Posted March 10th, 2010 5:57 am

The post below has a postscript—yesterday, Doug Martin, a city council member and Newberry ally, asked for the vote to be postponed for one week.

Incredibly, council members had not been provided with a copy of the current zoning laws that give a definition of family, a boarding house and fraternity and sorority houses.

It was just in December that seven Lexington students cheated death in a slumlord firetrap. As was pointed out at the time, evidently the Lexington-Fayette Urban County Government is willing to gamble that no students will actually die from the government’s conduct, or at least hopefully they won’t die before next year’s elections.

The gambling can stop today. Today, Lexington’s Fayette Urban County Council will either fix the problem with dangerous student housing that is also destroying single family residential neighborhoods, or it will side with the slumlords who profit from the housing. This issue has been discussed and debated for years, and yet there are calls to “just start over”, ala the national health care debate. There is also disturbing news of closed-door secret meetings with the landlords recently. No one knows who has said what, or promised what in those meetings. And that is not the way good government is designed to work.

Enough is enough. This issue has already destroyed several neighborhoods, and will destroy more unless addressed now. Beverly Fortune reports:

Urban County Council Tuesday will consider zoning-law changes aimed at reducing population density in neighborhoods near the University of Kentucky.
The proposed amendments are intended to crack down on landlords who convert small, World War II-era houses into lucrative dorm-style rental units for students.
The seven amendments, if approved, will include changes in how the zoning code defines a family, a boarding house and a fraternity and sorority house.
The council work session comes after Mayor Jim Newberry has met behind closed doors in the past two weeks with a group of neighborhood landlords, residents and city staff members.
Newberry declined to discuss specifically the nature of his talks, but he said Monday that he initiated the meetings because “my sense is that as things have begun to come to a head, that the opportunities for people to become more focused and intent to find a compromise has been enhanced.”
Fourth District councilman Julian Beard Monday was critical of Newberry’s tactic of holding private meetings.
The Student Housing Task Force has been meeting on related issues for two years, and Beard said it “does not work well” for two entities in government to work on parallel tracks. “They don’t converge and cross pollinate.”
Third district councilwoman Diane Lawless, whose district encompasses many of the university neighborhoods, said of the mayor’s meetings: “It’s within his legal right. I’ll listen to any idea anybody has that might be a solution.”
The council Tuesday will decide whether to place the proposed amendments on the agenda for Thursday’s regular council meeting.
…
Houses where landlords have built large additions, then rented rooms to as many as 16 students, would be considered boarding houses. These would not be permitted in single-family (R-1) and two-family (R-2) neighborhoods and would not be grandfathered in, said city attorney Rochelle Boland.
…
Fifth District Councilwoman Cheryl Feigel recommended last week at a meeting of the council’s Planning Committee, where the text amendments were hammered out, that the council not consider defining a family until Newberry’s group makes its recommendations.
But Second District Councilman Tom Blues said he had problems with attempts to “slow down an issue that we have been working on, on some level, for several years.”
“What has been going on for a long time is the destruction of neighborhoods and economic values,” Blues said. “It is time for the full council to debate this issue.”
Newberry said his group is not on a specific timetable. He did not know when or even if they might make a recommendation.
Molly Davis, president of the Elizabeth Street Neighborhood Association, said she went into the first of Newberry’s meetings optimistic. “But by the end of the second meeting, it’s more of the same,” she said.
Davis said she was not comfortable “looking to people I see as the agents of destruction — the landlords — as coming to some agreeable arrangement.”
And with the mayor involved, “It makes this a political issue in an election year,” she said.

It is a political issue and it is an election year. Lexington citizens will vote for and will support elected officials who back these responsible protections in its zoning laws.

Please contact other council members, including the at-large members, and urge them to vote to pass the amendments today.

The contact information is listed below:

Council District Councilmember Phone Number E-mail
Vice Mayor Jim Gray 258-3202 jgray@lfucg.com
At-Large Linda Gorton 258-3828 lgorton@lfucg.com
At-Large Chuck Ellinger 258-3212 cellinge@lfucg.com
District 1 Andrea James 258-3216 ajames@lfucg.com
District 2 Tom Blues 258-3217 tblues@lfucg.com
District 3 Diane Lawless 258-3222 dglawless@lfucg.com
District 4 Julian Beard 258-3223 jbeard@lfucg.com
District 5 Cheryl Feigel 258-3213 cfeigel@lfucg.com
District 6 Kevin Stinnett 258-3225 kstinnett@lfucg.com
District 7 K.C. Crosbie 258-3214 kcrosbie@lfucg.com
District 8 George Myers 258-3203 georgem2@lfucg.com
District 9 Jay McChord 258-3215 jmcchord@lfucg.com
District 10 Doug Martin 258-3224 dougmartin@lfucg.com
District 11 Peggy Henson 258-3218 phenson@lfucg.com
District 12 Ed Lane 258-3221 edlane@lfucg.com

Share on Facebook