Civic Assembly members now understand the assignment as panel goes through orientation
By Alan Lytle
March 1, 2026 at 7:10 PM EST
36 randomly selected women and men met for the first time on Sunday as part of Lexington's first-ever Civic Assembly.
Over the course of the month, the panel will be tasked with deliberating two major questions: Should the city charter be updated and should urban county council members earn more money for the job?
Vice Mayor Dan Wu says the council has agreed to receive a presentation on the panel's recommendations.
"At the very least, at the end of this, we will have three dozen more really educated and engaged members of our community who I hope will continue to be engaged with the political process, with how things work in the city," Wu said. "Obviously, I have my own feelings about compensation. We're seeing some of the effects of compensation being an issue in that this year we're losing so many council members who aren't running again. And three of them, three of my colleagues, have stated compensation as one of the reasons that they weren't running. So it's obviously an issue that hopefully we can solve."
(1202x1920, AR: 0.6260416666666667)
Local area non-profit group CivicLex is organizing the effort.
Executive Director, Richard Young:
"We sent out 10,000 postcards to households across Lexington, both homes, apartments, everything. And from that, we got demographic information and we used that information to build a fully representative panel. Lexington is 50% women, 50% men, our panel is 50% men, 50% women. But importantly, it's across nine demographics. So housing status, income, education, gender, political representation, or political affiliation. We really wanted to try and get a snapshot. What does it look like to build a snapshot of 36 people that are randomly selected to be a part of this process and make (what) will ultimately be a pretty significant decision," Young said.
Sunday's four hour session served as an orientation. Limited seating is available for those want to watch and the meetings will be streamed live through a link at CivicLex.org.
https://civiclex.org/civic-assembly
Vice Mayor Dan Wu says the council has agreed to receive a presentation on the panel's recommendations.
"At the very least, at the end of this, we will have three dozen more really educated and engaged members of our community who I hope will continue to be engaged with the political process, with how things work in the city," Wu said. "Obviously, I have my own feelings about compensation. We're seeing some of the effects of compensation being an issue in that this year we're losing so many council members who aren't running again. And three of them, three of my colleagues, have stated compensation as one of the reasons that they weren't running. So it's obviously an issue that hopefully we can solve."
(1202x1920, AR: 0.6260416666666667)
Local area non-profit group CivicLex is organizing the effort.
Executive Director, Richard Young:
"We sent out 10,000 postcards to households across Lexington, both homes, apartments, everything. And from that, we got demographic information and we used that information to build a fully representative panel. Lexington is 50% women, 50% men, our panel is 50% men, 50% women. But importantly, it's across nine demographics. So housing status, income, education, gender, political representation, or political affiliation. We really wanted to try and get a snapshot. What does it look like to build a snapshot of 36 people that are randomly selected to be a part of this process and make (what) will ultimately be a pretty significant decision," Young said.
Sunday's four hour session served as an orientation. Limited seating is available for those want to watch and the meetings will be streamed live through a link at CivicLex.org.
https://civiclex.org/civic-assembly