Housing, short-term rentals among key issues for Lexington 5th district council seat
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In the election for Urban County Council 5th District seat, incumbent Liz Sheehan will face Meredith Price in the November election.
District 5 includes several Lexington neighborhoods like Kenwick, Chevy Chase and Ashland, and parts of the 40502, 40505 and 40517 zip codes.
Sheehan, a faculty member in the department of psychology at the University of Kentucky, first won election to the seat in 2020 and was reelected in 2022. Price is a Realtor who has lived in Lexington for 17 years.
The race has not been without controversy with two outside groups spending money in the race.
Sheehan, who voted in 2023 to expand the urban service boundary, has been targeted in mailers by Protect Lex, a political action group formed to advocate for preservation of farmland. Lexington for Everyone, another group formed to push for the expansion of the urban service boundary, has also sent mailers supporting Sheehan.
Meredith Price
Price said she will bring the perspective of working in real estate over the last decade, and how to be “good stewards of this land.” Her experience working in development projects has shown her where improvements can be made in that process, she said.
Price said her priorities are to “listen, communicate and consider everything” brought to her by constituents.
“I care about Lexington, I care about my district, I care about the neighborhoods, I care about the people, and that’s why I’m doing this,” Price said.
Price said her main priorities in District 5 will be addressing traffic and roads, for drivers, bikers and pedestrians. Additionally, she wants to prioritize how to use public spaces in the district, and how to utilize “responsible development” to improve the district.
“We have a lot of people that travel through that don’t live there, and that traffic and those roads get completely bottle-necked,” Price said. “What can we do to allow the residents to better use those roads, and safer roads, for cars, walkers and bikers?”
She is against expanding the urban service boundary but instead wants to find ways to develop areas within the boundary.
Price said affordable housing is an issue in many cities around the country, including Lexington. If elected, she will work with other political leaders and housing developers to streamline the process of getting additional housing built, she said.
“I’ve worked on a couple of very small-scale development projects and dealt with the city with permitting and approvals processes, and the engineer I’ve worked with is baffled all the time by the process,” Price said. “It’s a backward process that doesn’t have to be as hard or complicated as it is.”
As for the city’s use of FLOCK cameras and FUSUS technology to address crime, Price said she has privacy concerns, but because the technology has shown positive results, she feels generally positive about them.
“Because it’s showing that it’s effective, keep showing me the results, and then I can get on board,” Price said.
Earlier this year, changes were approved by a council to Lexington’s short-term rental ordinance, including restrictions on how many new vacation rentals will be allowed in neighborhoods. It has not yet been approved by the full council.
Price said she doesn’t support “unenforceable regulations,” like bedroom occupancy requirements or the distance requirement between short-term rentals, and said she finds some of the proposed changes are confusing.
“Generally speaking, I think the ordinance itself is confusing for everybody on both sides, and I would like to see or better understand if there’s a way any of that permitting funding can go back to the neighborhoods,” Price said.
Price said she has other ideas about how to look at the density of short-term rentals in neighborhoods, and would rather do something “a little more black and white” to enforce rentals in Lexington.
Liz Sheehan
Sheehan said her four years of experience on the council and in a leadership position on the environmental quality and public works committee will help her continue working for her district if she’s reelected.
“I’ve been doing this work, and I’ve been effective at it,” Sheehan said. “I’ve been able to push policy forward that is for my community and responsive to what my district wants, and I have the relationships to get this work done.”
Her top priorities are to address the basic needs of the community, like affordable housing, safety and physical and mental health. Sheehan has also been one of the council members working on the short-term rental policy changes.
“I know how to get policy through our system,” Sheehan said. “I know how to work with my colleagues, because you don’t do anything alone on council. There are 14 other people, but I also have the relationships within the government and with our community partners to be able to work on policy and problem-solving.”
Sheehan said that by adding additional funding to the affordable housing fund, additional units can be built. Sheehan also said that by adding a position in the planning department, called a development liaison, could help move housing projects faster through the approval process.
The current process can take nearly 250 days for a development project to be approved, Sheehan said, which is “an extensive amount of time.” A liaison, or having a “fast-track system” to green light proposed housing developments that use pre-approved plans, could help address housing needs, she said.
“We need to continue working on making housing more affordable and accessible to people at all income levels, and that requires policy change to help units being built, like investing more in our affordable housing fund, or getting a position within our planning department that has been recommended called the development liaison position, to help move projects through the system,” Sheehan said.
Sheehan said she has been supportive of using FLOCK and FUSUS technology, but has also asked questions and met with police to review data and how the technology is being used.
“I do feel like I have been taking kind of a critical thinking approach,” Sheehan said. “It’s not just an automatic yes, but I bring the concerns that I hear from the community, like surveillance concerns or data access, to the police department and talk them through.”
Sheehan is one of the council members who crafted changes to the short-term rental ordinance earlier this year, and said there is now “a mechanism for removing (rental) operators who aren’t being respectful and responsible.”
“We didn’t have any regulations before for short-term rentals,” Sheehan said. “So I understand that there are some neighborhoods that want them completely banned, and there are some operators who don’t want any restrictions at all. We worked to find a middle ground.”
This story was originally published October 23, 2024 at 5:00 AM.
