Development, crime at top of mind for Lexington’s 11th District council candidates
.png "Rock Daniels, left, Brittanie C. Price and incumbent Jennifer Reynolds are running for the Urban County Council District 11 seat. The election takes place Nov. 8, 2022.")
Three candidates are in the running to represent west Lexington’s 11th District on the Lexington-Fayette Urban County Council.
The district is bounded in part by West Main Street, South Broadway and Alexandria Drive and includes Versailles Road, part of the downtown area and neighborhoods near the Distillery District.
The nonpartisan race includes incumbent Jennifer Reynolds, Rock Daniels and write-in candidate Brittanie C. Price.
Here’s what to know about the candidates.
Jennifer Reynolds
Reynolds was elected to the council in 2018.
“It has been really my favorite thing that I’ve ever done,” she said. “I get to work with people. I get to solve problems, help people feel heard, connect them with local government.”
While it’s paid as a part-time position, Reynolds said she spends “easily 50 to 75 hours a week” on council duties.
“You can’t always do everything and you can’t always do it perfectly, but I feel like I have accomplished a lot in the past four years,” she said. “I’m looking forward to serving another term.”
Among the top issues she wants to continue to work on are her district’s corridors, such as the Versailles Road project that she said she helped secure funding for and hopes to see finished during another term.
Reynolds said she wants to continue working “to make Leestown Road safer,” and she’s working with others “on a complete street policy taking into consideration bike lanes and sidewalks.” Reynolds said she’s also been advocating for a sidewalk fund.
As for affordable housing and development, Reynolds said the city has “a housing shortage problem across the board.” But she said there’s a “disconnect.”
She said people often talk about preferring infill and redevelopment, but in reality “our constituents don’t want that,” she said. “They don’t want it next to them. They don’t want it behind them. They don’t want that density.”
“We have to let go of this idea that we don’t want things to be developed,” she said.
While she said she doesn’t have her mind made up about expanding the Urban Service Boundary, she is open to “a little more flexibility with the boundary if it would mean we could provide more housing.”
She said she values Central Kentucky’s unique landscape, and “I don’t want that to go away.”
Community safety is also top of mind.
“A healthy community, a safe community, has lots of activities, and when those go away that’s a problem, because people have nothing constructive to do,” she said. “What can parks and rec do to create safe activities?”
On the topic of police recruitment, Reynolds said she’d like to see the city consider rehiring retirees and look at shorter training periods for officers coming from other jurisdictions.
Reynolds said she’s advocated for better communication about the uptick in gun violence, which resulted in town hall meetings.
Reynolds said communication is one of her major points of interest as a council member.
As co-chair of the Mayor’s International Affairs Advisory Commission, she said she helped get money in the budget to translate the city’s website into more than 100 languages, which she said is important for both city residents and visitors.
She said District 11 is of the most diverse districts in the city, and about a quarter of its residents speak Spanish. Reynolds, who is bilingual and previously worked in community outreach, said she makes sure all her materials are published in both English and Spanish.
She also said she helped get $1 million of the city’s American Rescue Plan Act funding dedicated to the new Village Branch of the Lexington Public Library on Versailles Road.
Rock Daniels
Daniels says he wants to represent the 11th District because the city has “so many issues that are not being addressed.”
“Crime rates are just through the roof right now,” he said, at the same time the city is dealing with a shortage of jail staff, enhanced 911 operators and police officers.
“I’m for putting more money into recruitment,” he said.
On the police front, Daniels said he’d like to see the city hiring people coming out of the military and working with athletic directors at surrounding universities to recruit former athletes to work on the police force. “Let’s get these quality people.”
He said he thinks the force’s primary need is more community resource officers, people “walking the streets, knocking on doors, getting to know the neighbors.”
“You’re never going to get people to identify those bad apples until you have worked on strengthening the bond between police and citizens,” Daniels said. “You’re building those bonds of trust.”
He said the city also needs more youth activities to “keep kids out of all this violence.”
Daniels suggested that every family that makes less than 80% of Lexington’s mean income could be given a free bus pass and pool pass for their children. “At least the kids can get on the bus and go to the pool and kids can swim in the pool all day,” he said.
Another prong of Daniels’ plan for decreasing crime would be encouraging more drug treatment and intervention programs, which he said can reduce petty crime as well as the amount of money going into drug dealers’ pockets.
“We need to decriminalize drug use and we need more treatment,” he said.
Daniels, a general contractor who owns rental property around Lexington, said the city also needs more affordable housing.
“Lexington’s got to continue to grow, or we’re never going to have housing that’s affordable to people,” he said, adding later, “We need to be open to development, but also protect our neighborhoods.”
Daniels said he’s open to more oversight of landlords, such as an annual business fee of $25 per unit that could be used to fund an inspector who could make annual checks of rental properties. Landlords, he said, would “either fix up the properties or they’ll sell them.”
He suggested that the city could also look at expanding the Urban Service Boundary along outbound Richmond Road and outbound Winchester Road.
He noted that with two hospitals are being built in the Hamburg area, “we need to have a lot more housing out there. Does it need to be half acre lots? No.”
Inside the boundary, he said, “not all that land’s for sale at a price that actually works to develop it.”
Daniels said his background in the real estate business gives him an edge when it comes to planning.
Daniels, who ran unsuccessfully in the 3rd District in 2012 and 2014, said he’s also concerned about transportation issues and traffic patterns, economic development and the new city budget, the largest in the city’s history.
Daniels grew up in Bristol, Tenn., and he said his father was an immigrant from Pakistan. When Daniels moved to Lexington years ago, he said he found it to be “very accepting to all people.”
“What I’ve seen lately is just a lot of people being ignored,” he said.
Brittanie C. Price
After serving as an environmental commissioner, Price is running as a write-in candidate.
“I’ve lived here in the 11th District for a long time,” Price said. “I want to help the community and make improvements.”
Price is concerned about recent shootings and said she’d work to get the community involved in solving the problem through Neighborhood Watch programs and more programs for youth “so that they can learn that crime isn’t the way,” she said. “They can get out of poverty and be successful.”
Price suggested “volunteer police officers that would work alongside paid police officers” as a possible low-cost solution.
Price said “people’s economic situation and not being able to have adequate housing” also contribute to problems with crime.
“Instead of expanding, we need to find ways to improve the existing dwellings,” she said. “Refurbish original structures ...make it affordable and ask landlords to work together with the working poor.”
Price said the city could provide incentives to landlords to help encourage them to make rent more affordable, such as reduced taxes.
Price said she also supports raising the minimum wage so people can better afford housing, and she’d like to see more drop-in shelters for the homeless that provide “a place where they can go during the day, where they can get out of the weather.”
When asked about the Urban Service Boundary, Price responded, “I think that we are expanding too much, and we need to keep our history. We need to keep these horse farms in existence.”
Price said the city needs to consider building up instead of out. Rather than having two or three people living on a parcel, Price said a six or seven-story building “would allow more people to live inside the Circle.”
But, Price said, “I’m worried about overcrowding” and she wants to see more emphasis on green spaces in her district.
She’s also a proponent of renewable energy.
“As we find more ways to explore renewable energy we can think about expanding a little bit,” Price said.
And Price said keeping the community clean is important to her.
“We could create some jobs by having the community pick up trash,” she said. “I would make sure that our parks and recreation are safe to be there and enjoy.”
Rock Daniels
Age: 46
Previous work experience: Owns construction and real estate companies. Licensed general contractor with the city of Lexington and licensed Realtor.
Offices currently or previously held: No public offices. President of Meadowthorpe Neighborhood Association. Past board member of YMCA.
Family: Wife Heather Daniels and sons Grayson, 9, and Bennett, 6.
Brittanie C. Price
Age: 61
Previous work experience: Adult Kentucky Peer Support Specialist; Lexington V.A. Medical Center volunteer; University of Kentucky student and volunteer; Two nurse assistant classes; United States Navy veteran
Offices currently or previously held: Former Environmental Commissioner
Family: Not provided
Jennifer Reynolds
Age: 39
Previous work experience: Was a small business owner and ran a successful CrossFit gym. Worked as a professional ballet dancer and taught for 17 years. Later worked in non-profit fundraising and was outreach director with Bluegrass Youth Ballet. Started a bilingual outreach program in the 11th District’s Valley Park.
Offices currently or previously held: Urban County Council member representing the 11th District since 2018. Continues to serve on the Bluegrass Youth Ballet board.
Family: Reynolds is the mother of a young son.
