BY ANDREW WYLLIE
One of the hardest things about moving to Lexington from Seattle ten years ago was brewpub withdrawal. There were a couple of places that had a half decent beer selection, but not much in the way of locally brewed beers or even regionally brewed beers. I was happy to find new favorites at Pazzo’s and a gigantic selection of beer at the local Liquor Barn, but there still seemed to be a bit of a niche that needed to be filled. When I talked to people about this, I was told that there used to be a couple of brewpub/breweries around in the late 90s but they all went out of business.

Certainly, the micorbrew industry has gone through some ups and downs. In the mid to late 80s, microbrews and brewpubs started becoming the new hip places to be. This just happened to coincide with when I was starting college and really becoming interested in the different styles of beer.  In some ways I see this as an advantage, that I never really drank a lot of beer from the major breweries, so it’s not like I had to switch from ‘Molson Canadian’ (similar to Miller – I grew up in Canada) to double IPAs or porters. Double IPAs is where I started, and then I just worked my way down the taps at the local brewpub where they usually had six or eight of their own beers as well as ten or more beers from around the world (as well as one of those incredibly long lists of bottled beers). Unfortunately, like many other similar places, my favorite brewpub in Toronto closed down in the mid 90s and many of my favorite local breweries were bought up by the big players.

Not that this was all bad. New breweries would spring up and we would be treated to new styles and flavors.
Some would find new favorites until the new guys would get bought out or put out of business because they could not meet their overhead and distribution costs.

Another problem was that there was too much beer. Sure, it sounds like a nice problem to have but what was happening was that everyone and their brother was trying to start up their own brewery. The mentality became more of a “let’s open a brewpub because brewpubs are cool” as opposed to “Let’s open a brewpub because we are passionate about making good beer.”

This had a watering down effect on the market as people always wanted to be at the newest coolest place, drinking the newest coolest beers while the old standbys were left to twiddle in the wind. The beer was not necessarily better though, it was often worse since the idea was to win market share and the easiest way to do that was to make the beer as similar to the beer everyone was familiar with i.e., Molson Canadian/Miller.

Since that time, three breweries have opened in Lexington, with another one on the way. A fourth, Rooster Crow will be opening soon nearby in Paris. There are also a couple of bars that only sell beer. The servers are required to have quite a bit of knowledge about the beers they serve in order to help customers find something they will like. All of these places are great if you really enjoy beer and know what you want or if you don’t drink much beer and want to try something new.  New beer drinkers, or people unfamiliar with anything other than the big brewery beer are often surprised by beers that taste like chocolate, or fruits (cherry, raspberry) or even just a good well made pale ale which has a lot of flavor compared to what they may have had in the past

So the question now is whether the craft brewery market segment is sustainable. It’s a complex industry as the products being produced by various breweries are not directly comparable. You can’t compare two breweries to see how successful they will be simply based on how much they produce, it’s really about the quality and variety of the beers being produced and a ton of other factors.  What is happening though is that beer consumers in the U.S. are becoming more educated about different types of beers. This should help sustain a demand for craft beers brewed both locally and from around the world.In the meantime, get out to the various breweries and bars around the city and try something new. Look for me, I’ll be out there doing my “research” and would love to hear about what you think of our local beer scene.

Lexington Breweries:

Chase Taproom/Brewery (Taproom open, brewery coming soon)
Rooster Brew (Paris, coming soon)
Country Boy Brewing
Blue Stallion Brewing Company
West Sixth Brewing Company

Lexington Beer Bars (only serve beer):
The Beer Trappe
Lexington Beerworks

I Shouldn’t Be Alive
A Year in the Life of a Lexington Pedestrian

BY ANDREW WYLLIE

There’s a great show on the Discovery channel called ‘I Shouldn’t Be Alive’ which documents true stories about people’s adventures in remote parts of the
world.
The stories usually start happily enough — a group of hikers getting ready for a
week of adventure in some remote part of the world, only reachable by helicopters or float planes. Everything goes downhill from there (or uphill if you enjoy watching people get clobbered by avalanches, eatenby bears and become hopelessly diseased as they wander around in circles completely
lost from civilization).

When I was younger, I went on a number of these kinds of wilderness trips, and many times I was probably very lucky that no one got hurt, drowned, mangled or stuck under an avalanche. These days, my biggest adventure is getting the kids to school and getting myself over to UK for class which may sound easy enough but can often present its own dangers. If they made a show about my daily commute, it would go something like this:
[queue our narrator with low gravelly voice, ready for danger] Our team of adventurers have settled on a well know route through the Ashland Park neighborhood of Lexington Kentucky.

Today’s journey is like most other days: a one mile walk on concrete and asphalt, occasional street crossings, and the smell of danger in the air. Our daily trip starts out the same as most other days. Our food supply is placed in Tupperware containers and stored in a backpack with a folder containing last night’s homework, and a bottle of water. We get our shoes on, get the packs on and exit through the rear door of the house. We make our way out onto the sidewalk and to the corner beside a large tree to wait for a safe moment to cross. This newly paved street we are about to cross has many turns in it making oncoming traffic hard to see. The new pavement has removed the natural speed impediments on the road allowing traffic to move much more quickly through the neighborhood. The large tree on the corner bears the scars of automobiles going too fast to make the turn, wrapping themselves around its trunk. On the lookout for danger, we step out on to the road. All of a sudden, we spot a large SUV coming around the turn at an estimated 35 mph. I grab my seven year old daughter’s hand and we quickly step back into the grass for safety.
Fact: the difference between going 25mph and 35mph can be the difference between life and death. The stopping distance and time for a vehicle traveling 35mph in normal, dry conditions is 135ft (45 yards) or almost half a football field. A car  going 25mph only takes 85 feet to stop. Stats have shown that the chance of a pedestrian surviving an accident with a vehicle traveling 25mph is 89 percent. The survival rate drops to 11 percent for a vehicle traveling 35mph. This is hardly surprising. A vehicle traveling 35mph is going 40 percent faster
than one traveling 25mph.

The roadway clear once again, we make our way across and scramble up onto the
sidewalk on the other side. The sidewalks in Lexington have their own perils and traps ready to leap out an attack the unsuspecting pedestrian. There are the bumps and cracks that are usually easy to spot. Then there are the trees that have branches overhanging the walk. The trees, though motionless, can catch you off guard as your eyes are focused downward looking for cracks and bumps. Tree branches tend to attack from above, snagging hair and poking out eyes.

Ice build up on sidewalks can make passage impossible in the winter. Then there are the cars backing down the driveways which do not stop to look for traffic until they have crossed the sidewalk. Another major obstacle can be cars parked across the sidewalk which sometimes force pedestrians out into the street in order to get around them.

Fact: It’s against the law to park a car on the sidewalk, even partially blocking a sidewalk. It may not seem like a big deal since most people can fairly easily walk around a car –- but for someone in a wheelchair or using a walker trying to maneuver their way around a car blocking the sidewalk is almost impossible. It’s also the property owner’s responsibility to keep sidewalks clear of debris including snow and ice (and garbage cans). 35 percent of the people in Lexington don’t drive and rely on sidewalks and bike lanes to get around town.

The city does not do much for pedestrians either as they will happily close a sidewalk and leave pedestrians to their own devices. I’m not suggesting that every sidewalk closure come with an alternate route, but where conditions will require pedestrians to walk beside a closed sidewalk on a busy street, or a sidewalk will be closed for an extended period of time, some provisions need to be made. A recent example of this was at the corner of Rose and Euclid where they were ripping out the sidewalks on the corners (all four corners at the same time).

This is a very busy pedestrian gateway to the University of Kentucky but during
the construction, people were being forced to walk on the road along the side
of Rose Street which is very narrow at this intersection. To make matters worse, the pedestrian signals at this intersection do not change unless you press the buttons but the button was unreachable due to the construction. A similar situation exists on Main St. where they have closed the sidewalk for
the construction of the new Cheapside Pavilion.

How hard could it possibly be to put up a couple of barricades so that pedestrians
have a safe route to bypass the closure. Once we reach the intersection of Ashland Ave and Main Street we witness another kind of problem. The pedestrian lights here, as in many other parts of the city, will not change unless the button is pushed. The walk symbol, once it comes on, only stays lit long enough for you to get half way across the street then switches to a red flashing hand. Annoyingly, if the button does not work, and there are no cars going the same direction you are, the light will never turn green.

The next part of our journey takes us up the west side of Ashland Ave. The speed limit on this road is unsigned which apparently means “as fast as you want to go” in this part of town. The danger here lies in crossing three streets, all of them one-ways. The sidewalks here do not go to the corners but are about six feet in. The stops signs are on the corners, past the sidewalks, so drivers tend to stop at
the corner instead of the crosswalks.

People coming out of these streets looking to make right turns often only
look for traffic coming from the left and often do not look to the right to
see if anyone is coming. Rarely will a week go by without a close call at one of these crossings.

Finally, we get to the school where we find a large pickup truck parked completely across the crosswalk (even though there is tons of street parking available). For us, it means that we need to make our way around the truck and across the street. The
problem of course is that there is quite a bit of traffic coming down this street
and it’s very hard for them to see us, as well as for us to see them. A lot of drivers
are just oblivious to pedestrian crossings and don’t know what to do when they see
people riding bikes. It’s not like the police are going to do anything about it either. I recently had a conversation with a police officer who parked his car on the corner of Broadway and Short streets – right in front of the Opera House. His car was parked on the sidewalk in such a way that nobody using the sidewalk could get by him without walking on the street. There were a lot of people trying to get around him as there was a show on at the Opera House. He told me that he was on
traffic duty (probably for the basketball game at Rupp Arena). I suggested
that he might want to park somewhere else, like in the median on Broadway
so that he was not blocking the sidewalk, but he just rolled up his window
and refused to say anything else until I walked away at which point he
cracked his window and said “Have a Nice Day!”. I didn’t respond – at least not audibly.
Our one mile (not even) journey finally comes to an end. My daughter is now safe at school until later on this afternoon when we make our journey back home along the same route. We are veteran pedestrians, we know what to look out for and we expect that most drivers are oblivious to our existence even though we have as much right to use the streets as anyone in a car. Just because we are walking does not mean that we are any less important, or not in a rush, or too poor to drive a car as one woman in an SUV, who almost ran me over, yelled at me the other day suggested.
We walk because it’s often faster, it’s healthy and it’s more social as we often say
“hi” and sometimes even stop to pet a dog or chat with a neighbor. It’s amazing how much more aware you are of your environment when you are on foot. It’s unfortunate how many people drive all the time, especially to school, where they wait in the pick-up line for 15 (or more) minutes so that they can rush home and get their kids in front of their video games or off to some other
after school program.

A lot of the excitement around developments in downtown Lexington has to do with the city becoming more accessible to people who are not driving in their cars. Making the city more accessible requires more than just infrastructure items like striping bike lanes, adding bike racks, building pedestrian malls and better sidewalks.

We need to have a different attitude as well which includes citizens
and business owners keeping sidewalks which cross their property clear, getting bylaws in place which require alternate and safe routes to be provided for pedestrians when sidewalks are being ripped up and finally enforcement of laws with respect to sidewalks, crosswalks, and people speeding and running stops signs in residential areas. But for now, as I make my way back down towards UK, I’m back in alert pedestrian mode and I once again make the realization – I
shouldn’t be alive.

PED PROGRESS IN LEX

While my day-to-day commute can be a harrowing experience,
there are a number of great projects in progress
which will make it easier to get around town on foot or
by bike.
Streetscaping plans on South Limestone are making
progress and now there is new work on Main and
Vine streets which will include new sidewalks and rain
gardens. The work on these projects should be done by
the beginning of August. The Fifth Third Bank Pavilion,
which will be the new home for the Lexington Farmer’s
Market as well as other events like Thursday Night Live,
is opening this Friday, April 16 with a ribbon-cutting at
5:30PM. This is an exciting project as it really helps
define the Cheapside Park area and gives the city a much
needed pedestrian only area in the heart of the city.
Construction has officially started on the Legacy Trail
which is a 12.5 mile recreational trail that will connect
downtown Lexington to the Kentucky Horse Park. The
first two phases which will connect the Horse Park to the
Northside YMCA on Loudon (near Newtown Pike) should
be completed on time for the Alltech FEI World Equestrian
Games. In addition to the beautiful landscape, the trail
will showcase a number of public art installations. More
info about the trail and the Legacy Center at: http://legacycenter.
ning.com/
Second Sunday bike rides will continue on the Second
Sunday of every month. Cyclists can meet at the Old
Courthouse downtown at 2pm for a police escorted ride
to a new destination each month arriving back at the Old
Courthouse by 4pm. It’s a great way to get out for a
safe ride around the city. The big event in October will
all types of activities that promote healthier living. More
info at: http://www.2ndsundayky.com/
These are not the only projects. The Lexington BPAC
(Bike and Pedestrian Advisory Committee) has over fifty
ongoing projects to build/improve sidewalks, build new
bike trails and install new bike lanes around the city. The
BPAC meets on the first Friday of every month. More
info at: http://www.lexareampo.com/BikePed/BikePed.
htm ■

I found the Lexington Bike Summit two years ago to be a very exciting event. At the time it seemed that Lexington was on track to being a top cycling and pedestrian friendly city which makes a lot of sense. The areas around the city are well known for some of the best cycling in the United States. Lexington itself is fairly flat and has a much warmer climate compared to a lot of cities that have huge bike commuter populations. The summit was well attended including a number of city officials (Mayor Newberry who was there for the entire day).

The keynote speaker was Gil Penalosa who works as a consultant for cities that are trying to promote complete streets and alternate methods of transportation. It was at this first (and only as far as I know) Lexington Bike Summit that I first heard about Ciclovia. Ciclovia started out as a weekly event in Bogota, Columbia. Every Sunday, the city (population 7 million) opens up 91 kilometres of roadways to everyone except vehicular traffic. On average, 1.5 million people take to the streets on bikes, roller blades, running, walking and any other method of transportation they can find. There are lots of events set up around the city in side streets and parks along the main routes, like aerobicsclasses for 60,000 people, music, dancing. There are now a number of cities in the US that have regularly scheduled events based on the Ciclovia concept. It’s good healthy safe fun for the whole family.

The Second Sunday event this weekend is Lexington’s Ciclovia and is part of a state wide event. It’s obviously not as big as the event in Bogota but we need to start somewhere.

Starting at 2pm on Sunday (October 11th), Main and Short streets between Mill and Deweese Streets will be closed to cars and open to pedestrians and bikes. While many in Lexington will look at the Second Sunday event in Lexington as just another annoyance in a recent string of closed streets downtown, the real purpose of this event is to get out of your car and see the city and what it has to offer. This year’s event will include music, dancing, martial arts, bike polo, street tennis, group cycling and yoga just to name a few. Check out secondsundayinlex.com for more details.

Mill Street Ped Mall proponents are promoting Second Sunday as a way of showing Lexington how inviting that project could be.

If you are planning on attending, there are lots of great ways to get into the city without worrying about dealing with a lot of traffic. The best way into town is probably by bike, there are bike lanes on Richmond Road and on Main St. once you get into town. You can also use Central Ave. which runs parallel to Main and gets you down to Vine and Rose without having to deal with a lot of car traffic. Rose also has bike lanes if you are coming up from UK or south of there. If you want a real adventure, you can try to work your way up South Limestone on foot or by bike (but be very, very careful). Stop in at some of the business in this area while you are at it. If you just have to drive, keep in mind that many of the streets around town are closed right now, including South Limestone from Euclid up to Vine, and Main Street west of Newtown Pike. Parking at UK might be a good plan and just walking the rest of the way — it’s really not that far — and besides,
that’s the whole point.

(Second Sunday and Second Sunday in Lex both have twitter accounts to follow for more events.)

Mill is in a perfect location in the city on a stretch of road that has older buildings on both sides many of which are occupied by restaurants and bars at street level. The new area would allow business owners to build small patios and would provide a space where people can walk with out having to worry about dodging cars. A place to relax on a park bench at lunchtime, to read the paper or share some gossip. The plan has been received very enthusiastically by the businesses that will be directly affected by the closure of the street. Indeed, many of the business owners even complain about the sidewalks not being wide enough, and that theyâ€ve had to hire security guards to make sure their patrons do not get hit by cars on the street. People visiting Lexington who are staying downtown will likely spend some of their time exploring the city on foot. These pedestrian areas like the one proposed on Mill St. are the parts of a city people will remember about their visit and tell their friends about when they get home.

Most major cities have pedestrian areas, especially in Europe where the cities are much denser and not zoned like cities are in the U.S.

Most U.S. cities are not designed with pedestrians in mind but are planned for automobiles first. While older cities like Lexington would have originally
been built for pedestrians, as cars became more prevalent, the density of the downtown area was diminished and people moved out to the suburbs, many of which require residents to own a car (or two or three) just to get around. To make matters worse, a quick walk around Lexington will reveal how poorly the pedestrian infrastructure has been maintained. Since Main St and Vine St have been optimized for car travel, walking along these roads is like walking beside a major highway with some cars easily reaching speeds of 45mph. This is one reason, with a few exceptions, most of the new restaurants and bars downtown are not on Main or Vine but are on the peripheral streets which are much easier to walk along.

While the Downtown Master Plan has the closing of Mill St. on the list of changes to be made, itâ€s not currently high on the priority list. The project is estimated to cost roughly a million dollars and would include putting in trees and benches and proper lighting. Local businesses along the stretch of road are enthusiastic about the project and do not seem particularly concerned about losing parking spaces or car traffic along the street.

A few streets over, the South Limestone streetscape project while largely supported — has drawn sharp criticism from business owners protesting the Lexington Downtown Development Authorityâ€s execution, and the lack of communication throughout the process.

They cite the lengthy closing of the North Limestone corridor as precedent for how slow and devastating the construction projects can be.

LFUCG work sessions have become the site of heated debates, with Vice Mayor Jim Gray, Council Member Diane Lawless, and Council Member Julian Beard advocating for the imperative of speed on the project (CM Beard pointed out, “Four months is just long enough to put a lot of these folks out of business.”)

This is where the Master Plan needs to become a living document.

In one part of town, buy-in has been sought, while another group felt excluded from the process.

I donâ€t doubt that the changes to South Limestone will create a lot of foot traffic from the UK to downtown which is ultimately better for the businesses along the street, but we also need to consider the needs, concerns, and survival of the businesses that are already making it vital.

In his opinion piece, he asks us to consider the fate of a business that becomes cut off from Main and Vine St. due to the closure of Mill.  Suggesting that the closure of the block would starve properties of access on the next block is misleading at best and almost makes you wonder if Mr. May is familiar with the block in question.  If you turn right on Mill St. from Main, you can only drive up two blocks before you are forced to make a left hand turn onto Second St.  There are a few properties on Mill between Short and Second, most notably a large parking lot which surely would benefit from the addition of a pedestrian mall.  If you were truly worried about access to properties, you would convert the streets back to two way streets.  Talk about confusing for a driver.  Closing a three hundred foot section of road does not hold a candle to the impossible network of one way streets in downtown Lexington.  Try to get to Third Street from Main on Mill St. – you can’t, try to take third street to Newtown Pike – you can’t, try to get from Elm Tree (Rose) to Broadway on Second – you can’t.  If Short and Second are converted to two way streets, access to the upper block of Mill becomes a non issue.

May then quotes Roberta Brandes Gratz and Norman Mintz’s book “Cities Back from the Edge”.  I was not immediately familiar with this book but I was curious about it’s title.  An ‘Edge City’ is a city which is completely car dominated and has no facilities for pedestrians or cyclists – think of sprawling suburbs where you have to drive everywhere even to get from two stores that are situated right next to each other because there are no sidewalks or crosswalks.  The book title suggests that cities need to be more pedestrian friendly which I found odd considering that he is stating an opinion against a pedestrian area.  The quote he takes from the book is that “Streets should never be totally be closed to traffic”.  Fair enough, Google tracks this down to page 127.  Here’s the rest of the quote that May left out “This might work on some short narrow streets that would not attract much traffic anyway”.  I think we can all agree that Mill St between Main and Short is not just narrow but can’t be longer than a few hundred feet and does not usually have much traffic on it since it does not really go anywhere.  What I found more interesting though was in the next few pages of the book which discuss designing downtown streets “Car traffic must be slow.  The slower the better.  Car speed should coincide with a walking pace.“ and “Cars, although important, must be secondary to the human scale; otherwise the appeal to people erodes.”.  That pretty much sums up the problems in downtown Lexington in a nutshell.  We basically have an eight lane super highway running straight through the center of the city.  We taken a city that was laid out before there were any cars and redesigned it to make it more car friendly to the point where nobody wants to get out of their car to do anything.

So what has the impact of traffic flow on Main and Vine have had on downtown development in general?  The speed on those two streets is so fast that a driver can’t possibly see the names of stores or restaurants which line the street.  Walking along the street is just unpleasant and it’s no surprise that many of the businesses that once lined Main St. have left.  Going back to Gratz and Mintz, they suggest that the top speed allowed on Main St. should be an absolute maximum of 15mph.  Although the lower speed limit would restrict traffic flow, it would also get people out of their cars which Gratz and Mintz argue is the desired effect.  To prove this point one observes that most of the new development downtown has been off Main St.  There are lots of new businesses and restaurants on less busy streets like Limestone, Short Street, and Mill Street.  Certainly there are a few exceptions on Main, but they are like Islands in a sea of parking lots and vacant store fronts. 

One thing that is true, using a pedestrian mall to revitalize a downtown area is probably a waste of money.  Cities are known for pursuing the promise of a miracle project without considering the effects the it will have on the surround parts of the city and are then they are surprised when the project fails.  These forced planning decisions not only include failed pedestrian malls, but also include shopping centers, industrial parks and even downtown hotel and condo projects.  A street that has no businesses or pedestrian flow on it is not going to be transformed into the new heart of the city just by throwing money at it to make it prettier.  City planners need to be aware of where growth is occurring in the city and help facilitate it.  This can be done by changing city by-laws, zoning laws, and improving access for pedestrians, cyclists and automobiles by creating spaces that are interesting, safe a clean.  In essence, if an area is being revitalized, it’s important to make sure the infrastructure exists to support the revitalization.  In the case of Mill Street, it is the businesses on this stretch of road that are requesting the improvements, it’s not some crazy idea that a council member is putting forward to try to revitalize some deserted stretch of road.  Suggesting that the Mill St. project will fail just because other pedestrian mall have failed around the country is very misleading.  One only has to look at a number of successful projects around the country to see how, when done properly, a pedestrian only area can be a very important and interesting part of any growing city.

The decision by our city council to take the federal grant money and install the sidewalks on Tates Creek Road is a sign of things to come.  It shows that the council is overwhelmingly in favor of improving bike and pedestrian facilities in our city which is an important step in making Lexington a more accessible for the 35% of the population that does not have access to a car as well as more attractive city for the ‘Creative Class’.  In last night’s city council meeting there was a lot of talk about the other 50 or so projects listed in the city’s Bike and Pedestrian plan many of which are already in the planning stages.  Hopefully these projects, which are relatively inexpensive compared to projects like widening a road, will not have to go through the same controversial process that the Tates creek sidewalks went through.

Why are these projects so important?  Lexington is a relatively flat city with fairly temperate weather.  There are many cities around the world that have higher percentages of bike and pedestrian commuters than Lexington that are in much, much colder climates – Madison and Toronto, Canada come to mind as well as a number of European cities.  The advantages of walking or cycling vs using a car are well known: less pollutants, healthier, etc., but what is the advantage of taking your car?  Carrying capacity is one – it’s hard to buy groceries on foot, although many people do use a bike trailer or a wagon for this task.  Speed would be considered another – it’s obviously faster to travel by car than by foot or bike – or is it?  So I took it upon myself to work out the actual costs of walking, biking and driving to school (I’m one of those “non-traditional” students over at UK).  With thousands of students and employees commuting daily to UK, many of them living with two or three miles of campus, I thought this would make an interesting case study.

I’m going to make an assumption that time IS valuable – like time relaxing at home, sitting around Magee’s, or even studying in the library is worth more than the time used to get to these places.  Of course, one could argue that time walking is more valuable than time sitting around in traffic, but it’s hard to place a real value on that. I live in Ashland Park which is about two miles from UK.  I’m also going to assume that a car travels about 25mph in Lexington, that I can bike at about 15mph and that I walk 4mph (4mph is a brisk walk, 3mph is an average walking speed).

First by car, as a student, I would need to park in the the K lot which is on the south side of the football stadium.  Google maps is telling me that it’s about 2.5 miles (7.5 minutes), but assuming normalish traffic from my house that’s got to be closer to about a ten minute drive.  From the K lot, I can take the bus up to the classroom building (Euclid and Rose area) or I can hoof it.  Google has it at about 1.5 miles or a 20 minute walk – total travel time 30 minutes.  I have no clue how long the bus would take, but considering that it goes along Limestone, I would imagine that it would still be at least 10 minutes.  Anyway, you are looking at 20 to 30 minutes.

If I take my bike – it’s 1.5 miles, down to Euclid and straight across in the bike lane, that’s 6 minutes maybe 10 if I get red lights the whole way.  My experience has been that I can get from my couch to my seat in class in about 15 minutes by bike.

Finally if I walk 1.5 miles, it works out to about 25 minutes at a quick pace, 30 minutes in leisure mode (35 if I stop in at Starbucks along the way with the added bonus that I don’t have to mess around trying to get a parking spot in their tiny lot).

So, if the main goal is to get their fast, biking is the best option.  There are plenty of bike racks on campus so parking is not an issue.  If the main reason is to get a bit of a work out (and a six minute bike ride does not really count as much exercise) walking is the way to go.

Costs?  UK parking is $232 a year or very roughly a dollar a day.  5 miles of driving is about a quarter gallon so let’s say fifty cents per day.  Car insurance (if you are a good driver like me) is about $2 a day, the actual cost of the car assuming a $25,000 car (bought cash – so no borrowing costs) and kept for ten years is roughly $7 a day.  So the cost is roughly $10.50 per day, $50.50 a week and assuming 200 days of school – $2100 a year (also not that I’m not including regular maintenance, etc).  Without the cost of the car and insurance, it still works out to $300 a year – and that’s assuming that gas prices don’t go up, and you know they will.  For a bike, a good commuter bike will cost about $600 and will last about 6 years – so $100 a year, and walking, well walking is basically free although you may want to upgrade your shoes to good walking shoes and get a nice warm coat, hat and gloves – but since you would need these items anyway – even if you are driving, there’s not much point including them here.

Lexington is a very walkable and bike-able city and this only becoming more true as facilities are improved.  The weather here is usually very good for walking or biking and the terrain is fairly flat.  It’s great that the city is supporting the need for better facilities and I look forward to the day when more people consider leaving their car at home and either bike or walk to work.  Not only is it cheaper, better for the environment and better for your health, it can also be a lot faster. 

I just received CM Feigel’s statement on the Tates Creek sidewalk project.  I responded to her and the rest of the city council members and have included my response below for your reading enjoyment.  I have also included her original statement below my response.

Hello CM Feigel,

I understand your frustration with this Tates Creek sidewalk situation, but I need to point out some of the problems in your statement which I have include below.

According to Kenzie Gleason, the cost of the project has been established very precisely:
“Total project cost is $1,014,200. Eighty percent ($811,360) is from federal funds. Twenty percent ($202, 840) is from local general funds. The budget includes funding for design, construction, landscaping and contingencies.”  I should also add that there is a 20% contingency fund budgeted in to that cost estimate should there be some unforeseen costs.

Also from Kenzie’s document:
“A survey will be completed during the design phase of the project to determine the exact location of the right-of-way. Preliminary review indicates it is 8 to 10 feet wide along the corridor. The right-of-way was secured when Tates Creek Road was widened to four lanes in anticipation of a future sidewalk installation. Preliminary grading for the sidewalk was also completed at that time”

So, the right-of-way has already been prepared for the installation of sidewalks, no poles will need to be moved or water lines.  Why on earth would you move a water line in order to install a sidewalk anyway?

With respect to sidewalks on one side of the road:
“Sidewalks on one side would improve safety only for those pedestrians whose origin and destination are on the same side of the street. Best engineering design practices recommend against constructing sidewalks on only one side because it increases pedestrian exposure to traffic by requiring them to cross the street more frequently. In addition, Tates Creek is a very wide roadway and pedestrians may be unlikely to cross to use a sidewalk on the opposite side. This is evident in many locations in Lexington where there are worn paths opposite of one sided sidewalks.”

If you do not have a copy of the project facts document, I suggest you contact Kenzie in the Division of Planning directly.

Of course these costs have to be balanced out with other projects around the city, but many of the major projects you have listed are self funding if the city could get their act together.  For example, if the police actually enforced traffic laws in an efficient manner, they would easily be able to collect more in fines than the costs of their salaries.  Same goes for code enforcement.

This idea that the sidewalk creates more impervious surfaces is also ill informed.  Runoff from a sidewalk simply runs off the side of the walk into the grass and has little impact on storm runoff.  There are no storm sewers on a sidewalk.  On the other hand, most people have their storm drains from their roof and run off from their driveway flowing into the storm water system.  If more people ran their roof runoff into their grass instead of onto their driveway or directly into storm sewers it would greatly reduce the amount of storm runoff that needs to be handled.  In fact, in Toronto the city paid homeowners to disconnect their roof downspouts from the storm water system for exactly this reason.

Sidewalks are a necessary part of any city.  At least 35% of the population of any city, including Lexington, does not have access to a car.  What you are saying by not supporting this project is that people who do not own cars are second class citizens.  That is a very unfortunate position to take in this day and age.  Economically, bringing in $800,000 into the local economy when jobs are hard to find can’t possibly be seen as a bad thing.  I would also imagine that the businesses in the Landsdowne area would appreciate having better access
to their businesses.

Finally, I’d like to point out that many of your constituents live in the 5th district because they want to be able to walk and bike to work either downtown or at UK.  There has been a huge effort in my neighbor to support this project, larger than I have ever seen for any other city issue since I have lived here.  I have had neighbors come to my door as well as numerous email messages about the walk-in scheduled for the evening.

Thanks for your time,
Andrew Wyllie

and here is the original statement:

Statement on Tates Creek Sidewalks from Councilmember Cheryl Feigel –

The Tates Creek Sidewalk project has become something it should never have become, a hot potato.  When neighbors begin to take sides and work against one another, it?s a no-win situation for all those involved. I’ve seen these projects and there’s no happy ending. I’ve tried, over many years of public office, to build consensus and create excitement and energy for a project rather than push it through by hook or crook, which is common in politics.

As this project was proposed, before my tenure, it is my understanding that it was not done in a manner to build consensus and create excitement.  I have observed that it was guided through a process to reach a defined conclusion, which excluded the kind of essential input from the public and city officials which could have generated a win-win project with tremendous support.

Without a lengthy description of this unusual process, suffice it to say that I would have done things very differently with full transparency and with a fair-minded regard for the public input process.  I have never supported the hook or crook method.  The process used has now pitted neighbor against neighbor and friend against friend, and all of the above against the city council members.  This is very sad, indeed.

The primary concern I have at this point is this.  We have been granted approximately $800,000 from the State Transportation Cabinet to support this project.  The City must match this by 20% which takes approximately $200,000 from our general funds – plus any additional funds necessary to complete the project. That’s the real issue here.

We have no real cost analysis to determine if the project is a $1,000,000 project or a $2,000,000 project.  We know that over 100 utility poles must be relocated, which is not included in the grant. We know that the cost of additional right of way is necessary but we don’t know how much or even where it is and this cost is not included in the grant.  We know that water lines for the fire hydrants must be relocated and we have no estimates for that cost, which is not in the grant.  We know that mature trees and landscaping on private property must be removed, or are at great risk of being killed.  These costs are not in the grant. I’m not an engineer but would bet that as the project proceeds, there will be additional unanticipated expenses with the very common ‘change orders’ coming before council.

I am a proponent for sidewalks projects to make Lexington more pedestrian friendly.  However, as a member of the council I also must put all expenditures into a more comprehensive assessment of needs of my district and our city.  Such as:

  * I hear from my constituents almost daily regarding their concerns about speeding traffic in their neighborhoods.  The only way to address this is with more police officers.  We currently do not meet the national standards for public safety officers for a city of this size.

  * I understand that our fire department is seriously understaffed and that ‘overtime’, which is required to provide the minimal level of safety we must provide, has exceeded all budgetary constraints.

  * I frequently hear from constituents that neglected properties within their neighborhoods are affecting their quality of life and negatively impacting their property values.  The 2009 budget froze all new hires and two additional code enforcement officer positions who would have handled those calls, that were never filled for lack of funds.

  * Many folks request more funding for the arts and I supported reinstating funds in the 2010 budget because I believe, in these economic times, our citizens need local activities when personal vacations may no longer fit within their budgets.

  * The parks system within our community is of the 70’s vintage, with meager funds made available for maintenance to tennis courts, ball fields, restroom facilities, swimming pools, etc. . . . In fact, I’m heading a task force to find creative resources to begin funding an update of our parks system.

  * Throughout the winter I heard from constituents who felt their streets were not adequately salted or plowed.  In fact, after the winter weather, many of the streets in the 5th district have seriously deteriorated.  In fact, there are streets within the 5th District that haven’t been resurfaced in decades due to budgetary constraints.

One of the most difficult decisions I’ve had to make, as a councilmember, is to assess every taxpayer a storm water management fee to cover the decades old problems in our storm water and sewer systems, systems that have been neglected in the city budget by previous councils.  I voted for you to pay for the impervious surfaces on your property, because I felt I had no other choice to solve the serious problems of flooding and water quality.  In my heart of hearts, I cannot rationalize adding more impervious surfaces.  In fact, the city’s message is ‘do as I say and not as I do’.  Furthermore, we don’t even know if those sidewalks will have to be removed in a couple of years to replace the failing sewer/storm water system.

I firmly believe this particular project, for which we have no real cost estimates, was pushed to this point with a lack of forethought, no comprehensive plan including storm water/sewer implications, and no regard for this economic crisis in which we, as council members, now more than ever, must be vigilant to a fault of where your tax dollars are being spent.

In an effort to find a solution to this dilemma with Tates Creek Sidewalks, I have met with the State Transportation Cabinet to discuss options and learned that:

        * There is no June 30 deadline

        * The location for the grant project cannot be moved from Tates Creek Road

        * Once the grant has been accepted and real cost estimates are done, we can decline the project but must repay the State for any expenditure.

        * Any additional funding beyond the grant must come from the City

        * The scope of the proposal can be restructured to reduce the sidewalk to only one side of Tates Creek, with a request from the Mayor.

I have proposed this alternative to the Mayor and have agreed to support it on the East side of Tates Creek due to more non-residential uses on that side.  The scope would include creating crosswalks with high priority for safe crossing.  The proposed alternative would allow the project to proceed and serve as a measurement for the ultimate need for pedestrian traffic.

After hearing from so many concerned and interested constituents, I felt I needed to respond with an explanation.  Even if we do not agree, I hope this will help you to understand where I am coming from.  If you would like further comment or information on my position, please contact me at cfeigel@lfucg.com or 425-2283.

by Andrew Wyllie

Cover via Amazon

Lexington is a city with a lot of potential.

Richard Florida’s book, ‘The Rise of the Creative Class’, provides a method of measuring a city’s desirability as a place to live for the creative class. His analysis breaks down a city’s potential in three categories: Talent, Technology and Tolerance (the three T’s of economic development). In order for a city to be attractive to the creative class, it must be able to rank highly in all three areas.

The index is fairly easy to use, a city’s talent can be measured by looking at the number of people in the city with college degrees especially architects, doctors, software engineers and MBAs. Lexington already scores higher than most cities on this index. Technical competence of a city is evident through the number of patents generated by firms and universities. Lexington possesses a world class University which attracts many talented professionals to the city. The University of Kentucky’s mission to become a top 20 University will fuel this migration of talent into the city. In essence, if they can bring in a few top people the rest will follow.

Possibly the biggest hurdle to overcome is the reputation the state of Kentucky has with respect to tolerance. Florida measures a city’s tolerance with something he calls the gay-bohemian index. This is simply a measure of how accepted gay couples are in a particular city. The numbers for the index can be gleaned from census data by looking for households with gay couples, a higher number indicates a higher tolerance. In the previous election though, 75% of Kentucky voters voted to ban gay marriage and civil unions. I can remember being somewhat stunned by this result after the election as for me this is an issue about basic human rights and should really not have any place in state politics. Fortunately, there are other examples of cities that have managed to break through stereotypes placed on them by the state they are located in. Austin, Texas is a great example although Austin is quite a bit bigger than Lexington (but then again, everything is bigger in Texas). Lexington ranks fairly highly of Florida’s gay tolerance index but this is true for most urban areas

While an index is useful as a measurement, it is not necessarily a ‘be all and end all’ solution with respect to the desirability of a city towards members of the creative class. A city can score high on the index but be on it’s way down, with members of the Creative Class moving to more hip and lesser known cities. For example, Seattle and San Francisco are both great cities, but people are starting to leave as they find the cost of living is just too high and the morning commute is just not worth the hassle anymore. In my experience, the real leaders of the Creative Class are always on the lookout for the next great thing. They don’t sit around analyzing indexes and whatnot “oh look, I see Lexington is scoring really high on this talent index, we should go there and check it out”, it’s more of a word of mouth thing – “Hey I hear Lexington Kentucky is the place to be these days, they have awesome cycling and a great bar scene downtown”.

Lexington’s planners need to encourage density and mixed use zoning, especially in the downtown core. Mixed use zoning means that people can work and shop very close to where they live as opposed to big sprawled out suburbs where you have to drive everywhere. Jan Jacobs, a well know urban planner, was a big advocate of designing cities for people not cars. These spaces like SOHO in New York City and the St. Laurence Market area in Toronto (which she helped plan) are areas where people can live, work and shop without requiring a car to get around. Other amenities which attract the creative class include bike paths and wide sidewalks with street side cafes, farmers markets and other public spaces. Since downtown Lexington is not very built up right now, there is a huge potential to convert (not tear down) some of these older buildings into stores, restaurants, bars and housing. Relaxing liquor laws does not hurt either like this idea to allow people to walk around with open alcohol in certain areas – the creative class does not like to be burdened by rules.

I think the technology, talent and tolerance already exist here – we are the creative class. Now we need to use our creative energy to create a city the city that we want as opposed to trying to emulate other cities around the country. It’s this pure honesty about who we are that will make our city more attractive and give it a unique character that will help us realize our full potential.

by Andrew Wyllie
Here’s an interesting exercise to try.  Go downtown and WALK around a bit and try to get a sense of what the city has to offer.  Try to ignore the fact that walking along Main Street feels like walking beside a major highway with cars easily getting up to 45 mph and that the sidewalks is closed for no real apparent reason around the possibly future site of the new Center Point project.  I have walked through downtown many times trying to imagine what it would be like if we could reduce the amount of traffic that flows through the city and maybe fix up some of the old and empty store fronts.  The Lexington Downtown Development Authority has a lot of plans (which can be downloaded from their website) for making downtown a destination as opposed to a cut through for people trying to get across town.  Some of the ideas coming from the LDDA include building a linear park down the length of Vine St., converting both Vine and Main Streets back into two way streets and closing Vine St. in front of the Convention Center/Rupp Arena.

Main St. has a number of nice older buildings which add a lot of character to the city.  The sidewalks are nice and wide and fairly easy to navigate.  Vine St. on the other hand is not really nice for walking on at all, modern buildings (including a couple of really ugly ones that should never been allowed to have been built), the bus station and parking lots. 

One thing you may notice as you walk along Main is that there are no driveways that do not also connect to Vine or Water Streets.  So the idea to create a park and basically shut down one of these two streets is a good one as access to all of the buildings and parking areas can be maintained.  The problem is that we are doing it on the wrong street.  Main Street would be much better off being the street with the park on it, simply because it is more interesting and has much more charm.  Who wants to hang out in a park across from the bus terminal?  Besides the fact that it will be noisy and smelly, you still have to maintain a roadway here which makes it harder for people to get in and out of the park area.  Main on the other hand really does not require a lot of vehicle traffic and,  if you convert Vine into a major thoroughfare, you can easily take most of, if not all, the traffic off Main.  This would allow restaurants on Main to have large outdoor areas, would provide a good space for the Farmer’s Market including the potential to allow some more permanent market spaces as there are a number of empty store fronts along the street right now.  This would create a green space corridor that would connect the library, the court houses, Cheapside, Victorian Square, the Triangle Park and the Convention Center.  Vine St. would then become the commercial part of town. Vine can easily accommodate two way traffic with two lanes in each direction and would allow access to all of the parking structures and the bus terminal.

The next area to focus on is Triangle park.  With Vine as a major thoroughfare, a large deck could be built over Vine to connect the convention center/Rupp on the second floor with the park and Victorian Square (since Main St. will be closed off).  This is potentially another good location for a permanent farmers market, using the frontage offered by Victorian Square and the space currently used by Main St. for the market area and public space.

You may have noticed that I have suggested a couple of different locations for a market.  I feel that a permanent market is a key ingredient to making the downtown area more vibrant.  I’m not convinced that the proposed market on Cheapside is a good idea though.  I have a feeling that it will constantly be in the shadows of the Fifth/Third tower as well as the new Center Point tower (if it ever gets built).  Being in constant shade would not be a very nice environment for a farmers market.

Overall though, I think think the Lexington Downtown Development Authority has a lot of great ideas and I’m excited to see what the future of Lexington might be like.  The addition of a permanent Farmer’s Market and being less car and more pedestrian oriented would help make downtown Lexington a destination again. 

The Lexington Downtown Development Authority’s (LDDA) Streetscape Master Plan is well worth reading if you get a chance. The ninety-one page document lays out the plans for many areas in downtown Lexington and includes lots of cool drawings of places in Lexington that you know and love but might not recognize right away. There are lots of good ideas and recommendations, many of them you may have already read about, like converting one way streets back to two ways and this idea about making Vine St. into a big park. There are also a number of items that have not really been mentioned much in the press like creating two roundabouts at either end of downtown on Main Street. After reading the plan though, I found the process to leave feedback somewhat lacking. I’m a full time student at UK and a stay at home dad, so my time to attend public meetings is fairly limited. The LDDA website is very informative, and they seem to be doing a great job getting the word out, but it’s one directional, there’s no way to get the word in.

My first experience with the web was back in 1993 when I was working as a network administrator for the Physics department at the University of Toronto. One day, one of the high energy physics profs (you know the type, Einsteinian hair and somehow lacking in social skills) came into my office with a request (demand?) that I install this software on the main server called Mosaic. I had never heard of it and I tried to blow him off with my polite, professional brush off – “yeah, ok, sounds great, I’ll get right on it”, which basically, for all you non-geek non-systems people out there translates to “fat chance”. Maybe sensing my haughtiness he said “No, seriously, we need this installed so that we can collaborate with our colleagues in Switzerland at CERN”. Not having, much of a life at the time, I figured I could stay late and install the software. If you haven’t guessed already, Mosaic was one of the first web browsers, and once I got done in the the wee hours of the morning, I was looking at pictures on my computer from half way around the world. The point though is that the original technology for the web was meant for collaboration (multi directional) and not just for publishing (one way).

That’s why websites like Facebook (and more recently Twitter) are so popular. The idea that I can share photos and notes with people that live hundreds of miles from me, instantaneously, is almost as good as seeing them in person. Once I post this blog article, people can immediately leave feedback like – “wow, that paragraph about your old job was a bit long and maybe not really that relevant to the conversation at hand”. Go ahead, click on the comments link below, I’m a big boy, I can take it. This is what makes the Internet such a powerful tool, to be involved, to leave feedback, and have a conversation with the guy that wrote that long winded tripe at your convenience.

Which brings me back around to the Lexington Downtown Development Authority’s website. I’ve read the documents, and I have some ideas but I can’t for the life of me figure out how to be heard. What can I do to have an intelligent conversation on some of the issues with other people, not just planners, that want to see Lexington reach its full potential. Obviously one way is to write about it here, but then how do I know if the people that are making the decisions are going to read this blog post. Why can’t the LDDA have a discussion area on their website, or set up a blog on blogspot or wordpress. They do have a Facebook group but there’s nothing going on there and Facebook is probably not the appropriate place for this type of discussion. Once a good solution is found, it needs to be promoted and the high ranking members need to be visible and available to take part in the discussion.

I’m concerned that major changes to Lexington are being made without much opportunity for the general public to be a part of the process. I would be very surprised if it was due to a general lack of interest by the city’s population. We need to encourage the city government and its agencies to start taking advantage of new technologies in order to create an atmosphere for a discussion to take place. There are a lot of people here with really good ideas and Lexington certainly has the potential to be one of the top cities in the US to live. We need to harness these ideas and have an intelligent conversations if we to move closer to these goals.

]]> https://acemagazinelex.com/lexington-idling-ills/ Mon, 16 Mar 2009 14:16:00 +0000 http://www.acemagazinelex.com/2009/03/idling-ills/ by Andrew Wyllie

One question I often have as I walk past the line of people in their cars waiting to pick up their kids after school is how much gas is being burned by all of those idling engines and what the effects are on the local environment.

The problem seems to be the worse as it gets warmer.

The kids will be outside playing in their end of the day recess on the playground beside this big line of cars waiting for pick ups. All the cars will have their engines running so that they can run their air conditioners. I remember one day when I found my son feeling sick to his stomach right after school. He was playing third base and the foul line runs parallel to the car pick up line which usually starts forming about twenty minutes before school gets out. So the whole time the kids were out playing kickball, they were breathing in the exhaust from the cars in the pick up line.

I think everyone knows by now that car exhaust has some pretty nasty stuff in it. Ground level ozone is one of the primary pollutants in the Lexington area. It comes from car exhaust and is known to cause asthma which is particularly dangerous for young kids. There are a number of other pollutants: carbon monoxide, nitrogen dioxide, sulfur dioxide, suspended particles (this is stuff that gets stuck in your lungs), benzene, formaldehyde and don’t forget polycyclic hydrocarbons – all of these have adverse health affects including asthma, heart disease and cancer. This website talks more specifically about the effects of some of these pollutants:
coalitionforcleanair.org/air-pollution-pollutants.html.

It turns out that that the average car burns roughly a gallon of gas every hour it idles depending on the type of engine and whether the A/C is on. Say the typical wait time at the local school is about fifteen minutes and there are roughly sixty cars in the line up, that would translate to about fifteen gallons of gas being burned per day per school. If the price of a gallon of gas is around two dollars, that works out to about thirty dollars a day or $150 a week or about $6000 a year per school (assuming 40 weeks of school). How about this, instead of sitting around burning your money (and making the oil companies richer), you could turn off your car and make a donation to the school.

The thing that really bugs me about this though is why it even happens in the first place. Is it really that difficult to just park the car somewhere and walk over to the school to pick up your kid? How do you feel about releasing all these toxins into the atmosphere right beside children playing? I would strongly encourage parents that feel they need to drive to pick up their kids to turn off their cars while waiting in the pick up line. Even better would be to leave the car at home, especially on nice days, and just walk or ride a bike. You and your kids will be better off for it.

I recently had the opportunity to see Dr. Vandana Shiva speak at the University of Kentucky’s Second Annual Sustainability Lecture Series. Her talk focused on areas of economic and ecological sustainability, suggesting that the growth in the economy was at the cost of ecology and the poor people in the world. At a number of key points in her talk, Dr. Shiva talked about a negative economy, negative energy systems and energy slaves.

A negative economy has been created by the green revolution. It runs across the whole spectrum of industrial agriculture. For example a typical farmer pays more for seeds and fertilizers yet has smaller yields than what can be obtained with organic methods. Not only are yields smaller, they take more energy to produce than what they yield. These systems are, in Dr. Shiva’s words, ‘negative energy systems’. In the U.S. it can take up to ten calories of energy to produce one calorie of food, the rest of the energy going into the biosphere as waste and pollution. This is due to the mechanization of the farm and the reliance on fertilizers, pesticides, plastics, feed and energy to run these farms. There is also extra energy being used to get products to market as these newer farms are centralized and it takes more energy to ship the food to market. Additionally, on the consumer side (at least in the US), most people can no longer walk to the local store but have to drive instead which uses even more energy and creates more pollution.

The “energy slaves” are the farmers. They become, in Dr. Shiva’s words “addicted to chemicals” and require non-renewable resources to maintain their farming operations. The seed companies lure these farmers in by promising huge gains over the traditional agricultural methods. Once the farmers are hooked, the seed companies drastically increase the prices for their seed. Indeed, in the short term, many farms do see much larger yields. But in the same way that the GDP is a poor measure of overall wellness, these short term gains are not a good measure of the overall health of the farm as they do not take into account all of the factors required to keep the farm running in the long term. Artificial fertilizers cause the soil to deteriorate with 17% of soil organisms destroyed in the first three years of use. The response from the farmers is to apply more fertilizers which further increases costs for the framers to a point where they can no longer afford to run their farms. Costs of production are also increased by Genetically Modified seeds which require much more water than regular seeds. The green revolution has also killed the diversity of farms. This diversity is the essence of organic agriculture. Biodiversity produces more and better quality food than most monocultures that rely heavily on external inputs. Eventually, like all unsustainable systems, the system fails leaving the farmer with unusable land and unrecoverable debt.

Maybe the current financial crisis is an opportunity to reevaluate our economic and ecological priorities. An opportunity to create a new measure of wellbeing that looks at more than just economic wealth and somehow incorporates ecological wealth as well. One of Dr. Shiva’s closing remarks was that “small people can grow food”. It’s time to start focusing on the future of the planet via sustainable systems as opposed to focusing on the profits of large corporations. It’s a matter of “Knowing what to say no to, and knowing what to do”.

And if that wasn’t enough, here’s a link to the making of the making of the clean coal video.

Enjoy!!

If you’re a small biz, hand a little more over to LFUCG.

[Work Hard for the Money? will appear on Page 5 of this week’s Ace, on stands Thursday, Dec 4.]

If you ask anyone who has started their own business, they will tell you that it is a lot of work. You have to deal with three levels of government, make sure you have all the required licenses, set up business bank accounts, get insurance, and maybe even hire a lawyer and or accountant for accounting and tax advice. This is true even if you don’t plan on having a lot of business activity.

For example, someone with a full time job a may want to set up a small side business to sell their photography or art work in hopes that it may some day turn into a full fledged business. A student may need to set up a small business to help pay for school. Many people have hobbies that are considered businesses because they generate some revenue. In our current financial climate, many people may be cutting back on their business income to try to get stable employment, like construction contractors taking full time work at the local big box hardware store but keeping their business open just in case some work comes along.

Well now in Lexington, you can add another $100 of prepaid tax onto your businesses’expenses if you don’t plan on making more than a few thousand dollars.

The new annual minimum license fee “bill” from the LFUCG arrived in most small-business mailboxes just in time for Thanksgiving.

No one likes paying taxes, but most people can understand why we need them.

Currently if you own a business in Lexington, you are required to pay an Occupational License Fee. It’s not a huge amount compared to state and federal taxes, just 2.25% of your net earnings. So, if you made a net profit of $2000 selling photographs, you would have to pay the city $44.50 in business tax. That’s not a big deal although it is a bit of a pain to fill out all the paper work (which is actually pretty complicated) just to send a check in for forty or fifty dollars a year. With the new plan, you are now required to prepay $100 in tax, so if you wind up only owing $44.50, you lose the other $65.50. Or to put it another way, your tax rate goes UP if you make less money.

Here’s the reasoning for the new tax (from Mayor Newberry’s budget address on April 8th, 2008): “… there are hundreds of businesses filing for licenses, yet they generate no revenue for the community. In those instances, the fee [the $100] will serve to pay for the cost of administering the program or will serve to discourage businesses which are not active from filing for a license. In FY09, this fee will generate approximately $2.7 million, and in subsequent years, we anticipate that it will add approximately $1.4 million each year.”

Basically, what he is saying is that there are business in Lexington (actually about 12,000 of them) that are filing for licenses but then don’t have much if any net income. Well, like I described above, there are lots of small business out there that are just small side interests or hobbies which maybe just generate a small amount of money. To suggest that these businesses should pay the city so that the city can in turn afford to processes the returns of these small businesses is a bit ludicrous —it’s a ‘make work’ project funded by people who can’t really afford to pay for it.

So now, it gets even worse for these very small business in Lexington. If you are running a small side business (you or your spouse work full time), you may not be able to write off many expenses, and even though the business does not generate much revenue, you will be taxed at a higher rate as the profits are added to your regular income. So, going back to the $2000 in net profits selling photographs: You’re looking at 25% in federal income tax ($500), 15% federal self employment tax ($300), 6% state tax ($120), state business taxes (flat $165, for a LLC) and Lexington’s $100 = $1185 in taxes or a marginal rate of roughly 60%. Surely anyone in this position is doing it as a labor of love. If you just wanted to make money, you would be better off with a part time job at Target.

Other cities that we are trying to emulate, that are vibrant and foster the creative class tend not to place any taxes on these types of small businesses. In Austin Texas, they have no business license requirements. Same for Boulder Colorado although they do have a city sales tax. In Bellevue Washington, you need to pay a one time registration fee of $29.00, but then only pay taxes if your gross income is over $135,000.

It seems to me that the city could save a lot of time and money by using rules similar to those of Bellevue WA. Have a registry of businesses set up for a nominal fee, but only tax businesses that are making above a set gross income limit. This would reduce the amount of labor required to process the 12,000 tax forms with zeros all over them and remove the need to generate another $1.4 million in revenue to pay for this processing. The key though is to encourage people who want to run a small business in Lexington, not make yet another hurdle for them to jump over.