What’s New

Photo by Kathleen Burke | staff | The Fayette Alliance

The newly adopted Goals & Objectives specify no expansion of the Urban Service Boundary or Rural Activity Centers into more farmland for development. This measure will preserve our precious Bluegrass landscape in Fayette County, while also encouraging innovative development on roughly 12,000 acres of under-used, vacant, and blighted land inside our current city limits.

With the current draft of the Goals and Objectives in place (click here to see current draft), our community has the opportunity grow in a way that creates a world-class city in a world-class landscape–by revitalizing our urban core, cleaning up our polluted waterways, improving neighborhoods, promoting greenways and parks, and saving our farms for local food, equine, and general agriculture. It’s a win-win for our quality of life, environment, and economy.

On the other hand, if we expand the Urban Services Area and Rural Activity Centers, the community stands to lose on several fronts …from paying increased sewer fees, to losing more Bluegrass farmland to unnecessary development.

Click Here to see our full position statement on this issue.

On May 15th we called for  your help to make sure that the Council adopt the current “no expansion” language of the Goals and Objectives. With your quick response we achieved our goal. Thank you for supporting sustainable growth in Lexington…for our city, our farms, and our future.

Here is a sample email that was sent to City Council (councilmembers@lexingtonky.gov):

Dear Councilmembers,

I am writing to you about the Goals and Objectives of the 2012 Comprehensive Plan.

Lexington has an opportunity to become the model for innovative and sustainable growth, by connecting and balancing its vibrant city with its productive and unique Bluegrass farmland. It just takes vision and follow-through.

The first step is adopting the current draft of the Goals and Objectives, and its language prohibiting the expansion of the Urban Services Area and Rural Activity Centers in Lexington.

With this language, our community can grow in a sustainable way that creates a world-class city in a world-class landscape—by revitalizing our urban core, cleaning up our polluted waterways, improving neighborhoods, promoting greenways and parks, and saving our farmland for local food, equine, and other agricultural uses.

This growth approach is a win-win for all of us, and can strengthen our quality of life, economy, and environment.

On the other hand, if we expand the Urban Services Area and Rural Activity Centers, the community stands to lose on several fronts …from paying increased sewer fees to losing more Bluegrass farmland to unnecessary development.

Please do the right thing for our city, our farms, and our future—and adopt the current draft of the Goals and Objectives.

Thank you,

[Your Signature Here]

Updating the Comp. Plan is a two-year process—which started in spring 2011. It began with the Mayor holding a press conference, announcing no expansion of the Urban Services Area during the 2012 Comprehensive Plan update. Click here to view.

To follow through on this vision, The Fayette Alliance has been involved since the plan’s early stages, advocating for farmland protection, innovative development, and improved water quality and infrastructure in our community. If we seize this opportunity, Lexington can become the model for sustainable growth and development, by connecting and balancing its vibrant city, with its productive and unique Bluegrass farmland.

Currently, the Council is almost done with the first phase of the update, where they draft the Goals and Objectives (G&Os) of the plan. The G&Os provide the over-arching themes for the Comp Plan, and guide zone changes and other land-use legislation at city hall. The G&Os drive zoning and planning policy in Lexington…which are the very building blocks of our community. To learn more, visit the 2012 Comprehensive Plan site.

A horse grazed in a paddock on the Calumet Horse Farm on Versailles Rd. in Lexington, Ky., Thursday, April 19, 2012. | photo by Charles Bertram | Staff Lexington Herald-Leader

Goal: Protect rural Fayette County

Editorial Opinion, 5.15.12, Kentucky.com

Almost everyone has known someone whose home-improvement ambitions exceeded his needs, his abilities and his pocketbook. Expand the kitchen, add on a great room, close in the garage, dig a bigger basement, etc., etc.

It’s the kind of thinking, and acting, that can transform a perfectly lovely home into an ill-proportioned mess, leaving the owner burdened with high utility bills and a big balance on a home equity loan.

The same thing can happen to communities. Add a subdivision here, extend sewer service for an industrial park there, make way for a shopping center in another place and before you know it, a pleasant place to live sprawls into nowhere-land USA with infrastructure costs running ahead of tax revenues….Read more at Kentucky.com