In Lexington elections, land use issues should be important. Negative ads should not | Opinion
The Lexington-Fayette Urban County Council is non-partisan, but in upcoming races, it has a dividing line that’s as stark as two political parties: Development or preservation of Fayette County’s rural land.
Last year, a majority of council members, many of them newly elected, voted to expand Lexington’s Urban Service Boundary, adding 2,800 acres to land that can be developed because of rising concerns about housing availability and affordability.
However, it was a rushed process, without any data or requirements for affordable housing or any kind of development.
Many of members were pushed by a group called Lexington For Everyone, a 501(c)4 that has refused to release its donors’ names, but has been represented by Realtors, housing advocates and developers.
This time around, Lexington for Everyone has so far endorsed two candidates that voted for expansion, Shayla Lynch in District 2, and Liz Sheehan in District 5. Spokeswoman Carla Blanton said the endorsements are “based on their support of balanced land use policies that benefit all of Lexington.”
After the expansion, another group emerged. Protect Lex. The political action committee formed earlier this year has endorsed candidates in five of the six contested council races: Tyler Morton in District 1, Emma Curtis in District 4, Meredith Price in District 5, Heather Hadi in District 7 and Hil Boone in District 12.
Morton, Curtis and Price are all challengers to council members who voted for expansion. District 7 and District 12 are open seats.
Protect Lex has not made any move in the District 2 race between incumbent Shayla Lynch and challenger Jacques Wigginton, even though Lynch voted for expansion.
But Protect Lex has gone a step further. They’ve made negative ads against Sheehan and Brenda Monarrez for their votes on expansion, including the claim it will cost Lexington $570 million. Some of those costs will be shared by developers.
One of the negative ads called out Monarrez over her dispute with fellow member Denise Gray, which has resulted in a protective order barring Monarrez from City Hall.
Charlie Rowland, the chair of Protect Lex, said PACs aren’t allowed to coordinate with campaigns, so they did not interview any candidates, but based their endorsements on statements, referrals and past votes.
“We’re trying to make sure that local land use issues are a focal point of local elections,” Rowland said.
Fair enough. Protect Lex is mostly funded by the Goodman family of Mount Brilliant Farm, which has donated at least $50,000, according to the Kentucky Registry of Election Finance. Greg Goodman is the former board chair and current board member of the Fayette Alliance, the most active land use advocacy group.
Other Fayette Alliance board members include current chairman Don Robinson of Winter Quarter Farm and former Godolphin America President Jimmy Bell.
But it’s disappointing that Protect Lex would go one step further and run a negative ad against Liz Sheehan, one of the smartest, hardest-working council members we have.
A self-inflicted wound
Like many others, I disagreed with Sheehan’s vote on expansion. I think any expansion vote should be tied to a data-driven process that emphasizes such needs as housing, transportation and services ahead of time. You don’t expand first and plan later because that allows greedy developers to build more McMansions and strip malls where we don’t need them.
I also agree that horse farms and racing are an important brand for Lexington. Together, they keep Lexington from becoming just another town.
Sheehan, who represents an urban district close to downtown, has said plainly she wasn’t happy with the vote either. She was worried about the haste, the lack of forethought to infrastructure and services. She voted to limit the acreage involved from the initial 5,000 acres to 2,700.
But in the end, she said, she was too concerned about the lack of housing that was keeping people out of Lexington.
The truth is that horse interests suffered a self-inflicted wound.
Decades ago, it wouldn’t have been too hard to figure out that putting a green wall around a city would elevate housing prices. The smart thing would have been to set up an affordable housing trust fund long ago, knowing the day would come when Lexington’s poorest citizens would be held hostage to its richest.
The second smartest thing would be to have worked in good faith on infill and development for affordable housing, instead of being dedicated only to the strictest of farmland preservation.
The third smartest thing would be to have compromised on, well, anything. In 2022, then-Vice Mayor Steve Kay, a long-time supporter of the Urban Service Boundary, recognized which way the expansion winds were blowing and set up the Goal 4 work group, which identified pockets of land that could be hooked up to city utilities without hurting horse farms. It also set up a detailed rubric to make sure any expansion met numerous requirements and priorities.
It would have created a slow, thoughtful, data-driven process, exactly what did not happen last year.
But Fayette Alliance, and its allies opposed it, just like they brought a scorched earth approach to stopping a soccer stadium off Newtown Pike near a highway at the edge of the urban service boundary and instead got a soccer stadium near a highway in an expanded urban service boundary.
You can’t oppose every single project, ignore the fact that housing costs keep going up, and then be surprised when a coalition such as Lexington for Everyone and a new round of council members worried about affordable housing make a move to get more.
Unleashing a political vendetta against Sheehan is not how you build coalitions for the good of everyone. And what’s so dumb about trying to oust her is that she’s exactly the kind of person you need on council to sort through the complicated process of how to best manage the expansion area and figure out what comes next.
She could be preservationists’ best friend.
Sheehan’s challenger, Meredith Price is a Realtor and a former employee of the Beck family of Gainesway Farm, which has given generously to her campaign. Greg Goodman and other family members have also given her $10,000, according to KREF.
Price seems like a perfectly smart, nice person. However, coming on board with no experience and total fealty to horse farms is not the best way to solve a nearly impossible situation over growth.
Lexington’s future?
The other inconvenient truth is that while horse interests used to dominate Lexington, fewer and fewer people care. A lot of Lexingtonians like going to Keeneland, but they’d rather have affordable rents and a first home they can buy than worry about our diminishing agricultural land.
So, Protect Lex is attempting to get rid of a public official who could be an important ally.
Given the recent soap operas that have plagued the government center, Lexington needs as much stability and thoughtfulness as we can possibly get. Sheehan offers nuance, intelligence and understanding of how the systems work.
The people funding her opponent appear to lack this big picture.
What they do have, of course, is money. Lots of it.
Let’s hope that money doesn’t seduce District 5 voters into making the wrong choice.
This story was originally published October 24, 2024 at 12:02 PM.
