Residents, community group sue Urban County Council over expansion vote
A group of Fayette County residents and the Fayette Alliance are filing suit against the Lexington-Fayette Urban County Council to stop the recent vote to expand the city’s urban services boundary.
The lawsuit, filed in Fayette Circuit Court on Friday, alleges that the council did not follow Kentucky’s state law on growth plans when it voted to allow development on between 2,700 and 5,000 acres in Fayette County.
In addition to the Fayette Alliance, a land use group, the plaintiffs are real estate broker Bill Justice, Carolyn Conley and David Powell, who both live in Lexington neighborhoods and Robert James, a farm owner, according to the complaint.
“We are not an anti-growth organization,” said Brittany Roethemeier, the Fayette Alliance’s executive director. “We do think it’s important to support smart, sustainable and equitable growth here in Fayette County. We don’t support growth that is not backed by data or research or doesn’t comply with our laws.”
Specifically, KRS 100.191 requires that comprehensive plans shall be based on “research, analysis and projections.”
“The mandated expansion of between 2,700 and 5000 acres is arbitrary and not supported by research, data and analysis,” Roethemeier said.
In addition, the council broke with precedent because in the past, the Fayette Planning Commission has always made the decisions on expansion, not the council.
With the council’s vote, the Planning Commission is now instead tasked with deciding where the acreage should be located, as well as developing an expansion master plan that will determine what kinds of development can go where.
The lawsuit also objects to the council’s decision to ignore the recommendation of the city’s planning staff, which was not to expand, maintain the current boundaries and to create a data driven process around the USB.
The lawsuit asks for an injunction to stop the process of expansion and return the issue back to the drawing board.
“Our hope is there will be proper adherence to the law to make smart, sustainable and equitable land use decisions now and in the future,” Roethemeier said.
The complaint also says that certain council members “acted as representatives and agents for certain land owners (by attempting to include in the Goals and Recommendations specific areas where the USA was to be expanded) and real estate developers and other entities promoting development, and did not disclose that conflict of interest.” It does not identify the specific council members.
A public policy panic
The lawsuit is not much of a surprise, given the frenzied atmosphere around the June 15 vote. Thirteen mostly new council members were convinced by the pro-growth arguments of the group Lexington for Everyone that expanding the urban service boundary was the only way to provide more and more affordable housing in a city where average workers are increasingly unable to live.
However, because no process had been adopted to decide how to expand, there was nothing to ensure any affordable housing in the expanded area. As far as it goes, the expansion vote could mean we get 5,000 acres of strip malls and McMansions as far as the eye can see. Since the 1996 expansion, only market-rate single-family homes were built in that area and less than half of those 5,300 acres were developed at all.
But why in the 27 years since the last expansion has no process been adopted? Like many aspects of public policy, nothing ever happens until everyone panics and then it happens poorly. As it did here. Mayor Linda Gorton declined to sign the legislation, a symbolic act to signal her displeasure with what happened.
There were two public task forces that had begun to put that process together: The Sustainable Growth Task Force and the GGoal 4 Report. But the Fayette Alliance and other groups objected to the Goal 4 Report because there wasn’t enough public comment and they didn’t like where the report identified as possible growth zones.
Everyone agrees we need more housing and more affordable housing. It’s understandable the council was fed up with past mistakes and wanted to get things moving. But like most things, decisions about precious and finite green space should be guided by data on what kinds of housing is most needed where. Just opening up countryside without infrastructure in place makes no sense. The best case scenario is that while the wheels of justice grind ever so slowly, the Planning Commission could put together a research and data driven process to guide growth, based on work that’s already been done.
That is the Fayette Alliance’s hope. “We hope to continue to advocate for this process,” Roethemeier said. “While we do think it’s critical to ask the legal questions, we also know we need solutions as a community.”
The Fayette Alliance is right to demand a better process, but the group needs to be just as urgent about getting to one that works for both sides. We can’t wait another 27 years.
This story was originally published July 14, 2023 at 10:48 AM.
