Interview transcript has been edited for length and clarity.
Clay Wallace, WUKY
It's time for our weekly Civic Lex chat, taking a look at what's happening in civic government. I'm Clay Wallace, joined by Civic Lex's Adrian Bryant. Thanks for being here, Adrian.
Adrian Paul Bryant, CivicLex
Thanks for having me.
Clay
So, let's start with the big stuff. The Kentucky House passed Senate Bill 61 last week. It started out as a bill which basically said swimming pools at personal residences are exempt from public pool regulations. But what just passed is a lot more than that. What does the current bill propose to do?
Adrian
So, after an amendment filed by Speaker of the House David Osborne, who is a Republican from Prospect over in the Louisville area, the bill now prohibits cities from regulating the density of short-term rentals.
In Lexington, if someone wants to have an unhosted short-term rental - which is a short-term rental where the owner does not live on the property, which is the majority of short-term rentals - if they want to open an unhosted one, then they have to apply for a license with the city and ask for a conditional use permit. You can think of it kind of like a special permission slip given by the city to the operator.
So, an operator will provide the address, and the city will check two radiuses, two circles around the proposed short-term rental. If there is another unhosted short-term rental within 600 feet of the proposed one, the proposed one will not be approved. If 2% of the housing units within a 1,000-seat circle are unhosted short-term rentals, then that's the second check that will prevent the unhosted short-term rental from being approved.
These are both restrictions on density. The goal is to make sure that short-term rentals don't get too close together, specifically in neighborhoods in Lexington. A lot of the areas in and around downtown and campus, before these regulations were in place, were getting a lot of short-term rentals - you can think about Kenwick, Bell Court, Ashland, Chevy Chase, those kind of areas. The regulations were passed to make sure that there was enough housing to apply in those neighborhoods for long-term residents and that they weren't just becoming short -term rentals.
But SB 61 would prohibit cities from having those types of density restrictions and regulations if it ends up being passed and put into law.
Clay
So it's not yet a law, but it did just pass the House. What happens next for Senate Bill 61?
Adrian
It passed the House and it will need to go back to the Senate. It was a bill that started out in the Senate, but as you mentioned, it was originally about swimming pools. The House amended it significantly, so now it has to go back to the Senate.
The Senate is currently on a recess. They will reconvene on the 27th and 28th of March, so Thursday and Friday next week. At that point, they can vote to pass SB 61, but there's a little kink in the process. Right now, while the legislature is on recess, the governor has the next several days up until the 27th to veto any bills.
When the legislature comes back, most of what they're going to be doing, presumably, is overriding the governor's vetoes. They can still pass new bills in that time, but that means if Senate Bill 61 is passed on those two days next week, then the governor will be able to veto.
If the governor vetoes SB 61 after it's passed by the Senate, the legislature will not be able to override that veto and it won't become law.
So really, to put it short: the Senate can still pass it. But if it gets vetoed by the governor, then the law is just dead. And Lexington and Louisville and Covington - their density regulations for short-term rentals will still be in play.
Clay
So to pivot back to Lexington, we also have an update on the new Parks Capital Fund. Can you refresh us on what that fund is and how it came to be?
Adrian
In November of last year, Lexington voters passed a new property tax that would be assessed on all land and boats and vehicles. The tax will go into a new fund that will be used for capital improvements in Lexington's parks.
"Capital improvements," meaning things that you can sort of build and see and interact with: new swing sets or paved walking or biking trails, basketball courts, tennis courts, things of that nature. The parks fund will go toward building new versions of those or replacing existing versions.
There will be a presentation in the Budget, Finance, and Economic Development Committee meeting on Tuesday at 1:00 that will provide a little bit more detail than we've had so far about the process for how this fund is going to be implemented during the first year.
One of the things we know is that there is sort of a rubric of priorities that Lexington's Division of Parks and Recreation considers when they're bringing to council what projects they think should be funded.
Some of those include safety and well-being. So, if there's a playground where, for example, a slide is about to literally fall off, that's a safety and well-being issue. That probably bumps it up.
Projects that preserve or repair existing park facilities, projects that the neighborhood or communities around the park have been asking for, these are the kind of high-level things that go into consideration.
And we also know now - and this is the first time that this has been made public - that 10% of the new fund will be reserved for unplanned projects. Let's say a giant windstorm comes through Lexington and knocks over a basketball goal, then the fund could be used to replace that basketball goal.
We also have – it's kind of a long list, so I won't go into detail here - but we do have a list of the proposed projects for the first year of the capital fund.
Clay
Alright, we will wrap up there for this week You can find in-depth breakdowns of stories we've discussed here and more at civiclex.org and you can catch our full conversation at wuky.org. We've been chatting with Adrian Bryant.
Thanks again, Adrian
Adrian
Thanks for having me.