the 70% AMIs. Okay. And on the housing credit program, the lowest you can go is 50%.

So this would be more like a diverse housing that you're talking about, because you're talking about different income levels.

Correct. We're calling this mixed use.

Okay. All right. Any other questions? Yes, Mayor. Outside of what we've discussed here as far as timelines and everything, 9D is possible action, if any, tonight. What is council's options if we decide not to act tonight with the September 11th deadline? What are our options?

So if a decision isn't made, then this deal will not be able to move forward September 11th because we have to have commitments in place and they can be contingent on us getting an award of funds. But without that, this application will not score. So we have to wait another year and then we don't know what the scoring criteria is going to be next year. Like I said, KHC changed the land donation this time. That was a standalone from 20 points to they included it. So I don't, I can't tell you what I can't predict what Kate's he's going to do next year.

Mayor, I believe his question is more towards the council. Okay. As far as... Oh, I'm sorry. Yeah, I'm sorry.

And so what we need to do here as council is have this discussion as to, you know, what is the council wants to do on this particular item here? You know, what, you know... As you all know, this is a big, big item, but yet it's an item that we're talking about affordable housing. We've been talking about it for years. Here's an opportunity where we as a council need to discuss your thoughts on this, because from there we need to decide where you want to go. I'll let you start it. Okay. Sorry.

Sorry. Um, so I think what he's asking is what decision should the council or what are their options between now and the deadline of, was it the 14th, the 11th, sorry. Yeah. Um, so you have a couple of options. So one option, um, if you all just want to have discussion tonight to talk through this, you can continue with that discussion. And if you would like more opportunities to talk, or if you need additional information, you can call other, you can call special meetings or other work sessions to have those conversations and create those spaces for additional conversation. Okay. Timing wise, you have. I don't have the calendar in front of me, but about two weeks.

Two weeks. So we would have to do... Give or take. Yeah, so we would have to... So if we decide not... If we need more information on this, we would have to call a special call meeting somewhere within that timeline before the 11th of September. Before they... and do their deadline, is that correct?

And you can call as many meetings as you need. I think Candice mentioned it earlier. There's two other decision points here, one being WSS and the other being the county. Off the top of my head, I'm not sure what the meeting schedule is for those two agencies, but that is a component that would weigh into your timeline. If you wanted to take some type of action tonight, there are multiple decisions. One could be thank you, but no thank you. one could be thank you we want to get answers to xyz and then we'll come back i don't know that tabling is the correct word but if you want to put this on another agenda we can work through that or if you decide that you would like to support this project you can also vote in the affirmative to offer that letter of support and that commitment that's being asked does that answer your question for some possible options clarification if i could

So if fiscal court and the board of the water company also need to make this application complete, because it's gonna take all of those actions We can't wait long if we are going to have a special called meeting because we have to give those other entities time to also take action.

So, uh, and I believe that correct me if I'm wrong. I think the fiscal court, I think is maybe this week. Maybe I'm not for sure. I'm not going to say what their timeline is because I will be telling you something wrong. Uh, okay.

I've got one quick thing that I want to say to the council. I know David wants to come up and speak. One of the things that I see, and I may be wrong on this, but I see us, if we vote to do this, we are opening an unfortunate door that potentially could be knocked on a lot in that if we have another developer that comes in and says well i'm doing a low low income housing project as well you loaned this one money where's my money another developer where's my money where's my money and and i think that's something we have to look at is that something that we want to that we want to get into i'm just playing devil's advocate here that i think seriously look at

I'm going to let David come up and say a minute, and then from that point on, like I said, she gave us three options here, and then we need to discuss which of those options we want to take.

David? Mayor, David Lusby. I've been in this building. I had the privilege of...

And it makes me think back to some of the mayors that I had the privilege to serve with. The first one was Warren Powers. Warren Powers. And one of the visions that Warren Powers had was to clean up all the buildings back here.

It was really bad. That was a... It took... Mayor Varney was...

and get all this cleaned up. And he liked it. His eyes lit up. He said, I like it. I like fresh black top. I like cleaning up things. Let's work on it. So we hired a real estate agent. Because things like that were difficult for us to do, right? We have a hard time getting things done sometimes. So we asked Obi-Wan to step in to help us out. And piece by piece, we managed to acquire...

And now look. Several years later. Toyota. Helen Donaldson. Toyota. On the. Toyota was quite concerned about it.

And at night, Helen Donaldson called each and every one of the city council members. She called me. And I said, Helen, the Chamber of Commerce, Jack Connor, they've had a vision, they've had a goal of a business park. I said, why don't we all go together? Why don't we work together and build a business park? And her whole tone went from kind of a solemn tone to optimism and positive. And she took it back to the plan. Kim was extremely involved in this. They took it to Japan, and they liked it. And that's where the ball started. We started with a discussion. We had a problem. And we turned it into something positive. Quite honestly, the city had to take the lead. The county didn't help us at that time. Can you imagine doing a business park without one of the other participating and helping out? We've had a lot of challenges. over the years that I've been involved. Affordable housing has become an obvious challenge. And when I was still in office in 2022, we were looking, we were talking about hiring a coordinator. And in 23, you all did that, right? You all hired Candace to come in. And then you all funded a study, a comprehensive study for the community. Paid about $50,000 to bring some expert in to tell you some of the things that you needed to do. Ironically, the things that we're talking about here tonight are the things that they had in their study. And you all know that. This is something that's been going on for quite some time. This is not a new issue. It's not. And some of the comments that I've heard tonight from some folks in the audience, they don't have their facts right. I don't want to say they're lying by any means, but they absolutely don't have their facts right. A project like this is a pathway to home ownership. Maybe they're not building new homes to sell to people, but people need workforce housing to be able to better themselves, to save money, to go towards the down payment so they can buy that home. We might not be able to solve every single problem with a Woda Cooper, but we can solve a very obvious problem that this community has. And I got to be honest with you. I've been working on this for a while. I haven't been in local government, but I still think about local government. I love this community. All I want to do is help. And I get criticized. criticized. I know.

They can talk about me.

They talk about me. Mayor, this is important.

I know, but let's remember now. We're here to conduct business.

That's right. I'm very cool.

I'm very cool. I'm very cool.

I'm a little off track now, but I'm very cool. So, Mayor, I honestly thought that this would be such an easy decision for this council to make. How, how could we not want workforce housing? I mean, we do, we do want it. There's no question that we want it, right Mayor? There's one common denominator that is the problem. I told you that I started here in 1994. Spent 29 years, that was the alpha, the omega. The beginning and the end. Mayor, this issue is more important than me. And I need to remove myself. I'm gonna step away from running for city council. The community that I love, because I think this is in your all's best interest. I couldn't give you a better project, a better group to work with. I've done 400 projects across the United States in 19 states, 800 employees. They take care of everything from A to Z. They couldn't be better. So I'm gonna step out. You all can run city government And I'm gonna ask that you do the right thing and you support workforce housing in this community.

thank you thank you david all right so we've heard from everybody on both ends of this so again we have three options here mayor that's not correct okay i'm sorry those were just some options okay you all as a council need to have a conversation based on the information that you've received and collectively you all need to decide what what would you like to do next and if that is scheduling another meeting having another conversation We can go down that path. If it's not, we won't know what the option is until you all have a more internal conversation here. Does that make sense?

Yes.

Okay.

So there's discussion here. You've heard from everybody, the pros and the cons for this. And so, yeah.

Yeah. I'll just say this. I think it's a great project.

It's something that we really, really need to do. We need to take that step forward.

As I said all along in this process, and this has happened to us before, maybe not anybody's fault, but I really, really have issues with short notification on these things. We don't have time to think about them. I really think that for the sake of this project to possibly keep it going, we need more time. I mean, I know we've got limited time. We've got the rest of this week and into next week, so we're probably looking. Next week, what's the earliest, Emily?

We can have a... You just have to give 24-hour notice.

24-hour notice.

So are you making suggestions?

Today is the 24th.

Two and a half weeks is what we would have.

So, you know, what's to say, you know, we take the information. I mean, we received information today. What, somebody, Candace said a 92-page lease agreement? You know, I haven't even had time to look through that. You know, what's that? So what I'm going to propose is we take the rest of the week and we call a special meeting for next week and we make a decision.

I'm talking Monday, next Monday.

Is that the 31st?

We can do the seventh and bump it out another week.

You can't do the seventh because that's Labor Day.

We can do the eighth. That's a Tuesday. We can set a special called meeting where we want to.

So what I'm hearing from this council here is that you still are interested in looking further into this. Yes. And so therefore, you would like for it to be more information, more opportunities for you to discuss. So by doing that and coming together with a work session somewhere along... The eighth.

Well, we wouldn't be able to do a work session because you can't make a decision in a, in a work session.

So we will have to do whatever a special call a meeting. Uh, excuse me. Thank you. A special call a meeting has to be done where we can make a decision. Have to be the one, what the eighth can't do the seven because that's labor day.

Can I ask a clarification? If we're setting a date and it doesn't work with the water companies, board meeting date or fiscal court date, then we've essentially said no to the project. So I don't want to necessarily throw this out, it's an important project to me to see if we can get enough information to move it forward.

So could we just find out, okay, when is the deadline date for both the county and for the fiscal court? Find out what their timeline's going to be for when they're waterboarding, bring it to them. So, but anyway, so we have to figure out as to find out what their timeline is, and then we can just simply, I can just give it to y'all and set you a date for a special call meeting.

I mean, we're forcing their hand then. Chase is here to advise on his court schedule if he is able to give the date.

Chase, can you give me a date for you have? Thank you.

Sir, our next regularly called meeting will be past the 11th deadline. So regardless, um, we will need to have a special called meeting. Should the city council direct us that, that you want us to be a partner in this, um, that I can take this to my board because my board's not heard about this. Uh, I have one board member here tonight and I, I certainly do not think that the board, uh, at the direction of the council would, uh, Um, not find a way to do a, a specially called meeting. Should that be what, what your direction is? So, but it, it will not be our, our next regular, regular called meeting will be the 15th.

So, so, so the water company board is not aware of this.

We haven't had, they have not had this presentation that you all had, um, th uh, Thursday, Thursday.

And so they would have that. If we said yes, the water board would have a special called meeting in order to receive this information and give their blessing.

I would, I would suggest that the project representatives come and possibly mayor Jenkins, just to say that this is kind of what the city is, is asked. And, um, really just, I think they're, um, their scope would just be more limited to the sewer portion of this and would we want to commit to that funding schedule knowing with the upfront costs, knowing that there's a repayment on this project. I think that's what our focus would be. It would not be, whether there's water board support of the project or not, it's should we be part with this application and I think that's what I would envision putting on our agenda for a specially called meeting.

There's also the request for the waiving of the TAP fees that hasn't been discussed other than being presented.

that's something else that they'd have to consider.

And what those fees would be. That was one of the questions that came up as well. Any other comments or suggestions here?

So if we want to try to, we have to be able to navigate your schedule as well as the fiscal court too. That's correct. But the fiscal court has already heard this. So that's the good thing about what we've heard. So the issue is now trying to get what you all need from us.

That's correct. And I think again, it'd be a bit of a different presentation because rather than the overall focus, your focus on what's, what's truly being asked of the water company. Okay.

So, Mayor, I think the other significant piece out of this that we need to build into this is being able to hear more from the public on their views and that probably needs to be a little more defined so that it's focused on the issues and talking about it from fact-based activity and what the concerns may be. Certainly one of the things that we talked about on Thursday was traffic and all the other potential infrastructure improvements that would have to be made as we begin to develop the first phase and then potential other phases, hopefully, to be able to handle the traffic extending bus lines or whatever the case may be uh into that area so again i think that's part of the the conversation and part of the information that was requested thursday that i haven't seen anything on that yet either okay so i think that there are many reasons why we're frustrated with the timeline

I don't see any of them as nefarious or purposeful or shady. I see them as unfortunate. I also feel very committed to workforce housing because it opens up housing at all the other levels of housing. If you, if you wiggle one level, you're wiggling them all. And so it's a unique opportunity to finally do something for housing for people who can't afford the median price of a home or an apartment even, a rent. So I want to defer to some short timeline to be able to make this happen and yet give the public an opportunity to still be able to come and speak. As many people as want to come forward to have their four minutes to talk at a special called meeting, I would assume we could allow that. But I want to make sure that we can get this done without fiscal court saying, well, look, city council didn't do anything. We're meeting on the 27th. Too bad. They're not willing to commit. We're done with this. I don't want that to happen. So what we're saying is if we put this off longer than the date for fiscal county to meet, we are saying that we are then allowing fiscal court to say yes or no to having another meeting. I think that's essentially it, and I don't know if that's a good gamble for me.

Any other, do we know when they're meeting 27, 27?

So the, the fiscal court, according to their website, apologies, I don't have their schedule memorized, but they're sending meetings. There's the second Friday of each month at 9 00 AM. The fourth Thursday of each month at 6 00 PM. And then they have a work session on the first Friday at 9 00 AM. So looking at the calendar, I believe you would have this Thursday at 6 00 PM and then actually September 11th. the deadline, they do have a regular meeting scheduled that morning.

So we could drown the whole thing if fiscal court doesn't agree to have a special called meeting because we are now delaying for decent reasons. I'm not saying they're not decent reasons, but I'm also saying this is a unique opportunity. It will be another year before this might come around again.

But I think fiscal court could, if they were so inclined to approve contingent upon the agreement of the city council, given the circumstances of why we're doing or proposing to do what we're doing.

do okay so good so in essence so what we need to do is we we want to have some type of special call meeting I like the suggestion for a day okay you met Thursday the third Thursday, the third, you want to have a special call city council. That's what kind of meeting now in that meeting. So let me make sure it put out on the agenda for a special call. We're going to have what we have discussion here. Thursday, when Thursday, the third, am I looking at right?

September, September 3rd, September 3rd is a Thursday.

Okay. And then, so let me make sure I get this correctly here. So. The suggestion would be that we have a special call council meeting on the 3rd of September, which will give us enough time for us to actually view more of the information. Also during that time, we will also have to let people know that If those that want to come and speak on this particular topic, they can come at that time, and they will have that four-minute time limit to which to talk. We'll have to put that on a specific agenda. We'll put that on the agenda. That's the only thing. That's the only thing. Allow the public to talk. Yep. Okay.

Will we vote on that day?

Yes. Yes. So then I will need, at that time, then I will need a motion. So you don't make that emotion. So the motion is that we will have a call, a special call city council meeting on Thursday, September the third, and the time will be six o'clock. Okay.

I'll second.

Uh, so motions may second by Mr. Minky. Are there further, further questions and or comments? No.

I don't know. I want you to comment. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Well, and I understand the timeframe and I, and I respect that. I really do. I just want you all to be aware that just by you all saying yes or no, we've got a lot of work on our end to do. And if we still have to go with fiscal court and with the water sewer company, we've got commitment letters. We've got to get up and going. We've got to get our final underwriting up and going and applications are due. Like I said, September 11th at noon and, there is a bottleneck if you don't get your application in earlier. So I'm just gonna make you all aware that I understand and I appreciate you all taking this and looking forward with some more meetings. But I do wanna let you know that I think our bottom line, we would have to know lease by no later than September 8th if everybody's in agreement for us to get our commitment letters together.

So I guess we need to tell fiscal court that.

Well, I could say that's another issue. But, you know, right now we more want to address our end right here. So the motion has been made and properly seconded to have a special call meeting on Thursday, September the 3rd, 6 o'clock p.m. And at that time on the agenda, a special call will be on this topic only. And they will also give some time for public comments.

information and then at that time also we'll be voting all right that probably made and second are there further questions or comments so is there a very concise summary with just the facts of what we're working on to be able to reiterate and be able to share so that the general public has something very concise to understand the issue issues and be able to speak to that if that's their pleasure to inform the council of their opinions so that we're all talking from the same page and we're not we get that out as quickly as possible to give everybody the amount of time necessary to review and digest and be able to utilize it for comments and decision-making.

All right. Noted. All right. If there's no other questions or comments, all those in favor of this motion, stand by by saying aye. Aye. Those opposed, say nay. All right. Item number 10.

Okay. Oh, I'm sorry. Open to let Tammy in. In mic. In mic.

All right, we're now on item number 10, planning, zoning, and zoning ordinance.

Um, yes, near on this item. Um, the planning commission staff is here tonight. There were some comments and questions at the last meeting related to the draft data center ordinance that's been circulated. Um, I think it would be a great opportunity to talk about it now since it's at since out there.

All right. Mr. Holden. Uh, I believe the question was asking is, I know that you all have been working with the county on a actual, uh, draft on this pertaining to, uh, the county. I think one of the concerns was from council is these unincorporated areas that they were concerned with. So if you want to give us a kind of overall a little bit about that draft or something.

So first off, very excited to be in the new council chambers. It feels really nice to be here after such a long time. With that said, a couple of months ago I was able to talk to you guys about some of the work that we were doing with Scott County Fiscal Court related to data centers. At that time, I shared a draft with this body and encouraged any feedback or comments to come this way. We continue to work with the county with that. A couple more touch points took place. We made a couple very small tweaks to the ordinance, but essentially the ordinance that we shared with you a couple months ago is still the same ordinance that we have today. The one major change that took place is we went ahead and identified which areas in Scott County did not have any soils of statewide importance or prime farmland. And that's the cap that we made. So for a parcel to be eligible, it would have to be 0% statewide importance soils or prime soils and greater than 50 acres. And then on top of that, it would need to be zoned for heavy industrial uses. We also made sure that there are closed loop water systems and that any discharge that takes place related to data centers gets treated water coming out. So made those changes with the recommendation of fiscal court, brought that to the planning commission. The planning commission had a work session related to this where additional feedback was received. And at this point, what we've done is we scheduled a special called meeting of the planning commission It's going to be held at the Great Crossing Auditorium on September the 17th. And so we anticipate hearing from the public on that night, and hopefully the Planning Commission can make a decision at that point. The question, I think, at this point is from Planning Commission's kind of perspective, is what would the City of Georgetown like to do? Recognize the needs of the City of Georgetown are a little different from unincorporated Scott County. And as staff, we're prepared to begin working on an ordinance that would meet those needs. But we want feedback from the council, and we will continue to need feedback from the community as well, specific for inside city limits.

Mayor, can I ask one more question?

Sure.

The question that gets posed to me the most by the public is, I haven't heard anybody who's contacted me that says they want a data center in any way, shape, or form, including me. But they ask, and I want to be able to give a clear answer as to why we just can't say no. Why can't we just say no to data centers and not leave any window open in any way, shape, or form for a data center? Is it because we're going to try to make it so difficult that one couldn't possibly come, but it seems like once you write something down, something will put their nose under the tent and be able to sneak in unless we just have an outright ban. So why don't we just do an outright ban?

Do other cities have an outright ban?

So, and this goes back to a conversation that we had a very long time ago. Typically the way we write our ordinances for the city of Georgetown is we list the uses that are allowed uses or conditional uses. The assumption is any use that we do not specifically permit is prohibited. And that's where we're at today. Again, many months ago when we had this conversation, there were some concerns of exactly that somebody would try to basically come in under some sort of similar use or some sort of other vague use. And so at that time, the feedback that we got is they wanted to be more specific for data centers. It looks like we're going to have a follow-up question, but basically what we're trying to do is understand that as of today, with no permitted uses, data centers would be prohibited. But it seemed like several months ago the desire was to create an ordinance specific for data centers. What we've done with the county is look for ways where if it meets all these uses and has the infrastructure and has the space and can meet setbacks and it has a community benefits agreement in place and all these different things, that if you have that Goldilocks scenario, then we do still want to at least entertain that idea. And that would have to go through a rezone first.

But if we're not comfortable for that in the city, I would like to have an outright ban.

I would, and again, at that point, I would talk to your legal counsel. Typically, when you do an outright ban, you really have to justify why you've called out that specific use separate and distinct from all other uses that you might not want. You know, and this is, I don't want to conflate the two, but we have regulations in place in the city of Georgetown right now for adult-oriented uses. If you go to our definition sections, they're pretty close to the top, just because they're alphabetical in that way. But the way those were written really were written in such a way as to protect the community from those negative impacts that can come along with those uses, while at the same time not being an outright ban. And so as we look forward to how to write an ordinance, that's typically the way that you would want to write it. And I want to go on the record, too. We don't have any applications that we've been made aware of that have come to us in this moratorium period. And we're sitting on it. We're just waiting until we get past the 17th. We're going to bring those forward. Those don't exist. I said it last time. I'll say it again, there's not an NDA on me. I've signed nothing. I can discuss this freely with you and the public. With that said, the way Fayette County and Lexington have approached this issue is they've created basically a tiered system where they've identified basically a tier one system is anything less than 50,000 square feet, and then a tier two system, which is anything greater than 50,000 square feet. And they've said, through their development regulations, that at least they're going through the ordinance review process right now, that they would entertain these smaller scale data centers, 50,000 square feet or less, and they don't want to consider anything greater than 50,000 square feet. So the short answer to the other question is, have we seen other communities do an outright ban? I am not familiar with other communities who have figured out a way to just create an outright ban. What I've seen is communities come together and figure out how they want to regulate them, where they could be appropriate, and then what protections they want to put in place to help protect their community. And so as just a couple things. I would think for the city of Georgetown, some sort of tiered system could make sense. That seems like something that could benefit the community. For the fiscal court's model, it's already a conditional use permit, which would go through your Board of Adjustment. You do have some I2 zone property, or we could foresee that happening. But for the most case, we'd be looking at some sort of rezone process, which would end up in front of the city council and come up for a vote. Other metrics that you could look to add into a data center ordinance that might be beneficial, again, for the context of the city of Georgetown, Well, we already protect sensitive uses like daycare centers and schools and require greater setbacks. You can look to tweak that. At the end of this, though, what you really want is you want a defensible ordinance. Because as I'm sure you're aware, and look to your legal counsel on this one, the moment you pass an ordinance doing anything, that then triggers the ability for an appeals process where if somebody were so inclined, they could then look to challenge that ordinance. Before you pass the ordinance, there's no legal challenge because you haven't made an action. But as soon as you do, it becomes very important that you have a legally defensible ordinance. And so that's what we're working right now with fiscal court, and I would look forward to working with you guys to craft and create.

Yeah, as a follow-up, I would be glad to have our legal counsel see if there are ways to have an outright ban that would be defensible. May not be. I don't know. I think that's an important question.

Go ahead.

So for the unincorporated areas in and around Georgetown, in order for them to actually be able to site a data center within the proposed.

Urban service boundary.

then they would have to be tied into GMWSS to be able to truly function based on capacities of other systems that are in the community right now that are not GMWSS.

So urban services proposed within the urban service boundary, the expectation is, number one, if they're adjacent to a portion of the city's limits, that they would be annexed. All of a sudden, that rezone process, again, comes in front of you guys. The other assumption is that urban level development requires urban level services. And so, yes, when we go through the technical review process, which is included in the rezone process, we reach out to other service providers to ensure that there is adequate infrastructure. This kind of conversation takes place all the time. which is what comes first, infrastructure or zoning, to facilitate that infrastructure. And so as a planner, a lot of times we'll put planning first. If you get the zoning right, it incentivizes the development of the infrastructure to support those uses that you've said we want to see in this area. At the same time, within our development regulations that we have today, the Planning Commission has the authority to deny any development if there's insufficient infrastructure at time of proposal. And so that's the other thing, and that's not specific for data centers, that's in e-development, is when we work with our service provider partners and they say, hey, we can't provide water, we can't provide sewer, we can't provide, and again, it could even be police or fire or insufficient roads. If we have evidence that shows that it can't be supported, then we have the ability to deny those applications. And that's a tool that we do utilize from time to time. But, yes, to go back to specifically what you're talking about, if it's in the urban service boundary, it's going to need to connect. If it's adjacent to sea limits, it's going to need to come into the city, and we will work through that. But we don't have any applications right now.

Right. So what are the steps, one, two, and three, in which order in terms of planning –

annexation So this is something else that's come up and it goes back to questions about timelines and so on a couple different projects that we've recently brought through we've had this kind of situation where we've Had a recommendation for rezone contingent upon annexation into the city There's a statutory limit that you have to take action on that. I believe it's 90 days and The way the Planning Commission has functioned in the past is we would wait until the record was totally complete, which would take 30 additional days after the date of recommendation from the Planning Commission to generate the minutes and then bundle that packet and send it to you guys with essentially 60 days left of the 90 days total, at which point your staff would then prepare packets, send that out, look for sponsors. Early on in my tenure, it was communicated that that just felt a little tight. And so what we've started to do is we've started to basically forward an incomplete record the day that the recommendation is made, and then basically supplement that record and close it once those minutes are provided. So you get kind of a preview for 30 days, and then you get the rest of the packet that gives you roughly 60 days, a little bit more time. Very recently, and this is for projects that we believe have no pathway forward unless they have annexation. And what we've talked about amongst my staff is just letting the city work annexation first. If we know that we're going to basically require annexation to get a recommendation, then just let, because you can do voluntary annexation, that's between the city and the developer at that point, and just let the city take that first step. And that allows you guys, within your authority, to make a determination early on in the process. Now in no way does that then supersede the decision of the Planning Commission. If the city were to annex, it does not all of a sudden guarantee approval at the Planning Commission. Again, if there's insufficient infrastructure, they don't meet our regulations. But we recognize on some of these cases, large scale nature like a data center would be. That's a great opportunity to just let the developer work with the city to find out if this makes sense for annexation. And then if it does, then we can run our process separate and that way we don't run into that concurrent timelines and you get into a question of which do you vote on first, how do you handle both, what do you do if you vote no to annexation and have to run it back over to fiscal court and then hopefully they can get that special call meeting. Uh, so that's how we plan to address that particular situation. Okay.

It, um, hold it. It just, it seems tricky because, um, you're saying on one hand that right now we, there's no way a data center could come to Georgetown. And so if it's the will of this council, that that's the way we want it, then we don't act and, and, but then you have. situations it's kind of like the wild west out there right now where people are it seems like they're coming in at different ways and getting yeah and and so you think you need to put up a barrier of some sort or some kind of really strict measure but when i hear you talk it sounds like I don't know if it's your intent, but it sounds like you're trying to say that we need to put something in place in order for the right data center to come here. It sounds like that a little bit. I can't think of an instance where it would be the right thing in Georgetown, but that's just me.

So if, if I may, I do want to, I want to take a look at our regulations just very briefly. Um, and I would actually like to look to council member Chris, because early on this process, you actually shared a couple of concerns specific to how somebody might try to find a creative interpretation. And that really spurred upon the need to create specific regulations. And so councilman Chris, if you don't mind sharing that kind of concern, I don't want to put you on the spot. But that was a real part of the early decision to embrace the idea of trying to come up with a specific regulation for Georgetown.

Okay. Somewhere in this, in this, uh, laptop, it would take me about five or 10 minutes to find a really well articulated version of what I sent you via email. Do you still have that email? I'm working on it too. Okay. I haven't opened up the wifi on here too, but yeah, essentially there were one or two, uh, One or two options regarding the zoning where it sounded like data processing was an option as one of the potential businesses that could come in one of the zonings that we did allow. So I think the data processing term might have been in both of those areas. both of those zoning classifications. So that was really the chief concern. And well, that came out a little bit better, you know, recollection now than what it was in that email. Have, have I bought you enough time to find it? I think you have.

Okay.

All right. So yeah, so really the data processing was something that I was concerned about because I thought that was just too close to be a data center and that a data center facility would come in and say, well, we do qualify as data processing. Um, and so is this allowable? So what are your thoughts on that? Yeah.

Yeah, and what Councilmember Christoph is referring to is we have a very rarely, if ever, used zoning district inside city limits called the Professional Offices District, or P1. And within that, there is a use called data processing, or computer and data processing centers. Additionally, in your business park, Mr. Jack Connor was here earlier tonight, there's a data processing that's listed as a permitted use. Typically, and again, this is staff's interpretation, the uses that that's referring to is something more like medical coding, where you take kind of a variety of data sets, put it together, and then you do analysis based off of those data sets. Data processing within your ordinance as of today is an undefined use. Anytime we have an undefined use, the expectation is that you go to the dictionary and you just look up what is the dictionary definition of that. And boring that, again, data processing might not be in Webster's, but you can use other resources like Black's Law Dictionary and other kind of things to figure out what the plain definition of that would be. Now, right now, you have a planning commission staff who can assure you that if we receive a rezone application for this professional office P1 use, and they have a concept plan that shows anything like a data center, it's pretty easy that we're not going to recommend approval of that. One of the things that we could do, and again, if this is the will of the council, is to just define what data processing is inside the city of Georgetown. And then you're creating a definition for use that's already listed and being very explicit what it is and what it is not. And which situation that concern goes away. And we go back to this idea that unless use is permitted by right, it would be prohibited. And so again, any feedback, this is your process.

Okay, thank you.

All right. That sounds like, I mean, does that sound like something that we ought to pursue? Yes. What do you think?

Yeah, it does. Because, yeah, with what you were describing, too, I know initially we all know, who've looked into data centers, the first thing you think of that they say they do is data storage, cloud storage. But you often wonder, could they have a really great attorney? come in and say, well, let's shop this as data processing. Sure, yes, we do some storage, but let's do this and see if we can find a loophole. So yeah, I mean, that sounds like a really good idea as a good form of defense.

If I could put one thing to the council for consideration, not a decision tonight, but just something to think about, is a lot of our institutions utilize relatively large server rooms. Most every business at this point has some level of cloud computing that they're taking advantage of. And so as we look to, again, shore up a definition, make sure it does what we want it to do, the other thing that we do want to be careful about is we don't want to prohibit some of these just ancillary business activities that are already taking place. You know, again, my office uses a closet in our basement to run a server. That's not a data center. I don't think anybody's looking at that as a data center. But in the event that, you know, what if, you know, there was, I don't know, CACO. CACO wanted to run some sort of service for the counties where they share data processing in one location, but it benefits multiple counties. How do we look at that? And how do we make sure that that is something that benefits the community and we don't expressly prohibit? And so if it's the will of the council, what I'd like to do is I'd like to come up with some definitions for you guys. I want to give that to you first and foremost. And then if... it is something that you guys want the Planning Commission as a body to look at, then we can bring that forward at their schedule. I would remind you, of course, that the moratorium on data center applications does expire at the end of this year.

Yeah. So we don't need to have a formal motion here? We need to do this? I'll make a motion. We don't have to, do we?

I just to keep track of the conversation and what your wishes are and what you're wanting to do. And especially if it's going to be something we're going to go back and forth with the planning commission. It doesn't sound like the, the spirit is you're, you're sending something to the planning commission at this time for them to work on, but just to make sure we're all on the same page, you can make a motion just to document this decision point. Um, and then we can do a more formal. referral to the planning commission later to start that text amendment process.

All right. So if we would make a motion, so we've met the record, what she said, you still have to make the motion.

Pardon me?

You need to articulate the motion you want to make.

Okay. I make a motion that the planning and zoning committee commission, um, look at the present look, look to, to define a, the professional help me. It's data, uh, data processing, professional data processing definition and bring suggestions to tighten that up back to the council for review. Does that work?

Sure. Okay. All right, so you have heard the motion here. Do I have a second?

I'll second that.

Seconded by Ms. Hambrick. Are there further questions or comments?

This would not preclude us then from once we have that definition from even tightening things further as far as looking into a continuation of the moratorium or

figuring out whether or not an outright ban is legally defensible we could still move forward on both of those if we wanted to it's just gathering information right yeah okay and again as as residents of scott county as well if you still have feedback on that draft that that's been provided to you and is also available on our website and we are taking public comment right now uh directly through our website if you have feedback that would also be greatly appreciated in that front as well

Okay, any more questions or comments? All those in favor of the motion signify by saying aye. Aye. Those opposed say nay. Number 12, first reading of the 2026 property tax and motor vehicle ordinance.

Good evening. You've been provided a copy of the ordinance, the public hearing that will go in the paper. We will hold a public hearing for the second reading and publish that notice. We... The ordinance recommends the 4% rate, which is what we typically budget for, and we are only required to have a hearing to pass that rate, which is 6.3 cents per $100 of assessed value. And just for reference, the 2025 rate was 6.2 cents per $100 of assessed value.

All right. Ready?

Can I ask a question? Yeah. So with that public hearing, can we include the trend, the historic trend? Of the rates?

Yeah, I can have that information ready for the public hearing.

I think that's important for folks to understand what the history is, and I also think if if possible, you know, where does Georgetown rank, uh, across the state with other cities, uh, both it's our size as well as across, across the board. Cause again, I think if we put that into context, it may tell a slightly different picture than what a lot of folks may.

I can absolutely have that for the hearing and before second reading.

Thank you. All right.

An ordinance providing for and making the real property, personal property, motor vehicle and watercraft tax levy for city purposes for the fiscal year beginning July 1, 2026 and ending June 30th, 2027 inclusive. Whereas the City Council for the City of Georgetown Kentucky is required by KRS 92.280 to enact by ordinance each year a tax levy on all real property, personal property, motor vehicles and watercraft. Now therefore bid ordained by the city council for the city of Georgetown, Kentucky as follows section one, that the following tax levy is hereby made for city purposes for the city of Georgetown, Kentucky for the fiscal year, beginning July 1, 2026 and ending June 30th, 2027 inclusive to wit for the fiscal year beginning July 1, 2026 and ending June 30th, 2027 inclusive. There is hereby made a tax levy of 6.2 cents. On each $100, $100 of assessed real property, 6.3 cents on each $100 of assessed personal property and 16.8 cents on each $100 of assessed motor vehicle and watercraft, which tax proceeds shall be designated to the general fund for the general operation of city government. Section 2, all matters relating to the payment of the taxes imposed on motor vehicles and watercraft here under shall be in accordance with KRS Chapter 134800. Section 3, that upon all taxes for real property and personal property levied herewith, which are unpaid on January 1, 2027, there shall begin to accrue, attach, and be added from said date a flat penalty of 15% onto the total amount of said taxes then due and payable through January 31, 2027. after which the flat penalty shall be 20%. Additionally, tax bills not paid before March 1, 2027 shall have added to them interest at the rate of 1% per month or fraction of a month until said taxes are paid. The penalty and interest as provided herein shall be added to said unpaid taxes and collected by the city clerk treasurer. Should the real or personal property tax herein become delinquent, the city financial officer, the city clerk, and or the city attorney are authorized to file suit to collect all delinquent taxes plus court costs and expenses, including a reasonable attorney fee incurred by reason of the delinquency. Section 4. If any section, subsection, sentence, clause, or phrase of this ordinance is held unconstitutional or otherwise invalid, such infirmity shall not affect the validity of the remaining portions of this ordinance. Section five, all ordinances or parts of ordinances in conflict with this ordinance are hereby repealed. Section six, this ordinance shall take effect after its passage of publication according to law. Publicly introduced and read for the first time August 24th, 2026.

All right. Next is item number 13, Georgetown Municipal Water. You got ABC is informational, correct?

That's correct, Mayor. Thank you. Thank you. I'll just start out by saying that I appreciate we've been kind of doing some of these informational updates on very important information and When I came in the building tonight, somebody actually asked me for some info. And I said, well, we'll be talking about some of this tonight. But I just think that some of these informational updates are probably every bit as important, if not more important, than just the monthly payables. So I appreciate your time on the agenda. With that being said, I'll jump right in. The first item we have for you, and I apologize that we don't have use of the screens because I like to have our PowerPoint up there. It actually helps keep me on track, but I gave everybody a copy of the PowerPoint. I'll put it on your desk because everybody got one. I will try to run through this in a manner that I can describe where I'm talking. I'll do the best I can with it. First item is our monthly customer usage report kind of update that we've been doing the last few meetings. Last meeting we did the June metrics, so I'd like to get caught up on July 2026 numbers. The first thing that we've been going through for each month is on the top, well I guess it'll be the left side of the slide that says usage report and we've got the total leak checks. So you can see that our end count for July was 15,473 customers and in that billing time period we did 87 leak checks. So 68 of those leak checks were requested by, I'm sorry, 68 of the leak checks were performed and we did not observe a leak. That is where we, for the customer, I'm going to go over this every time, we shut all the fixtures in the residence down or the business, whatever type customer it is, shut all those fixtures off, then we look at the meters. There's still continuous flow at the meter. That is a leak. So we had 68 of those that, We had no leak detected, 19 of those customers did in fact, we saw that there was still continuous usage, still continuous flow through the meter, so we know that we've got a problem there that we can work with the customer to try to diagnose. So moving to the right side of that slide, I just think it's important so you know of the 87 leak checks that we performed, 68 of those, I'm sorry, 56 of those were initiated by a customer and then 31 were initiated by our staff when they get that opportunity to dig down into the usage each month when we run the routes and we get all that data. So that was 56 requested by the customer, 31 initiated by our staff. And then on the customer part of that, those 56 that were requested, 48 in the end did not show a leak, but eight did have a leak. And so we're able to work with those customers, again, try to diagnose. And then of the ones that we initiated, 20 did not have a leak and 11 in the end did have a leak. So we feel like when we're trying to review that data and we get there, I guess the percentage is a little bit higher that our staff can look at that month-over-month data and see where there might be a problem and try to be proactive there. So any questions on this first slide? Um, next is, um, just kind of how we die or how we categorize our leak adjustment outcomes. And this is for July. We had 31 that were requested 10 requests. Um, that's the first column, um, were, uh, by policy, by our leak adjustment policy, that they met the criteria on those requests and were easily able to issue an adjustment on those accounts. Then everything that has the orange line under it, we have 17 requests for leak adjustments that didn't actually meet the policy. So that's what we, as I go over, those are kind of courtesy adjustments. We still want to work with our customers, especially when we don't issue, it's a good note, we don't just do a courtesy adjustment every month. Uh, if somebody comes in, we do two and a five year period. So if it's a small, if somebody comes in for a courtesy adjustment that doesn't meet policy and it's just a small amount, we might say, you might want to save that because you know, you might have a bigger leak at some point. and you don't want to have used up all of your cards, all of your tokens for a courtesy adjustment. But you can see that we had 17 courtesy adjustments. Then that last column, it said four did not qualify. And that's not that we just said no on those. It's that even with what the customer saw as a higher usage, they still didn't meet 2,000 gallons, which is our minimum bill. So there's really no point to issue a courtesy adjustment, because they're still going to be paying the same thing. Kind of in the breakdown there, you see that the highest category for the courtesy adjustments came from the toilet police. Any questions here? next one and I think it's this slide we go to this is one that I think is most important and this was the one that councilmember Hambrick that she kind of helped me with this one back when she came to meet with me about this issue and this is just looking we're tracking three months of data and we're putting this is all for residential customers we're putting our usage by range We're putting that here to show month over month we're staying pretty consistent within our usage categories. You can see across the x-axis the usage range. And you can see that our residential customers, the highest, and this is state consistent, the highest or the most frequent range is between 2,000 and 5,000 and then 5,000 to 8,000. And those are about even number of customers that... that have that usage for residential and you can just see month over month we're trending pretty pretty close and and we're not seeing a lot of variation there i think that's what we want to see i think that's a good thing so i'll stop there and ask if there's any questions on on usage okay So next, I want to jump back into the meter, kind of meter audit update. And that was requested both by this city council and also by our board of commissioners that we just feel like there's enough questions that we're in that process. And that's kind of two phases. One, for the overall system, how we're going to do that. We currently have an RFP out on the street that we're advertising for that service. That will come back in September with proposals that we'll score and and see what consultant can help us and that's good that that's an end we could do this but we want that independent take on it this isn't going to be an in-house study this is going to be an independent third party That being said, the things that I wanted to focus on tonight, and I can't believe she's not here for this, but Council Member Tingle Sames, she, I think, put out kind of an all call to her constituents and said, send me your bills if you have a problem. She had 31 that were people that contacted her, and then she forwarded those names and accounts on to us saying we think we've got a problem here. I think she sent a few more, but I'm talking about the initial 31. She has continued to forward those on to me, and I'm grateful for that. But of the 31, we did find very quickly only 26 of them are actually our customers. So there's five that were kind of pushed out there. They're actually Kentucky American Water customers. We get that cleared up, and we'll deal with these 26. So that's kind of the next part in the slide packet. We'll go to what we're looking at. what we've done on those 26 specifically. And so to help us understand the data and testing results when we test meters, we have to have the understanding of the general administrative regs, the KAR, Kentucky Administrative Reg, related to water meter testing. So we're a city-owned municipality. We're not subject to the recommendations as they're implemented by the Public Service Commission, but that's kind of where we look. Those are established regulations and those are established benchmarks, so that's where we want to go in looking at how we want to audit and look at our meters for accuracy. In other words, we don't want to reinvent the wheel. We want to measure ourselves against the same yardstick that the Public Service Commission is applying to regulated utilities. So the first standard, that's the one on the left side of your slide, this is regulation that is related to meter accuracy performing within its factory accuracy specification, what it's designed to do on meter accuracy. So when the meter is purchased by us and it's installed, it's actually doing what it's supposed to, what the meter says it will from the factory. And that's against, within the specification, that's against a low flow rate, an intermediate flow rate, and a high flow rate. And you average those, and that's what your accuracy percentage you're looking for. What I think is more important, probably to our customers especially, is what's on the right side of your slide, and that's the 2% rule. And this is kind of where I feel like the rubber really hits the road. The second standard is the one that's really used for evaluating billing accuracy as a result of your meter test. So what that rule states is that if a meter fails the billing accuracy test when a meter's average accuracy across the flow rate, that's again the low, intermediate, and high, it has to be within 2% of its specified accuracy. So if the accuracy is 100%, the meter is 100%, considered accurate as long as it's above 98 percent and below 102 percent of what it's specified so it can answer the question on the accuracy is was this person's bill usage billed correctly and for the purposes of this effort that's what we're going to look at in the next few slides is that two percent rule and that's our pass or fail threshold So we'll go to this slide next. It says Frankfort Plant Board. We had the meters tested at three different locations to make sure that we were doing, that we had good accuracy and that we're not just sending these off one tester. We didn't really feel comfortable just sending them to a manufacturer. We wanted to go to another utility or other utilities that had meter testing equipment. It's called a meter testing bench. And we had this group of 26 meters pulled from the customer's service. We replaced that with a new meter. Then we sent these 26 first to Frankfort Plant Board. They have a meter testing bench. Then we sent it to Hardin County Water District number two where they have a meter testing bench. And then we sent it to Northern Kentucky Water District to make sure we were very thorough here. uh... both harden county and northern kentucky water districts they actually have staff that are certified in meter testing i don't believe frankfurt plant board they have the equipment and they have the know how i don't believe that they have somebody that is uh... has the certification so uh... take that as what you will there so if the meter reading is low i'll just be a reminder that means that the meter reading is under registering usage and that's going to result result in a lower bill that's to the benefit of the customer and if it was uh too high then that's that's where we're going to see a problem because that means we're over billing so for um kind of the results that you have in this first part where we sent Frankfurt for testing, the average column is what we're looking at. You have a low test, an intermediate test, and a high test, and then we average those. So kind of the first thing that you'll see is there's two meters that don't have any data. And Frankfort Plant Board, they reported back that screen won't turn on, the meter's dead. That's not actually correct. We actually do have data from those meters. It's just if the meter interface doesn't, the screen doesn't turn on, we can still pull meter data and we're still getting meter data when we run that route. It's just the screen's not turned on. That's why those are blank. then you'll see that the only ones in that far right-hand column that were not registering within the 2% accuracy, higher low of the 100%, are on that far column in orange, and there was three that came in below. So that means we were under-registering usage, and those customers were actually paying less for their water than what they should be. So, yes, ma'am.

I have a question about that, and comes from a place of truly not knowing. So if a meter that's been pulled randomly is showing low, does that mean that it would never show high? Does it mean that there's something wrong with the meter because something showed up under the 2%?

It's likely just age. Meters will... they lose accuracy with age. Usually about 15 years is when you just see the accuracy plummet.

And so would you want to pull that meter then because it's low even though it's giving the customer an advantage because there might be a possibility that since it's showing its age perhaps it could be high next month? Yeah.

Uh, it it's not, I wouldn't, I wouldn't logic would tell me that it's not going to register low than high. Now, if we are seeing something wrong at a specific meter month over month, we're going to our customer service. That's when they're going to issue a work order to distribution, go out, pull that meter and let's check to make sure run the diagnostic to see that there's something else not going on. But just for the purposes of what was sent in on these 26, I think that this is just showing that again, at the test low, intermediate and high. Your average comes in, we have 95% accuracy, 89.6% accuracy, and 89.3% accuracy. The rest of those are in the green are within what's acceptable for accurate by the 2% rule under KAR. So did I answer that? I don't know if I did or not.

Are they going to remain flagged?

No, they've already been replaced. Oh, those won't be. Yes. When we pull them, they're replaced. It's done.

They're not going to be used anymore. I got you. So it'll just be a harbinger of others. I mean, this is a, a sampling.

This is, these are the other effort that will be a sampling. These are just the ones that council member tingle sames wanted me to go and investigate. Um, these, these, uh, 26. Okay. Yes, ma'am.

So does the customer know that they were being undercharged and is that going to, I mean, if they've been communicated to that you now have a new reader and so you might get your bill might be higher, but it should have been all along.

Samantha Chisley, she's our field operations manager. She's kind of spearheaded this and yes, they were sending letters, but she's just, she's just telling me so. So we might hear, but we aren't, we aren't going back to say you owe us this money.

We're just saying you've got a, you've got a new meter, but they may have say it's spiked. Um, because it's reading it correctly.

Now they're going to be receiving a, uh, with a newer meter, a more accurate reading of their usage. So if we go to the, um, you said it. The second group of data, this is from Hardin County Water District number two, and this is the second bench, the same group of meters, but on the second bench we had 18 of 26 meters that fell outside of the 2% rule, but they all fell on the low side. So again, this isn't to the detriment of our bottom line, but if they're going to fall on one side or the other, as your general manager, I would very much like them to fall on the low side. I'd be very panicked if I had eight on the high side. You can see that some of these do have something that's a bit over 100, which maybe that's a question, but when you're looking at how these are testing, they're putting a finite amount of water at a defined flow rate through the meter. Every meter that's produced, it has an accuracy range. They're not all just to the hundredth decimal place. This is a manufactured part. It is going to have a level of accuracy, and that is defined by the 2% rule.

What's the story with the 13.2 average?

Not sure on that one. I'll, Samantha, you would have. Other real expert here.

Uh, this meter that's got the 13.2 average would not register any flow at the end. And when we got it to read the 29.7 gallons and the 10 gallons, we had to tap it on the side to get it to start moving again. So, um, I don't know if that's where it had been out of the ground and had been waiting to be sent off again, or if. It's just because it was 22 years old.

Thank you.

So then we'll go to the, um, Northern Kentucky water district slide and you'll see, um, they were able to get it to read, looking at that same one, but. We had one that didn't meet the 2% rule, but it's on the side that I've talked about that I'm more comfortable with being the low side. So three sets of data. I think these were well tested. I do think we learned a lot about meteor testing going through this exercise. Should we look to testing, we feel like Northern Kentucky Water District has a heck of a setup. Everything is electronic. There's no human factor as far as calculating averages or anything. They have a very, very nice setup. What questions do you have about just this first exercise, first part of this that we've done?

Thank you for doing that. I think you could have only sent it to one, but I think the overkill, based on what we've heard, we appreciate that you didn't just go to one. You went to three, so thank you.

Um, let's see here. Mayor, would it be okay if I jump to our next, um, our, our last informational update on, um, the Deshaies and Water Street trunk sewer? Yeah. Okay. So the first item on Deshaies and Water Street sanitary sewer replacement is I've included, um, at your request, in your packet, some information about the cabins. And we do have the price proposal. I mentioned that at the last meeting. I have had some time to sit and go through it. But what I'll call is this was the proposal for cabin two, the southern cabin adjacent to the KU property. that we've got a price for I'll say very carefully and thoughtfully disassembling that cabin labeling pieces and then moving it over to the city property on the southern side of KU on the southern side of the street and then we could take the leech cabin, the northern cabin, and reset that in the southern cabin's location after it's moved. And that cost that was proposed, I mentioned it last week, is not something I've dealt with before. It's pretty hard to know how accurate that is, but that is the cost that they've submitted, and it was, in your packet, $45,334. I'll also say that I think there is a second option that you're not necessarily just tied to that one. And I know that you all have the city brought in a cabin consultant that gave you some recommendations. And I think that was a great step here. Happy we were very thorough. But I do think we can weigh that, that the second option would be now that the contractor has moved past cabin number two, that we're able to put our sewer in without Any disruption to that cabin that we could leave that one alone and then I can put cabin one the leech cabin I'll say back to its original location. I won't say exact because I don't want to set it right on top of the The sewer line case we ever have to get in there and dig it up But I think we could put it very close in the vicinity So I think that I mean there's any number of options But I think those are the two options at least one that you've requested and one I want to put back on the table. So I The first option, at least for this discussion, is we carefully disassemble cabin two, move it off-site, then we reset cabin one in cabin two's location at the southern end of the park. That would be kind of first option. Second option is we do nothing to cabin two, and then we reset cabin one very close in the vicinity back to where it was. That'd be with the new stone base. It's actually, it was on a concrete foundation, then lined with dry stack stone, we would put it back in that similar manner. I'll say in the vicinity of its original location. I'll stop there. Do you all have questions? Do you want to give me some direction tonight? Or is there additional information we need?

Just a question on your second option. Have you talked with Parks and Rec and Tourism about that option and what was their feedback on use and functionality of the park?

I've met with drew who was here earlier i've also met with lori we've just walked through the park and i think that really i didn't get a lot of direction from them on the cabins i think their direction is more going to be on restoration and other efforts that we can do while we're in there. One of which we're about to talk about in a minute, but, um, I didn't have a lot of feedback from them. I think that parks and public works would probably say that, you know, there is some, just keep in mind there's maintenance, there's cost and keeping these cabins where they are. That's fine because that seems like what the, the, um, what the will of the council and those that have weighed in on this, but more so I think their direction is, and I can kind of give you an update there, what we've discussed as well, but their direction and conversations with me have more been related to, as we walk through, just looking at things we can do to improve as we do the restoration effort.

I guess, in my opinion, it doesn't make much sense to spend that much money to take a cabin down and store it. And you didn't have to move it to do the sewer line. And you've got 40,000, 45,000 here that could be used to restore it. I mean, that's just my opinion.

and you know the man that came that was the cabin expert he said that you know historically there were all sorts of different time periods within that cabin and that you're it's not historically accurate but it is interesting and so you know if we take the second choice then we We can, when, when all is said and done, and perhaps we can shore spend some of that 45,000 and probably not all of it to get rid of the termites and, um, shore it up so that I don't know that we would want it to be opened up for people to come in and out of, but it would, it would be stable and secure and, um, with probably a lot less than $45,000 and then. people have the cabins where they got used to seeing them. That is what I think we should, that's what I would like to propose that we do. I'll make the motion that we use option two, which would be to keep the south cabin where it is and move the leach cabin back as close as possible to where it was before the renovation. Okay.

I'll second.

Okay. All right. Motion made by Ms. Mitchell, properly made second by Ms. Hambrick. Are there questions? So just a comment.

So if we're. keeping the cabin there and it's gonna be locked up, what's the whole purpose of having the cabin there if you're not gonna utilize it for its intended purpose other than it just being on the property? You know, it's been that way for a long, long time and I guess the, if we go back to the original concept was how do we clean this up and be able to utilize the park and give it new life and be able to truly utilize it and get back into using it to help tell the history and all of that of the community.

And I would say that it seemed like from the public comment that we got, that even though we haven't been inside either of the cabins in a few years, that it was important to the public that they remain there as a part of our, as part of the aesthetic of the park. And, and if we were to get into shoring up the South cabin, I mean, it would be possible that you would, you could, opened it, opened the door and let people go in. But the man from the, um, historical society said that it is Jerry rigged from different time periods already. And then it's not pure and historical in and of itself. So shorting it up, I don't think it takes away from it because it's already been taken, taken away from. But our community seemed to say that it was important that those remain there. And maybe we can open them later, I don't know. It doesn't mean that we can't do that when we get them back in place, that we can't find a way to read stories there on Tuesday afternoons like they used to do down there. I mean, nobody's saying that we wouldn't use them for something like that in the future. They're not in any shape to do that with now.

And also, you've got to remember that you've got two cabinets we're dealing with. One of them is a historical value. Right. And that's where we can look at possibly some grant funding for that. We've been looking into that. There is, even locally here, to do that. So I think that that was something we could look at future budgets to look at the possibility of actually putting money in to maybe start with one cabin and fix that one up and then work on another cabin.

If I could add a little bit of perspective. Many of us have been to many places where they have cabins and you're learning a lot from the signage outside of the cabin. You're not going in the cabin. Even some of the places in Washington, D.C. area and even Shaker Town has buildings you can't go in, but they have significant signage explaining the historical significance or the changes that have been made in the building. So I still think that it's important to preserve it even if we can't go in it.

You may have put information in, some type of information plaque there to let you know what that is. Makes sense.

So we've talked around this for months and months. And I'd like to remind me what was the original plan for that park and the whole impetus for

Are you saying for the cabins or for the more than that being the project as a whole?

For the use of the park, not the sewer side, but the use of the park given the new life that it's going to have now that we've taken care of the infrastructure component.

Can I offer some things that I've actually learned as we've gone through this? One, I think the value there is visual value of the cabins. No, we're not trying to get them to a point to open them back up, but that's been very clear that the visual value of knowing they're there. in discussions with Drew Beckett that he has a planning level, a plan that he's had an architect put together, and I think what he sees there is a lot of kind of This gets into this non-engineering stuff when you're talking about the meandering pathways that are more pleasant to walk along, and then some swings. Lori brought to our attention what you just said. With those cabins there and other parts is that signage plaques, they're a must, and now is the time to get those done and put those in, provide some more history and see if we can kind of as we're there doing this, we can make improvements that we leave it better than we found it and make it even more of a significant destination than say it already is. But I think that now that I've gotten some input from Lori and from Drew, Former Mayor Prather has reached out. I didn't know this, but he's a landscape architect. I think he's a former employee at Parks. His name is Steve Austin. I don't know if you know the name, but he apparently did a lot of research, had a lot of input. He has a long-range master plan for Royal Spring Park. Mayor Prather is trying to find a copy of that to get to me, and maybe we can pull from items from the Steve Austin plan, the plan that Drew has had drawn up, and then some input from Lori on what a tourist estimation looks like. But I think I'm confident that we can pull from all of those to make something really nice, and we can bring that to you for conversation.

When you talked to Lori and Drew, did either one of them say that leaving the two cabins there would impede them in any way from having the park look like they expected it to?

Again, I didn't get a strong opinion either way on the cabins.

All right, so properly made. The opposed was given and also properly seconded. Are there any questions, other questions? So at this point, all those in favor of the motion signify by saying aye. Aye. Those opposed say nay. All right, item next is the channel cleaning. Is that it?

Yes, sir. This was a leftover from the last meeting. And I apologize because I did have some of this information. I just had not gotten to it yet. But the last meeting, the city engineer and I, we brought to you just, again, while we're digging everything up, let's go ahead and get the channel cleaned out. And Clery had given us a change order price to go from the weir in front of the water treatment plant all the way down to the bridge. It's 235 linear feet. And they'd given us a cost of $105,795.91 at the time in communication with Eddie. If I'm saying any of this wrong, Eddie, correct me. But I just think that that wasn't budgeted. So Eddie said do what you can do for $30,000. You all came back and said let's price it now for the whole thing. So that $105,795, that's what their cost was to do that entire channel from – it's not from the mouth of the spring. It's from the weir at the water plant down to the bridge. So that's what that number is, and I just wanted you to have that. I wish I'd had that for you in time or known that I had it, but that's kind of how this conversation evolved. So it's $75,000 additional? Roughly, yes.

Okay.

All right. Well, the... When we had this done, we had this channel cleaned out about five years ago, maybe. I don't know if it was that long. And it was around the $30,000 number. We contracted through another group. And so that's what I put into the budget. I had $30,000 put into the budget. It was approved. When all that work was going on down there, I asked Chase, would you be okay if I asked Cleary to give us a price to get it cleaned out? Because it needs it again. And they came back with 100 pounds.

I was like, whoa, that's way more than I had budgeted. The park is a construction zone.

so so have you started you know dredging it out at all so what would be the drawback if you didn't do anything to it all come back later well we the drawback to that would be i guess uh we restore the site and get the grass growing back and get all the landscape in the end all the improvements and then i kind of tear it up okay and that's that's what i don't

It needs to be cleaned now.

If you go over there now and look, you'll look down and go, oh, there's a lot of stuff in there and it needs to be just scooped out. It's sand, it's gravel, it's just junk off the road. But the reasoning that we did this is because I wanted to get it done while we were in there. I thought that was the time to do it and get it all done.

And when it came in at 105, I thought, well, that's way more than... Is there any way that we can negotiate with them to get it down a little bit more since they are doing that particular...

The contract is set up per hour. It's an hourly rate. So the $30,000 would be get as much of this out of there as you can for that amount of money that we have allocated in the budget. I don't know how much that would be. We'll watch them close. Or you just kick the can down the road and have it done two years from now or something at a later date. They didn't wreck it through everything again. and people are upset about that.

But even if you were to take the $30,000 and get what you can, the most severe part of that drainage, I mean, can that be done where you just, you know, we've already got the money in the budget, why not just take, you know, okay, here's the worst part of this drainage area. Let's clean that part out, and then we may have to wait down the road for something else. That was the idea, and that was the thinking.

See how it gets as much as we can cleaned out for the $30,000 we've got set up.

So do we not have stormwater monies that can be reallocated?

Yeah, it came out of the stormwater budget. It was a line item in the budget, $30,000 for channel cleaning, and that budget has been approved by you all since the last budget passed.

We've had to carry over stormwater money every year. I mean, why aren't we taking care of it and get it done? Because... I agree.

I don't want to tear it back up.

And I'll say this, and correct me if I'm wrong, the last time we did it was when they were rebuilding the bridge, stacking the stone. That's when it was redone. I believe you're right. I think you're right. Four years ago?

That's right, it was. You're right.

Three years ago. I don't want to spend another four meetings trying to figure out right you know you need to make a decision if you want to spend extra money get it all done now or you just simply say okay let it go mayor that's the choices i'll make sure these are the choices we have just second choice we have is to either do it all or do nothing that's the choice we have so let me ask one other question so if this is a every

three to five year period, what do we need to fix so that we don't have to do that?

Well, you could do something. You could build a structure. upstream of that that acts it's called water quality unit and it's basically a catch it captures this and you could you could build one of those that's that would be a new project that we could we could do that would be a point where you could collect all this junk before it gets into the creek and then clean that unit out periodically you'd still be cleaning it out but you're not but you're not dealing with the wholesale where it's just collected it just runs out it doesn't just run out it collects in this thing i do think that i do think that that is a good idea on the the

city of Georgetown stormwater discharge that comes in there. But I will also say I think there is a good amount of settlement coming out of the mouth of the spring that you're not going to.

Well, that's true. That's very true.

So it has to come over the weir, right?

Yes, a lot of it, but you can see quite a bit of it above the weir as well. We usually clean that out every couple of years. We don't ever go below the weir.

I would hazard to guess that if we take care of the infiltration from the storm system, the amount of cleaning, additional cleaning that we would need to do because of your cleaning frequency at the mouth of the spring would take care of that. So again, I'm all about getting to the root cause of the problem and fixing the problem as well, and we can do that at the same time. We've got the storm system to be, storm budgets to be able to do those kinds of projects. to be able to do both.

No, I totally agree, but at hand tonight is whether to clean it now or not. And I think we can look at that at a later time. It can be an ongoing thing.

Once it's clean, let's get it clean.

So I'm going to make the motion that we accept the $105,795.91 to clean and dredge the whole spring. Okay, and second.

Second right here, okay. So any other questions, any comments? All in favor of this motion, signify by saying aye. Aye. Those opposed say nay. Thank you. Next are these items here. Items D through G, I'm gonna let you go ahead and just list those, and we're gonna go ahead and do those at one time.

Okay. Uh, first one purchase order for all max, the amount of $14,078 annual licensing for our ops operation software. It's opt in and Antero. That's what we do. All of our plant preventative maintenance work orders in. And I think it's also, uh, used for compliance reporting that is budgeted. It's a sole source item. Um, next is our monthly pay application for Judy construction on wastewater plant one that's for the July billing period. That is two 55, seven 29 41. Then we have a C squared. This is a purchase order for 40,000, five 2380. This is actually, this is not our expense. This is a pass through. There was a homeowner in the county wants to be on our water, um, has built a home, but didn't realize that the water extension from our closest line was going to be, um, what's the, about 350 feet. So part of this service will be considered ours because it crosses another property that the property owner had to get an easement for. So we wanted it built to our specification and we're set up to get this installed much easier than the homeowner so we've executed or we're going to execute an agreement with them that we will do this through our contractor he's he and is going to reimburse us for this expense but we just feel like with the situation that's kind of unfortunate that he's in we can do this to try to help out. So this is a pass through cost for the 40,000, five 2380. And then the last, uh, the last purchase.

Yes. That's a question on that one. Yep. So with that type of activity, is there any free privilege fee agreement concept for that homeowner? If they were wanting to tap into that?

No, not for something that minimal. I'm not going to try to manage that.

Okay.

Then the last one is Xylem Water Solutions for wastewater plant number two. This is in the amount of $71,525. This is for a new carbon resin pump. and we did look at the rebuild however i think that the price was still it was pretty significant i think it was in the notes it was 60 of a new pump and we talked to our tmmk liaison and our plant staff and they just felt like the new pump was the way to go so those are the four purchase orders and happy to answer any more questions there

Mayor, make a motion to accept all. Second.

Motion is made to accept votes by Mr. Stone, second by Ms. Brent. Are there further questions and or comments? All those in favor of accepting the bills for A-Max software duty construction, C-squared excavating, and Exum water solution, signify by saying aye. Aye. Those opposed say nay. Item 14, city engineer municipal order. Sims Road landfill drainage pipe inspection, cleaning, repairs, change order number one.

Yes, sir. Thank you, Mayor and Council. So this project was approved last year to do some maintenance work on the drainage system that surrounds the Sims Road landfill. It collects groundwater. diverts it to a pumping station that GMWSS pumps it to the Toyota plant for treatment. And the initial scope of the project was to camera the lines and clean it. And we got into the section of line that was giving us the most problems and realized it was beyond able to clean. We couldn't clean it. We're going to have to replace 840 feet section of line. I didn't have it budgeted to do it that way. I thought we could just clean it out, and that would be sufficient, camera it and clean it. We can't do that. We're going to have to replace it, and that's what this change order is for in the amount of $92,400, I believe, is the total. And if you all have any questions or anything about it, I'd be happy to answer them, and I ask for your all's approval to allow that section of line to get replaced.

Motion made by Mr. Minky. Do I have a second? Second. Second by Mr. Hampton. Are there further questions or comments? All those in favor of the motion, signify by saying aye. Aye. Opposed, say nay. Item 15, finance. Municipal order, renewal of Stockyard Bank Certificate of Deposit.

Yes, as mentioned in Greg's Finance Committee update, we have a CD with Stockyards that's about to renew on September 14th. The Finance Committee's recommendation out of the options was to renew it for 15 months for a projected rate of 4%.

All right. You have a question? Do I have a motion? Motion made. Motion by Ms. Dunham. Second. Thank you. Motion made by Mr. Hampton, seconded by Ms. Mitchell. Are there further questions or comments? All those in favor of the motion, say the file by saying aye. Aye. Those opposed, say nay. Item 15B, finance for department update.

Yes, first and foremost, there's a memo in your packet, but obviously thank you all for the addition of the Assistant Finance Director position. Ashton has been here two weeks now, and even within the first week, we had transitioned all the procurement processes over to her, so she's already started, especially working with Eddie, working on bids. I've been training her as we go on daily general ledger. accounting and she will continue learning monthly and other reconciliation activities as we go. So she has caught on quick. I think she's going to be a great asset that will hopefully free up my time to do more of that long-term financial planning, bring more monthly financial reports, capital planning, capital project tracking to make sure that All of the things that we have budgeted for in a year can be accomplished. So I wanted to thank you for that. And like I said, we provided the update just a week after she'd been here at Finance Committee. Now she's been here too and just picking up quite quickly. And along with that, I had provided some financial goals and objectives now that I have that additional staff with some deadlines, such as developing a monthly financial report that shows council and the public what they want to see about how the budget's being tracked, capital projects are being tracked. We'll look at some options from some other cities and what they do well so that we're not just recreating the well and see what we can pull together. My goal is by January 1st. Purchasing card implementation, that is something our departments greatly desire. We currently have a business credit card through Whitaker Bank. Obviously, if we can keep things local, I'd like to So my first avenue will be to have a conversation with them to see if they can provide what we need. If not, we will either solicit, see if there's any state conscious master agreements sometimes the state has master agreements with certain procurement card companies or a cooperative purchasing or potentially an RFP if needed but we'll find a way to find something that works that allows us to manage credit card limits at an individual and departmental level we're not all sharing the same credit limit we're not all tying each other up if one person's been heavily using the card for registrations or trainings or something, it doesn't tie others up. Just making sure, just a reminder that our ARPA fund balance has to be spent by December 31st to 26th. That should have all been spent by now, but I'm going to just double check that there's not any few dollars remaining in the parks or anything like that. But everything, for the most part, should have been spent by June 30. Again, continuing to monitor our cash balances for investment opportunities. capital project tracking, which I presented, and I can share that spreadsheet with the full council. I will get that emailed out. I did develop kind of my first go at a capital projects tracking spreadsheet for all budgeted projects for the year so that you can kind of see where they're at from a financial perspective now it may not have the project milestones from the construction contract but from a financial perspective where we are in the design phase bidding phase construction phase etc Monitoring our revenue trends obviously that's something we want to keep an eye on and we've had a lot of strong revenue growth years as we've mentioned at Council and the Finance Committee recently and You know the last year has been a little slower paced in growth than we've had and so Continuing to investigate those trends to see what's causing them and so I'll be bringing more back to you all within the next couple of months on that and just developing we have policies and procedures and but they're getting them all in one cohesive manual, one spot, and developing that longer-term operating and capital budget planning, especially as we go into our next budget cycle for 27, 28. So that's just kind of where we're at with goals, and just Greg had asked that I update the full council after I shared these with the Finance Committee.

Thank you. I have a... Yes. especially when I was a new council member, there are so many acronyms. Yes. And I'm wondering if in the policy and procedure manual, if there could be an addendum that would actually list all of the acronyms? No, seriously.

No, it's a good idea.

I mean, it took me a long time to be able to look at the financial reports and actually understand what the money was going towards.

We can certainly have a definitions section. Okay, thank you. That would be very helpful. I will make sure that's in there.

I'm going to make your head swell.

Thank you for bringing all this information. Greg also mentioned, and I think you did too, that you had brought revenue projection updates. Could you share those with us? Yes, yes.

It's the same tracking spreadsheets you're used to seeing for the quarterly financials, just for those three main, and the trends. I did provide the 10-year trends for those three specific categories. So I will provide all of that to council as well.

Thank you. All right. Item number 17, police resolution for VAWA grant.

Yes, I'm just gonna stay up here for this one since I'm up here. The Violence Against Women Act grant is a program we've had for several years now. It partially funds one of our police officers that serves this area. We are seeking your approval for the application because it does require a 25% match, but this is budgeted and has been budgeted for several years. So moved.

Second. Okay, now let's talk one at a time. Okay, so motion made by Ms. Hambritt, second made by Ms. Brandt. Now, is there any questions or comments? All those in favor of this motion, signify by saying aye. Aye. Those opposed say nay.

Thank you all.

Thank you. Item 17, council discussion, old business. Yes.

Yeah. For old business, I guess this would fit. Not only do we have this great, wonderful, newly refurbished building, but I believe we also have a new CAO. And I'd like to welcome you and hope you're enjoying and finding this as fulfilling as you had hoped. and uh mr mayor um thank you for filling the position so quickly and uh looking forward to working with you here over the you know next few months okay any other old business new business all right council comments

Since you started, I'll let you start again and finish it.

I've got nothing tonight.

Mr. Minky, just real quick.

So last year I had the opportunity to run along with the police department. That was a very enlightening, great opportunity. Last week I had the opportunity to run along with the fire department and that was a very enlightening opportunity as well. I didn't realize they had the same program as the police department and so I would encourage all of my fellow council members. It's very helpful to understand what they're doing, why they're doing it, their operating conditions for each of the stations. Thank you for that opportunity, Chief.

Well, I tried to do it last time. Every time I try to run when something happens, it's all kind of bars from riding with them.

I thought this was a very important meeting. I think we're in a very wonderful place. I know that The citizens will be glad and proud to come into this refurbished place. So thank you for everybody that had their hand in that. I do have one question about the ARPA funds. Could any of those ARPA funds, and it doesn't need to be a discussion now, but could any of those ARPA funds be used for the dredging of the $105,000? And maybe they already are.

We had used some of the ARPA funds for stormwater, but like I said, I'll double check on that balance and get it to you by the next meeting. I don't think it's going to be a significant amount of money. It may be where I budgeted a certain amount to pay, for example, the salary and benefits for the affordable housing I budgeted a certain amount for 25, 26, and if it came in a little under that, there might be a few dollars left, or there might have been a few dollars left on those parks capital projects. Everything else was completely spent. Those would be the only two areas where there might have been a few dollars where we budgeted a certain amount, and I just need to see what those final expenses were. I don't expect it to be a lot, but I'll get you the final number. Also, the other thing I will say is they had to be committed by December 31st of 2024. So I think they would only be allowed to be used for those purposes. So we would have to keep it in line with what they were originally expected to be. I think one of them was water, though. It was, but when I fill out that annual report, I have to put every project and its budget and exactly what we spent on it. Okay. Thank you.

All right.

Very quickly just really happy to be back in here. It really looks nice. So I think it's something to be proud of Secondly we talked about Communication and notifications. I was looking at the city website today and is there any way that we could have like under government like a community communication page, something where you can put notifications out there. I know there's a lot of people, and his comment came up tonight, a lot of people don't have access to a computer or internet, but any way we can do to put that information out there. Just to look into that and see what we can do. Are you talking about when something goes on when we have to?

Yes.

And beforehand.

All good.

Two things. Number one, and doesn't really need to go into new business, but it's something for us to think about. For planning and zoning to add in, and we can discuss this, just kind of laying it out there so people mull it around. When somebody comes to us with a development that we put into regs or ordinance, whatever, that a certain percentage has to be low income housing, not apartments, houses. The apartment ideas are great, but if you look at every road coming into Georgetown, most of the roads that come in, you have apartments in it. To me, I know it's a necessary thing, but it makes Georgetown look temporary. It doesn't make it look like a place where you're going to put down roots. If it's apartments, well, it's just temporary. So that's one thing for everybody to kind of kick around. The other thing is that the mayor and I attended last week the ribbon cutting for the Leaf and Barrel, the new cigar lounge down here on Broadway. That is something that I think it was you and I, our first term, Larry Ledbetter brought the idea and they were trying to move into the lock and key and bring it to downtown. They stuck with their passion, they stuck with their ideas, and they finally got it. It's down where Gibson Heating and Air used to be on 140 South Broadway across the street from the fire station. Great location, great people. So just wanted to say glad that finally did come to pass.

All right. Okay, if there are no other bids to be brought for this council, this meeting is adjourned.