District 3 Candidates On Lexington’s Future

Lexington is growing fast, and the hardest question is where that growth should go. We sat down on the Warehouse Block with District 3 council candidates Griffin Van Meter and John Larson for a wide-ranging, candid conversation about housing, transportation, and the choices that will shape Lexington’s character for the next generation. If you’ve been wondering why traffic feels worse, why rent keeps rising, and why the urban service boundary debate never goes away, you’ll hear real answers and real tradeoffs, not talking points. 

We get into the Urban Service Boundary, preserving horse farms and farmland, and the argument for focusing on infill development and adaptive reuse instead of sprawl. Griffin shares a planning-and-policy lens grounded in parks, public space, and connection across neighborhoods, while John brings decades of public service, a sharp focus on stewardship of taxpayer money, and a push to prioritize core infrastructure like roads, police, and fire. Along the way, we talk student housing pressure near campus, historic neighborhood impacts, parking lots downtown, and what it means to build a city for people instead of cars. 

Affordable housing is a centerpiece: funding realities, what local subsidy can actually produce, and practical tools like accessory dwelling units and corridor-focused zoning. We also explore inequality, the role of public education, libraries, parks, and transit, plus a frank look at respect and services for people experiencing homelessness. 

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:06

Perfect. You guys ready?

SPEAKER_03 0:08

I think we're ready. Okay. Are you ready, John?

SPEAKER_01 0:11

Did that order of operations seem okay to you? Is that okay? Just off the cusp. You don't know the questions yet, but they're not difficult. Oh, you can you hear me now? Can you hear me? Yes, yes. So there's gonna be times that the sound is for sure. And then whenever you're speaking into the microphone, you would want it to be about this close, wouldn't you say, Brandon? Yeah. Four or five inches? Something like that. Okay, sounds great. Okay, perfect.

Welcome And Candidate Introductions

SPEAKER_01 0:40

Welcome back to the Inside the Block podcast. I am here and joined by two of our uh candidates for District 3, Griffin Van Meter and John Larson. Welcome. Thank you so much for doing this. We are at the top of Minton's in the warehouse block on a beautiful day. So thank you both for being here.

SPEAKER_03 0:59

Uh it's great to be here at Minton. Thanks so much, Chad, for organizing this. Thanks, everybody, uh, for coming out. It's been really great to uh meet some people that we didn't know yet prior. So I love it. It's okay.

SPEAKER_04 1:12

Thanks, Eric. It's nice to meet you and talk to you about history. Uh thanks, Chad. I'm I want to apologize for my early mistakes with you. I love being here and thank you for inviting me. Uh, thanks to the warehouse block. Thanks for the chance to be out here in the beautiful sunshine of our wonderful city.

SPEAKER_01 1:32

Isn't it? So, our goal for today is to learn a little bit more about you, both your campaigning, what's going on this year, how you feel about issues in Lexington, and also to get to know you on a more personal level too. So, if we wouldn't mind starting, Griffin, would you mind telling us a little bit about yourself, what brought you to the role, and maybe end with what are you think are two issues that face Lexington today?

Griffin’s Background In Parks And Development

SPEAKER_03 1:54

Yeah, great. Thanks, Erica. So my name is Griffin Van Meter. I live over by Woodland Park with my family. I have uh I'm married to a wonderful woman named Sarah Wiley, uh, and we have three children, uh, two boys and a girl, uh, who go to uh two go to Ashland Elementary and one goes to Lexington Middle. And I live, yeah, right next to the park, and I love parks, and I have long been a public space advocate. And two years ago, I worked on the Yes for Parks campaign, which created a dedicated funding line for our city, and that was a wonderful experience and really taught me about the power of policy and how policy can move the needle. And I like to think about imagining a better, more equitable Lexington for everyone. And so all of that was leading to this idea of running for office and to be able to mirror budget and policy to make big change. And so that's kind of led me to jumping in here. I was really good friends with a lot of the previous council members and talked to them about their experience, and they were really encouraging. It's like, yeah, go go do it. Uh, there's never a better time. And so, with the blessing of my family, I jumped in there. My background was uh I was a small business owner. I am a small business owner. I uh did Kentucky for Kentucky, so is Kentucky Delhi, Bullhorn Creative. Um, and through those initiatives, I always really enjoyed how small business can make tremendous social impact. And I think we're seeing that right here on National Avenue and the role that small business plays to make a city that much better, to give it character. And I also have always been involved with neighborhood associations and doing community development. And actually, uh, it was at Old Mintons, which was at North Limestone uh probably about 14 years ago when it first started. That some friends and I got together and were looking at the North Limestone small area plan and how we could improve that area. And it said, Oh, you need to start a community development corporation. So we did it, and I remember very vividly launching it from Minton's uh over uh an omelet with sweet potatoes and sausages.

SPEAKER_01 4:22

It's like a full circle moment.

SPEAKER_03 4:24

That's right. It's a very full circle moment to be here, and it's it's lovely to see Ashley kind of continue that thread of small business. So uh I love I love that. And then that that led me into doing a lot of community development work and uh in affordable housing, public space, economic development. So it's really nice. I've been able to get uh a broad range of experience. Um and yeah, furthermore, I am doing a master's in public administration and urban planning at University of Kentucky, which is yeah, further support.

SPEAKER_01 5:00

What are you doing? Do you just like collect lots of projects and things like you're the father of a middle school boy?

SPEAKER_03 5:06

That's right.

SPEAKER_01 5:07

And then you're getting a master's, you're running for council, you're running small businesses.

SPEAKER_03 5:11

That's right. Uh and I'm uh here to meet everybody and learn, learn their ideas and learn how we can collectively move move this thing forward. And it's been really nice to be on this campaign with John. We've actually become really good buddies. Uh yeah. And so I think we have this nice thing that we're running the more most cordial campaign and race that the city has ever seen.

SPEAKER_01 5:33

As it should be. John, tell us about you.

John’s Story Service And Civic Work

SPEAKER_04 5:36

I forgot to thank Griff for being here. Uh yes, Griff and I are once this election's over, I intend to be his friend. I intend to work with him. That's what I believe in government. In government, you work for people who have voted against you, people who are maybe disagreed with you, but you're part of what I care for. What government should be is working for everybody, not just for your people, your friends. You know, I avoid those kind of things. I I got into this. I didn't know it was someone so substantial as Griff, but I'm going to tell you that I got into this. I was thinking about this in December, and it was at the courthouse where I'm at there every day. And I was um the homeless people were yelling at my name, and then people were honking at me. I'm well known, I've done just about everything. I I've it I've been uh practicing law 52 years. Um I'm the first public defender. Um I care for this town. Uh yes, I have three university degrees. I persevered to the end uh on all those degrees. I care for what we've done. Um let me give you a little background on me. So just so you know who I am, and I'm not trying I hate to be uh trying to bore you with, oh, you've heard about this, but my dad's a minister, Baptist minister. Oh, I have a hard, yeah, hard uh Baptist background. You wouldn't believe you know how many times we go to church each week. And but we moved around all the time. Um, I lived in about 12 places before I hitchhiked to UK when I was 12. I was a rebellious kid, but they let me in college when I was 16. Uh because I got got some good test scores. Um but I had to earn my own way through college. I didn't have any family that could afford to help me. So I paid my own tuition, paid my room and board. And um about that time everyone my age was subject to go into the military, go into Vietnam. Well, I I wondered why it should be them and not me. So I went in. I was uh an artillery officer in combat. I can't tell you where I was at, but there was some things, but I have survivor guilt because I do care for people, care for veterans. One of the things I do every week is I set up or I initiated what's called the veterans treatment court. Uh there are people who are unlike me, they've suffered from things that happened to them while in their military service. Uh drug addiction, family problems, mental problems. We try to help them through their their uh difficulty, and I'm really proud of that. Um I went to graduate school in Washington, DC, to George Washington University. Um I'm I worked in uh I was a teaching fellow, if you know what teachers are. So I care for this area includes University of Kentucky. It's a teaching area. People care about education. Um I went to the University of Kentucky Law School. I was so glad to get back to Lexington. I love this place. Um I was the I got an offer to uh set up something for a professional legal fraternity. And it was the uh the first question I asked is, can I integrate it? It hadn't been done. I integrated the fraternity system at University of Kentucky. So I got to be president of the law students. And I uh I just got through telling you about hanging out with the uh people that were in court with me because I I got to go to the criminal courts. I enjoyed being there, but you know, the Booger S conspiracy theory, they were in court with me almost every day. Um anyway, I did public defender. I was the first, very first public defender in Lexington for nine years. And um I have experience in government too. I'm the I was a judge executive. I ran for an office and I said, hey, let's do the right thing. I ran a scholarship, I worked on uh road planning, and that's what I've been doing, transportation planning. That you've been through the ice storm. Have you had troubles with dealing with it? Well, I'm the one who's interested in infrastructure, putting your money in infrastructure, not in into other things, but you know, caring for the people who on the things you expect your government to provide for you. Um there's something called an MPO. Uh that's transportation planning for more than one county, and that's what I was doing. Trans on roads, bridges, everything that you could do. And then I was on the Bluegrass ad, which is 15 counties of projects, transportation, environmental, you know, social projects. Uh I've been involved in this is not just Lexington. We're the Bluegrass um, I think the uh uh bike, the uh mo um years ago they called it uh this is Metro City. And Metro City includes all these counties around here. And one thing that I'm really uh not only interested in them, but I'm adamant on, we have to save horse farms in this community. Take a look at this. When people come here, do they come here to look at our beautiful downtown? Well, I'm sorry, it's not as beautiful as Cincinnati or Louisville's downtown, but it is we have something like a park surrounding this town. We have a like a horseshoe surrounding this town of horse farms with these beautiful manicured lawns, you know, with these fences, rock fences. I want to save these things. And you know, there's a way to save them.

Urban Service Boundary And Saving Farms

SPEAKER_01 12:14

Yes. I was I was just about to ask the the urban service boundary. Is that what you're getting at as well? Yes, one of the hottest topics in Lexington. It always comes up in council if we should expand. Griffin, do you think we should expand the urban service boundary? What's your stance on that?

SPEAKER_03 12:28

No, I part of my childhood was spent. Um, I grew up on a horse farm. So I was able, my first job was working on a horse farm. And I've always seen the value of our agriculture industry for this region and for this city. And um having the horse farms here, the farms here plus UK has actually kept Lexington recession proof. Uh, so we've always had steady population growth, steady economic growth, uh, so much tourism and um attraction because of that. I think one in every 11 jobs are related to our agriculture sector. So I'd be a staunch uh defender of the urban service boundary. And um yeah, I was a Fayette Alliance board member, and I believe that it's a powerful tool. I think what we've just done of implementing a growth management strategy for how we have that conversation is really smart. So it's it's a data-backed uh conversation about when and how you do expansion. We obviously just did an expansion. We added about 3,000 acres to the urban service boundary, and we already had a big chunk of acreage that is still undeveloped inside the from the last expansion, like the the 96 or 99 expansion. So I think that's what we really need to focus on is we preserve that land, I think twofold. One by focusing on infill redevelopment adaptive for use, like what we have here on National Avenue, building more houses like just down the street on Midland. There's uh there's a new infill redevelopment project that's about to happen, which will be huge. And I think you can take that pressure off of the horse farms if you build more supply inside. So I'm really uh that's a big part of what I'm standing for and why I'm running. And when you're talking about issues, I think that's a big issue. Is how do you how do you incentivize the infill and redevelopment? How do you do it appropriately? Um, you know, being next to campus prevents presents a really interesting challenge where there's a huge demand for student housing, there's a huge market for student housing, and how do you protect uh historic neighborhood fabric um and also still get housing supply? So that's a big part of it. But yeah, comprehensively, I think we need to preserve the boundary as a really unique planning tool, uh, but only if we're forcing the infill inside.

SPEAKER_01 15:07

Absolutely. And it sounds like you would agree with that then, though, John, right?

SPEAKER_04 15:11

I've got a different take. Um I didn't grow up on horse farm. I love horses. Um who doesn't in this area, but uh I'm an urban planner. I believe in this city is uh can be messing up what we're developing. We're losing some character. I call it popcorn development. If we have one area to develop, and I want to put it right there. Look at that area right there up Winchester Road. And if I was a businessman or a big commercial plant planner, um I'd want to be near the interstate. Why wouldn't you want to be have that area? But if you keep developing out sending out Russell Cave, sending out you know these other areas, you're gonna popcorn development into losing the well, you're you're gonna the golden goose is gonna be gone. I I want one area and one area on only for development. Well, I mean, I'm willing to listen. Um it's so important. I was on the uh green space commission years ago when they they got PDRs. Thank you for all those people who put their property so it's not going to be uh turned into developments rather than horse farms. We have something wonderful here, something enjoyable, something that something that gets my heart. Um Griff was talking about the in-field development. Okay. I'm not too excited about all these student developments that are going on downtown. Has anybody driven down uh Maxwell and high streets these days? I'm sorry. I'm afraid that we're we're putting in too much at this time. For some reason, our council has let these things go on. And you know, Griff and I were at something last night for uh what used to be Ramsey's at Woodland and uh the new development on Woodland Triangle. And the neighbors are upset, and no wonder they're upset. This is a historic overlay, and they're afraid of the the traffic that's coming in. But parking. Where would you get parking? They make parking for people who are there, but if you're visiting DoorDash or whatever, you're not gonna have parking there. I mean, just think of all these places that they're gonna stop by and they're gonna be crowded our streets, and this is downtown. Unfortunately, we are historically a wheel. We developed from the center of Lexington to Maysville, to uh sales, to uh um you know Bourbon County to Nicholasville, and we left things you know, we never picked up, we never did anything with our downtown town streets, and some of them are cobblestones. We can't expand our streets, or we've got to do something to help out our traffic downtown. I love downtown. I live in this area, I live in the third council district, but my office where I look out is in the center of town across from the old courthouse. I see downtown. I should, I my heart is for downtown Lexington. I want something better. I want something that, you know, we're not gonna just throw a bunch of stuff together in I I don't want to blame UK. UK's got its own problems, they're having an expansion of students. Well, maybe that's gonna last for a while and maybe it's not. But is this people talk about affordable housing? Is that affordable housing what they're putting in? I I don't know. People uh the people that asked me to speak for affordable housing, they couldn't afford these departments that are going in.

SPEAKER_01 19:24

Yeah, and that was mentioned at the public hearing too, is that it's but um a lot of the proposed development changes down there are not what would be considered affordable housing. So it's I mean, and speaking of affordable housing, I mean, if we're not expanding the USB and we're wanting

Affordable Housing Tools And Tradeoffs

SPEAKER_01 19:38

to do creative infill, does that accurately or does that effectively um combat the need for affordable housing in Lexington?

SPEAKER_03 19:47

I think you need to really so right now we have about a six million dollar affordable housing fund, a million of that is from the state. Um, one perfect one percent of our general fund goes into affordable housing, and we max that out uh every year, and it only represents the ability to build around 200 to 250 units. Um and that's it's really competitive dollars. And when you talk to the affordable housing providers, they say we could build more, but we need more subsidy. So that's where the government can come in and where council can come in is allocating more subsidy. Um, another way to improve housing and supply, a big idea that I would push in on is accessory dwelling units. So the ability to for private homeowners to develop um in-law suite or apartment above their garage. And what's really nice and elegant about that is they call that gentle density. So it doesn't feel like a major building. It doesn't take as much subsidy for that to happen. Uh, it helps homeowners stay in place. And we actually do have a pretty good ADU policy that our planning commission uh passed. And we're in about the second or third year of it, but culturally and financially, we haven't really got um, we don't have a lot of homeowners jumping in to make those happen. So we need to look at what those barriers to entry are because that's a really nice solution that you see in Seattle and Portland uh to solve it. But at the other factor, you do need to allocate and find more revenue for affordable housing because what we can show is that we can build it if there is um the revenue to support it. So that is, and we're doing some really interesting things. Like we've just uh put in there's a new zoning category called these corridor nodes zoning, and it's for like the Winchester Roads and the New Town and these major corridors that are on transportation, because if you You have to look at housing both as a transportation issue, like you have to factor in all of your costs. And the price to have a car for most families is can be around and even over $1,000 per month. So if you start to say, okay, well, can people uh live where they work? So can it be close to where all the major job centers are, like close to UK? Or can it be on a major transit line? So they don't have to have a car, uh, which are all these, um, like the Nicholasville, the Winchester, all these core doors. Uh, or can you build out enough bike infrastructure and pedestrian infrastructure that people feel safe riding? So, and that difference, that thousand to fifteen hundred dollar difference of car expense, can then go back into house uh expense and housing security. And that represents uh, you know, a huge huge amount of rent or a huge amount of a mortgage payment. So I think that's when we're looking at housing or economic, all these, all of these different things we have to bring in. It's layered and you need to take a strategic approach of how do all these things connect. But I think the big issues for it always seems like are transportation and housing. And also when you think about what most complaints are that people have uh that I've experienced on the campaign trail are actually usually kind of car related. So it's the traffic, it's the congestion, it's the noise, it's the pollution, it's the traffic violence, it's the speeding. And those have big impacts on a community. And so what we need to do is start to wrestle that away and change our car dependency, which is all based on our built environment and how we've planned this city. But you have to kind of start to surgically repair that and repair that sprawl um to build more of a connected network. And it's something that I I 95% of the time I use a bike to get around.

SPEAKER_01 24:04

And I see you on a bike. Thanks. Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 24:06

And I'm yeah, thanks for not running over me. Um yeah, I want to be seen on a bike. And I one one I organized a bike bus, so which is getting kids to school, which started with my son. He wanted to ride to school. And we had to kind of ask this is it safe for our kids to ride to school? And it it actually isn't. And that's a policy failure of our city, a policy failure of people who have been planning and been part of yeah, MPOs for a long time that we haven't really worked on that. We've only been thinking about car traffic and moving, moving people with speed. And if you ask what's wrong with our downtown, it's car related. Our the problem with our downtown is we tore down all the buildings to build parking lots. So we're at a 30% parking lot surface lot downtown. And you're like, okay, well, why aren't there any businesses and why aren't why don't people live downtown? It's because, well, we tore down the houses. We tore down 300 houses in 1975 in South Hill, historic black neighborhood, uh, for the Rough Arena parking lot. You know, 50 years later, we're talking about redeveloping it to try to re-we've always been trying to re-spark downtown, but you know, the problem is that we made it for cars, not people. So all the policy that I think about is about connection. So, how do we make people feel connected to themselves, uh, to their neighbors, to the city? And a lot of that is to get people out of cars and walking, walking in these neighborhoods. And there's economic development benefits, environmental benefits. Um, so I think so much through that lens of transportation, you know, solve transportation, you can solve for housing, you can do, and then solve for connection, which is a long way of talking about affordable housing. But uh yeah, it's multi-layered. It's layered in it, but I believe so much in affordable housing, giving people uh of all levels um the ability to live where they want to live. Uh, and to have, you know, we have your life expectancy has a direct correlation to what zip code you live in. Um, and we have to really reset that inequity. Um, and so that's what I'm I'm curious of how we can do that from a policy lens.

SPEAKER_01 26:28

Certainly. John, affordable housing?

Car Dependence Bikes And Downtown Design

SPEAKER_04 26:33

I'm coming from a totally different direction.

SPEAKER_01 26:37

Twice now you said that.

SPEAKER_04 26:39

Um I'm the I I'm the voice for the voice in Lexington. When uh the rent people who are dealing with rent problems, they asked me to speak for them. Uh when the people from yes, Kentucky and uh Kentuckians for the Commonwealth asked for a speaker, I'm there. I'm for the the people who feel like they're being crushed. I mean, they're bed and breakfast people are bu buying up all the places that are downtown near Ruperian, near the Coliseum, so they can, you know, bring in uh they're being these people are being squeezed every day into well, I mean, uh these student apartments aren't helping. We've got no real good mass transportation system here in town. Uh I've tried it. It's difficult. Have you ever been out 45 minutes in the snow and rain and ice to you know wait for a tr uh a bus to come along? It ain't easy. I'm there are 22,000 new uh housing units that are necessary, they say, by the end of the this this uh 10-year decade. Well, where are they gonna come from? Well, if I'm a developer, I'm gonna put up a whole bunch of old folks home. I mean, I'm a senior, and I mean that that's where the money is. Or I'm gonna develop high rises for people who've got good money. But who puts out money for these other people who are being kicked out? I mean I'm I'm sure Griffiths talked about gentrification at some point in time. Gentrification is nice, it picks up the neighborhoods, but at the same time, some of these people don't get back in their homes. They're left out. There's a backlog of people we're not caring for. Now, I'm gonna tell you something that I worked on personally and I'm real mad about. I I I I shouldn't be too mad, but in 1999, we had the Green Space Commission, and the city hired Charlie Seaman as a consultant for a quarter million dollars to come up with a good plan to get money. Okay, I've got it. You know where that plan was from? He was he knew all the housing associations in the country, and he was saying, hmm. When you develop a property, you've got to have police, fire, uh, infrastructure, water, uh, and everything else. Well, we're just listening to put that amount up and add something for affordable housing. Doesn't that make sense? So they had it, they had an exaction earned impact fee. And this council's done away with it or is in the process of doing away with it. There was something there. Obviously, we're gonna have to care for the bottom rung of housing. We we can't continue to to do it. And yes, there was some money that's left left over, but not 22,000? We're talking about a crisis here. I just want to be the voice for these people who need housing, who need their concerns, may need better mass transportation, you know, make so we can put it out someplace else other than you know, someplace they can walk. If you I I'm around the homeless people and they have to walk between uh one they have to walk a mile and a half uh after after they get their breakfast to where they go for lunch, another mile and a half to to where they get a dinner or where they sleep. This is we don't care for them. And they feel bad about it. Our social work offices are not geared to be polite to people. And we have a crisis dealing with certain kinds of people, and I'm not saying that that we have to cater to them on everything, but they have an interest in our town. They are our town, and I'm their voice.

Rapid Fire Personal Questions

SPEAKER_01 31:06

Great. Well, thank you. Um, we're gonna move on to some different types of questions right now, and then we're gonna take some questions from our audience. So make sure that you have those questions ready to go. Um, these are questions to get to know you more on a personal level. So you have only 15, 20 seconds to respond. Don't overthink it. Griffin, what's your favorite food?

SPEAKER_03 31:27

Quick. Ice cream from salves.

SPEAKER_04 31:31

Favorite food, John gravy and tartar sauce in just about anything.

SPEAKER_01 31:38

Oh, I thought you meant like mixing them together.

SPEAKER_04 31:40

No, no, okay. We're not mixing gravy and tartar sauce. It's tartar sauce. If it's bread or anything, I love gravy.

SPEAKER_01 31:49

Amazing. What flavor ice cream?

SPEAKER_03 31:51

Uh cookies and cream.

SPEAKER_01 31:52

Uh, a classic. Old school. Favorite ice cream?

SPEAKER_04 31:55

Uh I hate to tell you that I like the rich is it great? Rum raisin.

SPEAKER_01 32:00

Rum raisin. That is old school. I love that. What is your favorite location in Lexington that's not a restaurant or a bar?

SPEAKER_03 32:07

You're gonna say a green space out, but I would go with Raven Run, is where I find the most uh solace. And I uh I love going out there with my buddies and family. I love um, I love trail running uh is a is a big passion of mine. So Raven Run is definitely my sanctuary.

SPEAKER_04 32:24

Okay, good choice. John? I like the Arboretum Woods. Yeah, take my dog there almost every day. It's it's it's a wonderful place. If you've ever been to the Arboretum, you'd love it. Come on, I'm inviting you.

SPEAKER_01 32:38

Well, you both said, I mean, like nature spaces, that's great. Um, what are you doing on like with your free time on a typical Saturday night, Griffin?

SPEAKER_03 32:47

Uh as the father of three uh kind of mid-range kids, eight through 13, uh, usually doing whatever they're doing.

SPEAKER_01 32:58

Um shuttling to and fro.

SPEAKER_03 33:00

What shuttling to and fro? Or, you know, one thing that's been nice about campaigning is it gets you out to go do these things that you probably really care about, but you it gives you that push, a gentle push. And that's been wonderful to be able to experience um, yeah, all these programs and these people that are making these programs happen. So that's been a really lovely silver lining that I wasn't quite expecting.

SPEAKER_01 33:27

Excellent. I'm about to ask you about campaigning. John, what are you doing on a typical Saturday night?

SPEAKER_04 33:32

Um, whatever my wife Sari asked me to do.

SPEAKER_01 33:35

Whatever she tells you to do.

SPEAKER_04 33:37

But uh I mean, I I have I have the best wife in the whole world. I have two grandkids. Uh one of them, you know, maybe five, six, but he's gonna make the NBA or things like that. Of course he will. And then the other is, you know, has special needs, but I take him to the dog park and he gets in with all this stuff. We enjoy our company. Of course, we go to church and stuff together, but I love being with my grandkids as long as uh my wife doesn't tell me to do something different.

SPEAKER_01 34:09

Um, most challenging thing about being on the campaign trail, Greffin?

SPEAKER_03 34:15

I think that's the yeah, the trying to balance the family because a lot of the campaign events and a lot of the neighborhood events happen in the evening. So that's like prime time to be with my kids. And that's a huge sacrifice that that we're doing and and that my wife is supporting. Um, but it's hard to to not necessarily see your kids right after school and them kind of already being winding down uh is the hardest thing for me.

SPEAKER_04 34:44

Yeah, I'm glad Griff said that because I'm not a newbie to this uh political activity. I give speeches and have for years. I want to give prayers and thanks for the families of politicians. Griff and I decided that we were gonna take some risk, but the families they give up their family time, family fortune, and people are gonna say nasty things about you. And the families have to put up with that.

unknown 35:12

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 35:13

Uh I forgot the question.

SPEAKER_01 35:15

No, no, that's it was just the most challenging thing about campaigning. I mean, I would assume there's nasty well. I mean, uh, when you're a public role.

SPEAKER_04 35:23

I I guess it's the most challenging thing is anything that's happened, and I'm there. In the Bible, it talks about where two or three are gathered together. Me. I'm there. All the city council meetings. If they have a meeting downtown where people are happening, I just want to be there. Uh, it's a wonderful thing to be a candidate.

SPEAKER_01 35:43

Griffin, what type of music do you think that John listens to?

SPEAKER_03 35:47

Oh, definitely heavy metal. You know, right. Some really serious uh like slashers. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Um I think uh uh I think John is one of those guys that probably whatever song is on, he's really glad to hear it. Uh I know he John and I had the pleasure of at the Martin Luther King Unity breakfast. Uh, we were singing loud and proud from the back row. Uh and so I know that John does appreciate a church hymnal um and some gospel music, but uh, I would imagine that John has uh a broad wide taste.

SPEAKER_01 36:26

Appreciation, absolutely. John, what does Griffin listen to?

SPEAKER_04 36:32

What else? He's cool, right? I like it.

SPEAKER_01 36:36

Okay, so now what's the correct answer?

SPEAKER_04 36:37

What music? Oh, I want to tell you the truth is like novelty music, you things that make me laugh. Uh and black gospel music. I'm I'm the black gospel kid. I know you it doesn't look like it was my face, but you know, this is you know, I don't know what Griff's probably got something different than classic rock. I don't know what he does like. I'd like to hear.

SPEAKER_03 37:00

Well, part of it, you know, that these kids are such a forefront of the life. So, you know, we share the spot. Yeah, we share the spot. Uh, there's Bongo Cat, which is uh uh contemporary pop songs, but done with a cat meowing is a big thing. Amazing right now.

SPEAKER_01 37:18

Adjacent to like K-pop demon hunters, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 37:20

A lot of K-pop demon hunters. So there's definitely a huge influence of what the new music in my life is is dictated to you, dictated through the kids because we we share one Spotify account. Um, but I had this wonderful experience when I was at college at UK as an undergraduate. Uh I was a WRFL DJ. And that was that was actually like late at night? Yeah, late at night all night all the time. I did it, I did it for about eight years, um, both as a undergraduate and then just as a community member. And that experience, uh, one just exposed me to a tremendous amount of music that I enjoy kind of from this that time period, but also it was really cool because all of the folks who were part of RFL have all ended up doing amazing things in the community. And you end up with this network of mentors and community creators. So that was a big, big impact for me. So I a lot of times when I'm by myself, I'll find myself going back and listening to like the music that I was playing uh from that time period. But I yeah, I like music that makes you feel good and uh kind of dreamy and and bike ride-y type music.

SPEAKER_01 38:34

So okay, I think we're gonna open up for some questions from our audience. We're just gonna take a quick pause for Brandon to be able to do that. Do we have some questions? Oh, Daniela, I see your hand up back

Tackling Inequality Through Public Investment

SPEAKER_01 38:48

there.

SPEAKER_02 38:48

Hi, I'm Daniela DeJock, and I live in the Where Walls Block area. Um, and I am a professor at UK and also a youth organizer. Um my question is despite the incredible sense of community and well uh in a variety of ways that Lexington has, we also have a pretty staunch amount of inequality. Um, and so I know one health person can't fix inequality. I think uh, but I'm I'm curious about both of the candidates' approaches to thinking about how we uh work toward amelioration of inequality in our communities.

SPEAKER_03 39:26

Yeah, thanks, Daniela, for that thoughtful question. And it is um it's a it's a very important issue that a lot of communities obviously struggle with. And what I have seen as one of the best drivers for shifting inequality is to really focus on investing in the publics. So, and what I mean by that, invest in public education, um, invest in our public libraries, invest in public parks, uh, invest in public transit, invest in public radio. So by doing that, you can have the the broadest range of impact on the most people by yeah, improving these things that ever that are democratic. And so focusing on the money, the money ends up going the furthest, I believe, when you when you focus on those things. And you when you're giving people equal opportunity uh to the same robust level of public space or public education to get on um an opportunity continuum is can is tremendously important. I think social mixing is really important. So what we have in Lexington, we have obviously we have concentrated wealth pockets, we have concentrated poverty pockets, um, and it's really important for people of different uh incomes and classes and norms to be mixing uh with each other uh for for the dual benefit that each receives uh is a big part of it. But definitely investing in all of those publics is is what I see as the big, big way to shift it. And it's why I was so passionate about the parks project. Um I mean, a quick story kind of back about affordable housing is so we I've been an affordable housing developer. We when we did the North Limestone Community Development Corporation, we renovated uh about 20 houses. And it was a it was a long project. It took a couple years. Um and it as it evolved, we realized we were really having major impact on those 20-something families that we were able to service and help get them an affordable house that they then owned, uh, which it was a really great project. But what we realized is that it wasn't at scale. And that to have impact at scale, you really need sustained revenue. You need that's really where government comes in because uh you need the government to take care of where there are market failures and market uh inequalities, um, because philanthropy can't get it done just by itself. These projects can't get it done just by itself, but you need community and government working together at scale policy-wide to affect, you know, not just this community, but all communities. So I think that's where you see um the big deal. And and the idea that one council member uh can't fix it all is I I think there's actually we have a lot of cases where visionary leadership tied in with people that really understand operations and policy. You get you can get a bunch of hero cats, but it does take somebody with the vision to say, hey, we're gonna do this. This is why we're gonna do this, these are the metrics for why this works, this program works. Uh, and you need to you need to push that that needle. So I do think there is opportunity for elected officials or community members. I think that's been part of my success, is as a community member, been able to to push and to to shine light on things that needed to be highlighted. Um and then ideally as a policymaker, then able to kind of line that up with this budget policy to really make impact at scale um to fix inequality. But that's that's how I feel about it. And thanks for that question. And I really care about it. I think it's a great, it's a great denominator and a great lens and an anchor to uh to look through everything for.

SPEAKER_04 43:47

Thanks for your question. Uh, when you ask it, uh I was thinking about an old TV show. Remember JJ moving on up? I've got three things. That that make a difference. Employment, fatherhood, and respect. You're not getting you're not going to have equality of income. I mean, this is a free country. You're allowed to keep your money if you make it. In fact, we sort of encourage that. This is a capitalist system and we enjoy it. But there are some people who are not going to have it. Okay, what's going to happen to them? They need employment opportunities at a decent wage. I'm not talking about wage controls or anything like this. I'm just talking about job opportunities that go to everybody. And fatherhood. I've been yelling about this for a long time. Our country is falling apart because too many men are not getting the joy of being a father. I wasted 39 years of my productive life not being a man who had a child. I've suddenly become a productive person when I had a child to take care of. I knew what it was to budget money, to when it was tough, I had to, I, I had to, you know, figure out how to make more money so I could give a nice little dress to my little girl, take care of her. I loved it, it made me a better person. Well, unfortunately, our society is leaving our men behind. Too many men are not taking responsibility for their children. We have too many children who are growing up. You can you can almost count on the kids who are going to have higher incidence of low education, uh, of criminal behavior, of social problems because they don't have a father in their home. Hi, my friend Toomba. I'm so proud of him. I don't even know how many kids he has, eight or something like that. I'm so proud of a man who takes care of his children and is proud of it. It makes a difference to us. We've got to do everything we can to encourage good fatherhood. Now, I was a single parent. It ain't easy for the women in these situations. How do we do it? Well, we force the men out of the homes because they're not allowed to get in Section 8 if they're if the woman. This is a tough issue. We've got to work it so these kids get the advantage of having a man in their home. A man in their house, maybe not, but at least a man in their life to look up to. I don't want them to look up to to somebody riding a Cadillac and you know, doing some kind of drug thing running through their area. I want them to look up to a good positive male model. I I'm so excited. Well, you you can see how I feel about that. Sometimes you have to forgive people. I deal in representing people whose lives are broken. And I want them to be picked up. I mean, not only the ones that talked about veterans, but I'm talking about criminals, people get into criminal trouble. I made mistakes. I don't know anyone who hasn't committed a crime in their life. We've made so many lost. But give them a chance. Give them a chance to get up. And the final thing is respect. That's all these people are would like from you that I hang out with on, you know, Genie Ramsey's and groups of the homeless and the people who are hanging out down in the courthouse. By the way, I don't like these people who are stationed on the corners. I think that some drug dealer puts them out there. I mean, I just don't like it. But you know, the real homeless, the real people who have needs, they want respect. They want you to look at them and talk to them. I'm I it may sound silly, but I've got a whole bunch of umbrellas in my car. When it rains, I'm gonna give a homeless person an umbrella if he doesn't have one. Give them some respect. Give people respect who are not your group that you're comfortable with.

SPEAKER_01 48:19

Great, great responses. Here's another question from the audience.

Urban Planning Versus Urban Design

SPEAKER_01 48:24

What do you believe is the difference between urban design and urban planning? And a follow-up to that, if development is going to work, it needs urban designers rather than just planning through policy. Thoughts on that?

SPEAKER_03 48:39

Yeah, I think that the when you look at planning, we're we're looking at how things come together on a map. How um, you know, this, and we have for the last almost hundred years, a lot of cities have kind of planned where they're trying to separate their uses, and they're saying, okay, this is the residential use, this is the commercial use, and and that segregation has also led to sprawl and distancing. Um, and I do think what's nice is uh, I mean, this I think started mainly in European cities, where in with Jingale, who started to think about how cities we don't need to think about land use, we need to think about how people move throughout a city, and that it's the people that make the city, not the buildings or or the different districts and zones. And I think that's probably the big difference between planners and uh designers, is that designers are really trying to think how a person is going to interpret a space and how a person will kind of move throughout a space and live and is is thinking more thoughtfully than just uh geographically. And I think there's a lot of importance to that and a lot of importance to the what the built environment looks like. Um and I think we are uh there's a lot of evidence by design, both for health outcomes or uh outcomes of how you know crime and violence is also tied into the design of space. Um, so when we try to make when we have the idea of how do we make these spaces beautiful, uh is really critically important. And what are the small interventions, like what are the a lot of small micro interventions that you can work on that then end up making a big difference? I I just had the opportunity to, I was one of three Lexintonians who got invited to Paris, uh France, to be part of a cohort called Reimagining the Civic Commons. And we were specifically looking at how public space uh and the improvement of public space has dramatically changed the city of Paris. And what we started to see is all of these places and parking lots and spaces that were designated for cars, they started to redesignate for people and they started to plant trees, they planted um two million trees, and they've lowered their uh carbon footprint by 50% in just a 10-year period. And what it was is it was really designers being more thoughtful about how a city and a space could look. And I think we have that opportunity here in Lexington. Um, and it's really important to hire um, yeah, hire environmental designers uh to help us think through what is possible and then to actually implement it. Um so I think that's the difference. Like I think our our again, yeah, we at the it's the at the city level, I don't think we actually the we haven't had an urban designer who's kind of been in charge of planning. And that's that's a differentiator. So it would be really good to have um you know the commissioner planning to have an urban design background to be thinking how can we design the city more for people.

SPEAKER_01 52:22

Absolutely. John?

SPEAKER_04 52:25

Wow, I love it. Um before I get to your question, let me tell you a story. Um, I went to grad school in DW, downtown Washington, DC. Okay, uh I'm working with the urban planning department, volunteering, and I was their business consultant. Uh, we tried to help a lower-income neighborhood called Old Southwest. Old Southwest was a very was well-constructed project buildings. We tried to help them. I was putting in a grocery store, the giant food store would give us uh refrigerators and things like that. And we worked hard, but we weren't getting very well. Well, I went back to Washington a few years ago. The old Southwest is now the most exclusive apartment commercial district in the world. It got taken over. That's the problem with volunteers. Some urban planners, like the ones I worked with, they don't hang around forever. They don't stay with this. Now, urban design, you know, I got to uh talk, I think it was on Monday, whatever day it was, on a new design for a building going up on Main Street. And you know what? The first thing I ask this is a gateway to Lexington. What are you doing to make the architecture of this place into something we can be proud of? That's a design issue. I want this town to be beautiful. I want I remember when I said something about the you know, nobody comes down here because of our beautiful downtown? It's because we haven't concentrated on art. We tore away statues from downtown. We don't do things that are have good urban design. We could have had layered or different level roads, we could have had trains, trolleys, we could have had all sorts of things coming here, but we didn't plan for them. That's the urban planners part. But the urban designers, they're thinkers, they're thinkers of what we could do. They're artists. I love artists. My sister's an artist or was until she died. You know, she had our uh art gallery in Soho in Copenhagen in London and in San Francisco before they became starving artists with their 21 grandkids. But you know, they're it's a I love art. They're doing away with art and music in schools. They were doing away with, you know, years ago the white flight pushed people away from the north end of town. So we we left trash and we left schools that were terribly un well, we've had failing schools. We got to do something about it, but it's part of the planning, it's part of the design. But I love the design when you're talking about that. Give me more designs, give me more art, give me more beauty for this place because I love it. I'll listen. Uh, it may be over my head. I hope not. I hope I can, I hope I can share with you the values of urban design.

SPEAKER_01 55:58

Excellent. Thank you both so much for that. Our last question, I believe, is going to be coming from Corey Wilcoxon.

Budget Priorities Cuts And Accountability

SPEAKER_00 56:04

Hi, Corey Wilcoxon. I uh uh Kenwick resident and local pastor. Um, when you're on the council, you're gonna be faced with a lot of budget decisions, uh, making sure that things are funded, but also keeping a balanced budget. When you're faced with a decision like that, what are you gonna prioritize within the budget? And more importantly, what do you see within the budget that could possibly be cut in order to fund the things that you see as priorities? How do you how do you strike that balance? And and especially where do you think the city might be spending money that could be better used elsewhere?

SPEAKER_03 56:34

Yeah, thanks, Corey, for that question. I think that is obviously one of the hard things in the realities of government that there is limited revenue. Uh there are a lot of projects that are are worthy, a lot of programs that are really important, but uh there's just a fiscal reality that's really critical. And especially when we're talking about public tax dollars, the importance of oversight of those dollars is the number one job of a council member who approves the budget. So that is that's job number one to be uh to understand how those dollars are being spent, uh, how the programs that they're being spent towards, are they is there a proper program evaluation for that? Like, do we know that the those programs are making the impact they need to impact? Or if not, how do we mitigate that issue? Um and I think I mean, obviously, we're seeing that we are seeing what happens with our our local school budget and board, which hurts all of us and hurts trust and local government when you aren't able to fully build a sustained budget year over year. Uh and it's it's the cuts that are going on there uh will be necessary to balance the budget. Um, but it's it's a shame when those programs are suffering. So I think um that's a big part of it. And the lens that I would look at for is back to this lens of connection. So we one of the biggest epidemics we have is uh is loneliness, um, which affects major outcomes. People aren't as civically engaged uh as they used to be, which affects democracy. Who gets elected? It affects who, what projects come forward. Um, people, you know, people only 25% of our voting population voted in this last primary. Uh so people aren't civically engaged. So you have to start to work on that, fix that. Um, but then this lens of connection, which is kind of how I frame everything, is is this is the program gonna help people be more connected, more connected than themselves, more connected to the environment, uh, their neighborhood, uh, is how I look at a lot of those things. And so where that then, what's that actually mean in terms of programs and projects? So, like right now, we're uh we're in this area, which is known National Avenue is like kind of one of a smaller districts that are is having this, that has a moment of the small businesses, people like to go there. But right now, all I've really seen is like cars driving. I don't, I haven't seen the street life. I haven't seen people walking around from these different restaurants and bouncing all around to the stores. So you you just see that people are primarily like driving, which uh maybe that shouldn't be the case because this neighborhood has the ability for walkability. So I would think how do you how do you make people feel that connection? Like what can you invest in? And when you start to look at how much we spend on streets and roads for cars, and when we start to think about these expansion areas and how much that's gonna cost in terms of our infrastructure and where that has to come from compared to if we were uh investing in already built infrastructure. So that just is gonna dilute those tax dollars and spread them out, uh, which then becomes that much more problematic because then we can't take care of the existing areas. Uh so I really want to focus concentration on existing infrastructure, uh improvements to the streets and roads that are bike ped, public transit oriented versus car centric, because there's so much money that goes into uh car infrastructure, and it's just so it's tremendously expensive compared to the return of investment that you get when you start to invest in in bike pad. Um, so that's that's how I would kind of look at that again, back through the lens of connection. And if it's not connecting people, uh, I'm not gonna be that interested. Like I'm not investing interested in more gas stations, I'm not interested uh in more drive-throughs. Like those, it's just not healthy. And yeah, that's making certain people money, but it's not making our community uh wealthy in terms of their health. So, yeah, I'm about connection, health, and joy. And that's how I'm going to frame everything. All the policies that I want to work on will kind of have that element to it. Thanks. Thanks.

SPEAKER_04 1:01:43

Um my old mentor, uh Vice Mayor Ann Ross, told me one time if you get into government, you work for the taxpayer. That's your job to do the taxpayers' work. If you get on the council, I'm a guard dog. I'm watching out for your money. I'm a steward of your money, your assets. I care for you in a financial sense. I'm not wanting to be the Grinch, don't get me wrong, but when it comes down to it, I go to all these council meetings. You know what I see? I see payoffs, payoffs to little payoffs, neighborhood, you know, associations, uh, nonprofit corporations, little pieces of money that are given. But these little pieces of money add up to a lot. And then big pieces of money go to the same, perhaps the same folks. And we ought to this is our money. We ought to think in terms of hey, we're not gonna give it to the same folks unless they've proven themselves to have a better a better uh idea for our town. Um, and this is what I do. I mean I went to the school board meeting on Monday and saw this mismanagement that they're into. I'm not sure that there isn't mismanagement going on now. There's almost nobody who's got experience on this council. Do you trust them with your tax money? I'm not sure I do. I like them, I know a lot of them. However, when it comes down to it, you might like somebody like me who is uh a trusted hand, somebody who you can trust with your money. And what do you do with your money? Okay, I'll tell you what you do. Infrastructure. We had an ice storm, we weren't prepared for the ice storm. You know why we weren't prepared? We didn't put our money in the right places. All we had to do is put more money into infrastructure. Police, fire, roads. That's what we need. We've got to have more money in those things so we don't need to worry about our future. Our citizens are bound to expect our our government to do what they want. And when things bad happen to them, they have a right to be upset about it. How many of you were upset with Ibestorm? Okay, I'm I'm again, I'm not the Grinch. I'm not trying to keep you from using money, but some of these make work projects are not the right thing to spend your tax money. I want the tax money spent, first of all, where it's important on things. I I used to work for um an organization called Friends of the Jail. We had a jail where for years you couldn't visit the place. They were short. I think it was 120 jailers. We finally did a little bit of doing that, but we let things go in this town. Basic infrastructure, basic law enforcement, basic things that that are necessary have to go first, and then you can think if you got plenty of money, you can think about these make work projects. Number one, want to be a guard dog for your money. And don't get angry at me if I cut out a project that you like. Might happen.

Closing Thoughts And Support Ask

SPEAKER_01 1:05:35

It's been such a pleasure talking to both of you. Yes, thank you. I think we really got to know you guys better. So thanks again.

SPEAKER_03 1:05:42

Thanks so much. Thanks everybody for coming out and would love your support in November. Thank you.