This race will decide Lexington’s next vice mayor. Here’s where they stand on key issues
Six people vying to become Lexington’s next vice mayor agreed crime is one of the city’s top concerns but differed on how to address it.
Bill Farmer, a small business owner and former councilman, said there needs to be a deep societal shift to stop the rising tide of gun violence in Lexington. The city is on track to surpass the 37 homicides, a record, set in 2021.
“I think we need prayer,” Farmer said at an at-large candidate forum Wednesday at the Lyric Theater, which was hosted by more than a dozen community groups. “We need to bring civility back.”
Farmer and five other candidates are running in the Nov. 8 general election in the at-large race. The top vote getter in that race becomes the vice mayor, who runs the day-to-day operations of the 15-member Lexington-Fayette Urban County Council. The second and third place finishers serve a four-year term as at-large council members, who are elected city-wide. The race is nonpartisan.
Vice Mayor Steve Kay has served three terms as an at-large council member and cannot run again. Kay has served as vice mayor for nearly eight years.
Several candidates said during Wednesday’s forum that the city has to try new programs to tackle the surge in gun violence.
Councilman James Brown, who has served on the council since 2015, said he thinks Lexington is on the wrong track when it comes to rising homicides and non-fatal shootings.
“I think it needs to be a collaborative approach between our partners in public safety and the communities that are seeing this violence,” Brown said. “It’s not that the partnerships that we have in place aren’t working. I believe they are. We need to bring more people to the table. Because we have heard over the last couple of weeks that this is an issue that’s not going away.”
Lillie Miller-Johnson, who has run unsuccessfully in the at-large race in prior years, said people “need to get to know your neighbor and be smart about everything. Lock your doors.”
Miller-Johnson said she’s also concerned that the wrong people have access to guns.
Councilman Chuck Ellinger III, who has served on council on and off for 16 years, said he spent Sept. 10 shadowing police and E911. Ellinger said the city is facing a shortage of E911 call takers and police.
“We are down 115 officers,” Ellinger said. Nine people were shot on Sept. 10, stretching the city’s public safety response, he said.
“We have had a very big uptick in domestic violence (related) homicides,” Ellinger said. Approximately one-third of the homicides this year are domestic-violence related, he said.
Dan Wu, a first-time candidate and restaurateur, said the city’s One Lexington program, run by Devine Carama, is focusing on prevention and mentoring strategies to stop juvenile violent crime.
But that’s not the only solution, he said.
“We can’t have one strategy when it comes to public safety and turning violence around,” Wu said. “We have to look at this as a holistic, long-term solution.”
Wu said after-school programs, job training, and safe and affordable housing are all part of crime prevention.
“Law enforcement is after the fact,” Wu said.
Councilman Richard Moloney, who was first elected to the at-large seat in 2015 but has served 20 years on council, said the city has not invested in many areas of the city with high crime rates. To turn those rising crime rates around, it needs to invest in those areas.
“I blame the city for not investing where it needs to be invested,” Moloney said.
Flock cameras
Candidates also differed on the use of Flock cameras.
Through a pilot program, Lexington has installed 25 Flock cameras across the city. The license plate readers check license plate numbers with various databases. Lexington Mayor Linda Gorton has set aside money in the current budget to buy an additional 75 cameras. Police have not released their locations. The pilot project is almost at the six-month mark.
Farmer doesn’t like them.
“I think it’s an invasion of privacy of neighbors and neighborhoods,” he said.
Wu said he would like to see data from the pilot program before he would back an expansion.
“But the concerns from the community are real when it comes to Flock cameras,” Wu said. “If you want to alleviate people’s concerns, you have to have transparency.”
If police can’t tell people where they are, “then maybe you need to rethink how you go about it,” Wu said.
In a council meeting earlier this year, Ellinger was one of the first council members to ask where the cameras were going to be located. “They wouldn’t tell me,” he said.
It’s still a pilot program, he said. To date the cameras have helped locate 11 missing persons and 70 stolen cars, he said.
“There has been some positives come out of it,” Ellinger said. “I want to see what happens.”
Brown echoed Ellinger’s comments, saying the Flock cameras are still under review.
Brown said he wanted to make sure the cameras were not being placed in largely minority neighborhoods. The council is going to get an update on the cameras in October.
“Once it gets reviewed in committee the true tale of the tape is how effective they have been,” Brown said. “And have we put up enough safe guards to make sure that we don’t disproportionately impact low-income and minority communities. And so the jury is still out.”
Miller-Johnson said she is not opposed to the cameras “as long as they are not targeting certain neighborhoods or certain individuals.”
Moloney said he thinks the cameras have helped solve crimes but he, too, wants to know more about the cameras and how they work.
“Any tool that helps find missing people is very important,” Moloney said. With the police down more than 100 officers, “tools like these really help out.”
