The Lexington Times

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Kentucky briefs, Sept. 20: Kentucky football stuns No. 9 Texas A&M 31-21; Keeneland sale posts record seven-figure sales

· The Lexington Times AI Generated

Kentucky's football team pulled off a major upset on the road Saturday, while the thoroughbred industry continued strong sales at Keeneland's September yearling auction.

This week at City Hall (Sept. 21–25): Technical committee to review 5 development proposals…; Rural Land Management Board meets Wednesday

· The Lexington Times AI Generated

The Technical Review Committee takes up five subdivision and development proposals Wednesday at 8:30 a.m. at the Phoenix Building. The Rural Land Management Board also meets Wednesday at 3 p.m.

Kentucky briefs, Sept. 19: Big Blue Madness tickets sell out in 22 minutes; former UK tennis star Draxl upsets world No. 32

· The Lexington Times AI Generated

Kentucky basketball's marquee fan event drew sellout crowds in record time, while a former Wildcat tennis player achieved a career-defining victory at the Davis Cup qualifiers.

Carter out-raises Gorton in first general-election finance report; challenger holds $119,000 to mayor's $77,000

· The Lexington Times AI Generated Edited

Raquel Carter reported $102,600 in new contributions, $54,316 spent and $118,827 on hand in the 60-day pre-election report filed with the Kentucky Registry of Election Finance; Mayor Linda Gorton reported $81,168, $32,352 and $77,061. Carter's biggest checks came from homebuilders, real-estate brokers and three building-trades union PACs; Gorton's from the horse industry and senior members of her own administration. It is the first Lexington mayoral report under Kentucky's new $3,500 gift limit.

Kentucky briefs, Sept. 18: Keeneland sets sales record with 65 seven-figure yearlings; lawmakers address housing shortage

· The Lexington Times AI Generated

Kentucky institutions and lawmakers made headlines Wednesday, from record-breaking sales at Keeneland to legislative focus on the state's housing crisis.

Kentucky briefs, Sept. 17: Nyquist colt fetches $2.25M at Keeneland; Meta settlement brings $358M to Kentucky

· The Lexington Times AI Generated

Kentucky's bloodstock market posted strong sales numbers at Keeneland's September auction, while state lawmakers reviewed how to allocate millions from a major settlement aimed at protecting youth.

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Kentucky briefs, Sept. 16: Keeneland September Sale sets records; clean energy manufacturing jobs plummet

· The Lexington Times AI Generated

Keeneland's yearling sale reached record highs Tuesday while Kentucky faces steep losses in clean energy manufacturing positions. Federal eligibility guidelines for school meal programs were also updated for the 2026-2027 school year.

Kentucky briefs, Sept. 15: Keeneland September Sale opens strong at $71.8M; UK volleyball sweeps Houston

· The Lexington Times AI Generated

Kentucky's thoroughbred market showed robust strength as Keeneland's September Yearling Sale opened with its best first day since 2005. In sports, No. 3 Kentucky volleyball completed an invitational tournament with a dominant performance.

Shadwell replats its $20 million stallion complex next to Blue Grass Airport into two lots; a liquor store wants a pick-up window on Pimlico Parkway

· The Lexington Times AI Generated

A light week on LFUCG's Accela portal, with one large filing: Shadwell Farm has merged the seven surveyed parcels of its farm on Military Pike, Parkers Mill Road and Dedman Lane into two lots totaling 523.5 acres, the stallion complex the late Sheikh Hamdan's operation listed for $20 million in April, beside Blue Grass Airport and land Coolmore's Ashford Stud bought from Shadwell in February. Also: a liquor store's pick-up window at the Park Hills Shopping Center, filed the day after a council committee advanced new drive-through rules; Porter Memorial Baptist Church folding most of the property next door into its campus; a pastor's house at Boone's Creek Baptist Church; a home barbershop on De Porres Avenue; a short-term rental on a 10-acre Jacks Creek Pike farm; and slivers of a West Main Street lot marked with state highway project numbers.

Kentucky briefs, Sept. 13: Alabama routs Kentucky football 45-17; No. 8 SMU upsets No. 3 volleyball

· The Lexington Times AI Generated

Kentucky's athletic programs faced setbacks Saturday and Sunday, with the football team falling to Alabama in the SEC opener and volleyball dropping a match to SMU in the Paradise Invitational.

Banana Ball sells out CommonSpirit Ballpark three days running; Legends open playoffs there Wednesday

· The Lexington Times AI Generated Edited

Banana Ball's first Kentucky stop packed CommonSpirit Ballpark three days straight, with $35 lottery tickets, $25 parking and a silver-painted batter on a balance board. The Legends open the Atlantic League playoffs there Wednesday.

This week at City Hall (Sept. 14–18): Council weighs $350,000 Wiser Strategies marketing contract; EQPW hears traffic data analytics update

· The Lexington Times AI Generated

The Urban County Council Work Session on Tuesday considers a $350,000 contract with Wiser Strategies for mass marketing ads supporting water quality, recycling, waste disposal and safe streets messaging. The Environmental Quality and Public Works Committee also meets Tuesday to hear updates on traffic control systems using data analytics and coordination of maintenance for roadway projects.

Kentucky briefs, Sept. 12: Beshear appoints professionals to state boards; UK cross country opens season strong at Tennessee

· The Lexington Times AI Generated

Kentucky state government continues leadership appointments while UK Athletics opens its 2026 season with competitive results across multiple sports.

McClatchy lays off 12 Herald-Leader journalists, leaving two reporters for city and state government

· The Lexington Times AI Generated Edited

McClatchy laid off 12 journalists at the Lexington Herald-Leader on Thursday, Sept. 10, including its city hall reporter, its health and politics reporter and its high school sports reporter. Kentucky Public Radio reported the cuts eliminated a majority of the newsroom's positions and leave two reporters to cover city and state government. The layoffs come amid nationwide McClatchy cuts and a fight with its unions over an AI rewriting tool.

The rulebook for Lexington's 2,800-acre growth area lands in Accela with no text yet, months behind staff's own timeline; Sayre Christian Village plans a four-story rebuild

· The Lexington Times AI Generated

A light week on LFUCG's Accela portal: the text amendment meant to turn the Urban Growth Master Plan's "should" into "shall" appeared Aug. 31 with no draft attached, after staff told the Planning Commission in February it hoped for a May hearing. Also: Sayre Christian Village's four-story nursing-home rebuild on Belleau Wood Drive, whose plan sheet reprints a 2010 zoning condition barring pole lighting while the lighting sheet filed with it shows seven heads on 20-foot poles; the Pasadena Drive drive-through case, postponed after its lawyer told a committee "we screwed up"; a duplex on a 26-foot-wide Brucetown lot; a landlord's short-term rental near Kirklevington Park; and a garage apartment on North Hanover Avenue.

Gorton plans to name an external review panel for Lexington's Flock cameras, source says

· The Lexington Times AI Generated Edited

A source told the Times Thursday night that Mayor Linda Gorton planned to announce an external review panel for Lexington's Flock cameras. Her office confirmed it Friday morning.

Carter’s internal poll claims a dead heat with Gorton — and in the comments, her campaign backed banning large data centers

· The Lexington Times AI Generated Edited

Raquel Carter’s campaign released a Lake Research Partners internal poll showing Mayor Linda Gorton ahead 39%–34%, inside the ±4.9-point margin of error; Gorton’s camp called it fake. In the comments under the announcement, Carter’s campaign said she supports “banning large-scale data centers in Lexington” — five weeks before the council’s Oct. 6 data-center ordinance meeting. Campaign-finance records show Carter has out-raised Gorton all cycle.

1,240 homes on the Germond farm: the biggest plan yet filed in Lexington's growth-boundary expansion heads to a packed Sept. 24 hearing

· The Lexington Times AI Generated

The Lexington Times read every LFUCG Planning filing on the Accela portal from Aug. 22-31: Anderson Communities' 1,240-unit Andover Commons plan for the 136-acre Germond farm on Todds Road — postponed Aug. 27, with five waiver requests filed the next day — plus 96 apartments behind the Avid Hotel on Bryant Road, a Summit at Fritz Farm consolidation plat, and two homeowner variances headed to the Board of Adjustment.

Gorton and Carter trade barbs over Kentucky American Water; records show one $100 gift, not company money

· The Lexington Times AI Generated

A day after Lexington filed a PSC complaint against Kentucky American Water, challenger Raquel Carter said the mayor waited two years and is now asking the state to “solve Lexington’s problems.” Mayor Linda Gorton’s campaign replied that Carter “takes money from KAW.” KREF records show a single $100 donation from a KAW external-affairs employee; the complaint itself shows the city already levies delay fees — and that Gorton’s administration renewed the utility’s franchise last October.

Barr’s Senate campaign website dropped its “Trump-Endorsed” banner, rally photo and 16 Trump references in a July 16 rewrite

· The Lexington Times AI Generated Edited

Andy Barr’s campaign homepage went from “100% America First. Trump-Endorsed,” with a rally photo beside Trump and an “Endorsed by President Trump” pop-up video, to “Kentucky Tough, Kentucky First, Always.” The site’s own WordPress records date the rewrite to July 16 — five weeks before Ralph Alvarado made a similar change. The endorsements page and two bio bullets still cite Trump; the hidden search description still says “100% America First.”

Inside the room where Lexington police watch the cameras, and the week they turned off nationwide search

· The Lexington Times AI Generated Edited

In written answers to The Lexington Times, Lexington police say they have turned off the setting that let officers search license-plate cameras nationwide, and that two April searches for ICE were tied to a criminal pick-up order. No outside audit has ever been done; the department cites FBI security rules that do not bar one. A tour of the Real-Time Intelligence Center, where six civilian analysts watch 137 traffic-camera intersections and plate alerts, and where a 2024 bank robbery was solved in under 24 hours.

Lexington's second cannabis dispensary is at 130 W. Tiverton Way. The city says no one has scheduled its next inspection.

· The Lexington Times AI Generated Edited

Fayette County's long-delayed second medical cannabis dispensary is a High Profile Cannabis Shop at 130 W. Tiverton Way, Suite 100, records show — a strip center off Nicholasville Road. Lexington's Division of Building Inspection says the $820,000 buildout passed a framing inspection Aug. 18, that no further inspections have been scheduled, and that the certificate of occupancy a store needs before it can open has not been issued. A trade association says early October. C3 Industries has not answered three requests for comment.

Twenty people came to tell the Council what they think of Flock. Seventeen said cancel it, and one Council member said she would have voted no.

· The Lexington Times AI Generated

Twenty residents spoke on Flock Safety's license plate readers at Thursday's Urban County Council meeting: 17 asked the city to cancel its $1.6 million contract, three from the East End asked it to keep the cameras. Before comment opened, 4th District Council member Emma Curtis said she would have voted against the program and called Flock "not a corporation that acts in good faith." No other member responded, and nothing was voted on. Here is what each speaker said, checked against the record.

A Lego Store sign, a $32.85 million industrial deal and Country Boy at Turner Commons: two weeks in Lexington's development records

· The Lexington Times AI Generated Edited

The Lexington Times pulled the city's Accela permitting portal and the Fayette PVA's August sales roll: a sign permit for a Lego Store, Country Boy Brewing badging a Turner Commons building, a $32.85 million industrial sale on Remington Way, a $9.5 million assemblage at the edge of campus, a 155-foot cell tower application and a 29-home plat off Tates Creek Road.

Lexington's second cannabis dispensary license has sat unopened for 20 months. The industry's trade group says a High Profile store is coming in October.

· The Lexington Times AI Generated Edited

Kentucky's 24th of 48 licensed dispensaries opens Friday in Lebanon. Lexington was one of only two counties the state allowed two dispensaries, and the second Fayette license has not opened. State records tie it to C3 Industries of Ann Arbor, Michigan; the Kentucky Cannabis Industry Alliance says a High Profile store is now scheduled for early October and points to banking, insurance and landlord obstacles as the reason for the delay.

Lexington police have run more than 400,000 Flock searches since 2022. The independent review skipped all of 2023, and now samples 60 entries a quarter.

· The Lexington Times AI Generated Edited

Lexington police ran at least 400,168 Flock license plate searches between late 2022 and June 2026. Every audit of that searching was conducted by the police department itself, no Public Integrity Unit audit was published for any quarter of 2023, and the independent sample has been a flat 60 entries since mid-2025 while search volume rose 68 percent.

Flock opponents plan to fill Council chambers Thursday. The contract they want canceled has a way out.

· The Lexington Times AI Generated Edited

Bluegrass DSA organizers say they will present the Urban County Council a demand letter Thursday night calling on Lexington to cancel its Flock Safety contract and remove all 125 license plate readers. Flock is not on the agenda — but Section 11.16 of the contract the city signed lets Lexington terminate for non-appropriation on 30 days' notice, without penalty. Here is what the record shows, and how to be heard.

Alvarado’s campaign website drops Trump — five mentions and a photo — as KY-06 polling tightens

· The Lexington Times AI Generated Edited

Ralph Alvarado’s homepage went from “America First Fighter,” with a thumbs-up photo beside Donald Trump, to “Independent Leadership for Kentucky.” Server file dates put the rewrite on Aug. 19 — after a poll showed the race tied and a day before the DCCC put Zach Dembo on its flip list. The site’s hidden search description still pledges to help Trump.

What Lexington's developers filed this month: a downtown height floor, an industrial-zone rewrite and 988 student beds on South Broadway

· The Lexington Times AI Generated Edited

The Lexington Times read every Planning Division filing on the city's Accela portal from the past 30 days: two staff-written zoning rewrites headed for a Sept. 24 hearing, the final plan for The Standard at Lexington, Turner Commons' first expansion, a Pasadena Drive rezoning that would extend Norman Lane, and the Board of Adjustment's Sept. 14 docket.

Subtext promised Pralltown $3 million to build near UK. Its announcement doesn’t mention Pralltown.

· The Lexington Times AI Generated Edited

To win rezoning for a student tower across from UK, Subtext promised the Pralltown Neighborhood Association $3 million, and the city agreed to hold building permits until it is paid. Monday's announcement of the 520-bed EVER Lexington never mentions the neighborhood or the money. The council approved the project at 491 beds; the final plan carries 525, and the ordinance sets no cap. Deeds show the land sold Aug. 7 for $12.2 million, 4.7 times its assessed value.

Commentary: Bourbon country voted for the trade war. Now it is paying for it.

· The Lexington Times AI Generated Edited

The White House tariffed Canadian whisky at 50 percent because Canada stopped buying bourbon. Canada was about to put the bourbon back. The deal collapsed anyway — and the counties that make the whiskey backed Trump by 70 percent and more.

Analysis: The Democratic Party's civil war is on Lexington's ballot — and you can vote for both sides

· The Lexington Times AI Generated Edited

Herbert Lynn is a democratic socialist and DSA member running on public power, tenant unions and a data-center ban, funded by $47 average gifts. Dan Wu is a founding member of the billionaire-backed Abundance Elected network, funded at $253 a gift. The national Democratic civil war has arrived on Lexington's at-large ballot — where the same voter can mark both.

“The rebellion against elites”: Meet the billionaires behind Dan Wu’s abundance network

· The Lexington Times AI Generated

Leaked fundraising documents from the Abundance Network — the parent of the electeds group Lexington’s vice mayor says he joined at its founding — itemize roughly $200 million a year from John Arnold, Dustin Moskovitz and Steve Ballmer, and list the program Wu belongs to as an asset. The money’s only Kentucky footprint so far: $750 from the network’s own fundraiser, at Wu’s fundraisers.

Royal Springs has a watchdog. Lexington’s data-center rules never mention it.

· The Lexington Times AI Generated

On Tuesday the Urban County Council takes up data-center zoning rules the Planning Commission debated for roughly five hours without once saying “Royal Springs.” A Lexington Times review of nearly two decades of LFUCG meeting records shows the joint committee guarding Georgetown and Scott County’s drinking water holds one formal power in Lexington’s development process — a recommendation — and that it prevailed only when city staff agreed with it. The new rules would regulate data-center water use countywide, but contain no groundwater or recharge-area provision at all.

More than 400 Cardinal Valley apartments go to auction in the shadow of a $50 million fraud case

· The Lexington Times AI Generated Edited

The four Cardinal Valley apartment complexes described in January's federal fraud indictment of Cincinnati syndicator Vision & Beyond — more than 400 units bought for $20.8 million in 2021 and allegedly refinanced for $24.6 million in 2023 without paying off the prior loans — go to a no-reserve online auction August 24-26, with $18.1 million in judgments outstanding, 57 units condemned as of April, and no other outlet connecting the sale to the criminal case.

The data center, the bourbon bar and the mugshot: Mercer County's fight, explained

· The Lexington Times AI Generated Edited

A proposed 500-acre hyperscale data center next to Shaker Village, a tiny city asked to annex its way around county zoning, a $1 million state incentive for a downtown Lexington bourbon bar — and a developer's message to a critic, 'Should I post this on Lexington foodies?', sent above her mugshot. The whole Mercer County saga, explained.

Commentary: The sentence Dan Wu never finished

· The Lexington Times AI Generated Edited

The vice mayor's re-election website deleted the word "activist," the Civil Rights plank, and the Environment plank, demoted housing from a promise to a noun — and replaced them with a pledge to avoid drama. The record says the website is the honest one.

An $80,000 grant for gun violence survivors went unclaimed. The city's own documents show why.

· The Lexington Times AI Generated Edited

ONE Lexington's survivor-led grant drew five applications and produced no award. The procurement file shows the solicitation went out over the city's standard vendor list — reaching Tetra Tech, Grainger and out-of-state consultancies — and the contract required $1 million liability policies, workers' compensation and uncapped indemnification before a dollar reached a family.

'Stay vigilant, but we cannot panic': ONE Lexington director breaks silence after city's most violent stretch of shootings in years

· The Lexington Times AI Generated Edited

Devine Carama called the seven unrelated shootings that wounded nine people over four days unprecedented for Lexington — but said ONE Lexington won't abandon a strategy that has driven gun violence down four years running.

Lyft data showed he never picked up his accuser. Lexington charged him anyway, a federal lawsuit says

· The Lexington Times AI Generated

An Afghan refugee who drove for Lyft spent seven days in jail and ten months under felony indictment — including a kidnapping count carrying up to 20 years — for an assault that Lyft’s own records showed he could not have committed, according to a federal civil-rights lawsuit filed July 20 against Lexington police Detective Franklin Epley and the urban county government. The criminal case was quietly dismissed a year ago. The arrest made television news; the dismissal and the lawsuit never did, until now.

The Track on Race Street: how Lexington buried the course that made it the Horse Capital — and built Keeneland on the grief

· The Lexington Times AI Generated Edited

For 107 years Lexington's thoroughbreds ran at the Kentucky Association course on Race Street — the ground that launched Isaac Murphy and gave America its oldest stakes race. Then the Depression killed it, a housing project rose on its grave, and a handful of horsemen gambled everything on a non-profit called Keeneland.

51 pounds of meth, a kilo press and three federal drug cases in a single Lexington week

· The Lexington Times AI Generated Edited

In about 48 hours, federal agents in Lexington charged three men with drug trafficking in separate cases — headlined by roughly 51 pounds of methamphetamine, a kilo press and an AR-style rifle seized from Tararey Taylor. The other two: a man found asleep at the wheel with meth and fentanyl at New Circle Road, and a cocaine load shipped from the Texas border in a Lego box. All three were charged by complaint; none has been convicted.

A second FMC Lexington guard has pleaded guilty in the cover-up of an inmate beating

· The Lexington Times AI Generated Edited

Jonathan Grady Vago pleaded guilty Wednesday to falsifying a report about the June 2025 beating of an inmate at the Federal Medical Center in Lexington — the second guard convicted in the cover-up. The officer who threw the punches, Ryan Carnahan, pleaded guilty in May. A third officer who entered the cell has not been charged.

In 2014, Lexington voted 15-0 to bond CentrePointe's garage with zero city liability. The bonds were never issued. The tax diversion happened anyway.

· The Lexington Times AI Generated

Told that Frankfort had refused to issue $30 million for CentrePointe's parking garage, Lexington's council stood up a brand-new bonding conduit with the Kentucky League of Cities and the city of Midway — and approved it 15-0, after bond counsel promised the city would bear no repayment risk. The Lexington Times pulled the official minutes, the Granicus video and the municipal-bond record: no CentrePointe bond was ever sold. The garage was built with private money. But the TIF that was supposed to repay bondholders lives on, routing the district's tax increment to the developer's parking company instead. The complete minutes file is posted with this article.

In its first year, Lexington asked the state for $973,179 in Red Mile tax money. Frankfort mailed $86,918.50. The subsidy's full ten-year ledger is now public.

· The Lexington Times AI Generated

The Kentucky Department of Revenue has produced the last five missing years of the Red Mile TIF's state ledger — on the exact day it promised. The decade's total is public for the first time: $3,197,344 paid from 2015 through 2024, after state auditors spent ten years correcting Lexington's math, striking gamblers' income taxes from the subsidy request, and fielding hurry-up inquiries from the state's own economic-development cabinet on the track's behalf. The complete three-production records file is posted with this article.

Lexington police officer suspended 90 days after Waffle House confrontation; council approves two other discipline cases

· The Lexington Times AI Generated Edited

The Urban County Council approved a 90-day unpaid suspension for Officer Caleb Croney over a confrontation with a Waffle House security guard — his third formal complaint since 2020 — along with written reprimands for a second police officer and a fire captain, at its June 18 meeting.

Lexington posts a map of its license-plate cameras. It doesn't show the 2,000-camera network behind them.

· The Lexington Times AI Generated Edited

Lexington is praised as the transparent one on police surveillance — it posts a map of its 125 license-plate readers. But the department's own audits show a network of more than 2,000 enrolled cameras it can reach, and the audits never check who outside LPD taps in.

Texting Lexington officer rear-ended a driver and blamed her — then resigned days before the chief could fire him

· The Lexington Times AI Generated Edited

A Lexington officer told a driver he rear-ended that she 'stopped so quick.' His body camera showed him texting through the impact. He resigned May 18 — days before the chief could act on a termination recommendation.

“Transparency Is a Choice”: how the Fayette school board dismissed its public, step by step, on the way to a million-dollar exit

· The Lexington Times AI Generated Edited

On the night Fayette’s school board locked in four more years of Demetrus Liggins, a board member lectured skeptical parents that “sometimes transparency is a choice.” Eighteen months of receipts later, we know whose choice it was.

“So This Is Venice!” — When Summer Cloudbursts Turned Main Street Into a River

· The Lexington Times AI Generated Edited

In June 1928 a night of rain put a three-foot river down Main Street and drowned downtown basements “ceiling-high.” Lexington's flash-flood history, read from the original newsprint, runs on a summer calendar — 1923, 1928, 1932 — and it hasn't stopped.

Brilliant Lectures, Leaky Balloons: How Lexington Did the Fourth a Century Ago

· The Lexington Times AI Generated Edited

Before fireworks ordinances and food trucks, Lexington's Fourth of July belonged to Woodland Park's Kentucky Chautauqua — ten days of lectures and music ending July 4 — and to Prof. Frank Deivey, an ex-Opera House stagehand who ascended in a hot-air balloon he called 'a thing of shreds and patches.' No. 2 in the Fabled Fourths series.

"More Deadly Than the Battles of the Revolution": The Crusade to Tame Lexington's Fourth

· The Lexington Times AI Generated Edited

In 1910 the Lexington Herald gave a section front to the 'safe and sane Fourth' crusade — Independence Day was 'more deadly than the battles of the Revolution.' By 1913 fireworks deaths were falling while drownings soared; by 1918 the wartime Fourth ran on Liberty Loan flags and an Army aviator. No. 3 in the Fabled Fourths series.

Lexington Toasted Jefferson's "Declining Days." He Had Been Dead for Seventeen Days.

· The Lexington Times AI Generated Edited

On July 4, 1826 — the 50th anniversary of the Declaration — Lexington's Jubilee dinner toasted the living Thomas Jefferson, wishing cheer for 'his declining days.' Jefferson had died at Monticello about an hour earlier, and John Adams that same afternoon. The Kentucky Gazette of July 21, 1826 printed the toasts on page 1 and the death announcement on page 3 of the same issue. First in the Fabled Fourths series.

The Week Lexington Lined Up on Main Street to See a Dead Whale

· The Lexington Times AI Generated Edited

In April 1930, a 66-ton embalmed finback whale named Goliath was exhibited in a glass-enclosed railcar on the C&O spur tracks at East Main Street. Three thousand people came the first night, guided by a searchlight. The visit — one stop on the Pacific Whaling Company's railcar tours of inland America — has vanished from Lexington's public memory.

The Line: houses, horses, and the money behind Lexington’s growth boundary

· The Lexington Times AI Generated Edited

Lexington’s single biggest source of local political money is a horse farm. Its growth boundary — the nation’s first, drawn in 1958 — is what that money is defending. A documented, bilateral look at the homebuilders and the horse farms fighting over where to draw the line, traced dollar by dollar through the campaign-finance reports.

Let It Flood: how a drowned Lexington street became Kentucky’s biggest food forest

· The Lexington Times AI Generated Edited

The same low ground along Wolf Run that flooded out Kilrush Drive in June 1992 was bought up, demolished and left as a mowed city greenway for fifteen years — until a permaculturist asked to plant it. How a drowned Lexington street became Kentucky’s biggest food forest.

The Red Mile's tax payout was supposed to be off the books. Open records pried loose five years of it: $2.16 million, recalculated by the state nearly every year.

· The Lexington Times AI Generated

In June, a Lexington Times investigation reported that the public had no way to learn what the Red Mile's 16-year-old tax subsidy had actually paid out — the figure lived only behind open-records law. The Kentucky Department of Revenue has now produced it: $2.16 million in state increment released from 2020 through 2024, with the state rejecting the city's requested amount in nearly every year, and two agencies still declining to answer the question that decides what the whole deal is worth.

Kentucky is cutting its income tax. For its oldest development subsidies, the state recalculates the payout as if the rate never moved.

· The Lexington Times AI Generated Edited

As Kentucky ratchets its income tax down — 5 percent to 4 percent, and now 3.5 percent — a provision first written into the 2023 tax bill and quietly extended twice since recalculates the withholding inside older tax-increment-financing districts as if the rate were still 5 percent. The effect: the cut reaches ordinary taxpayers but not the subsidized projects. The Red Mile's own state increment letters show the adjustment adding more than $120,000 in a single year — enough to push the state's check above what the city even asked for.

Introducing KREF Watch and KLEC Watch: two new free databases tracking money in Kentucky politics

· The Lexington Times AI Generated Edited

The Lexington Times launches KREF Watch (krefwatch.com) and KLEC Watch (klecwatch.com): free, searchable databases covering $466M in Kentucky campaign contributions since 2016 and $223M in Frankfort lobbying since 2015 — cross-linked, open-source, and refreshed weekly.

Off-Beat: The plows are innocent — what 218,307 GPS pings and three precinct canvasses say about the Gorton swing

· The Lexington Times AI Generated

Lexington spent a week in January sure the snow response would be on the May ballot. We joined the city’s plow GPS log to precinct returns from 2022, 2024 and 2026 to test it. The plows have an alibi — and the precinct map shows what actually moved: the most Democratic, most heavily Black precincts broke hardest from Gorton toward Raquel Carter, who would be the first Black woman to hold the office.

The Quiet Buyout: 30 months of deeds show who is really buying Lexington’s cheapest homes

· The Lexington Times AI Generated

The Lexington Times analyzed all 18,969 residential transfers recorded in Fayette County since January 2024. LLCs took one of every eight homes sold on the open market and two of every five under $150,000 — plus 509 more in unreported bulk deals worth $96.7 million. Behind the shells: Ball Homes’ 214-home rental arm, a two-man partnership operating from a Hamburg mailbox, and a Manhattan sale-leaseback company buying through a New Hampshire PO box.

Twenty-four hours of whiplash: a moratorium sprint, a $546 million budget, and a resignation that wasn’t

· The Lexington Times AI Generated Edited

In 24 hours, Lexington’s council passed a $546 million budget and froze data-center development with surprise walk-on motions — the mayor’s endorsement arrived after the vote — while the school board and Superintendent Demetrus Liggins issued contradicting statements about whether he resigned. Commentary on what the speed says about civic process.

The Great Writ comes to Covington: why immigration detainees are flooding Kentucky's federal court with habeas petitions

· The Lexington Times AI Generated Edited

Eastern Kentucky's federal court logged zero immigration-detention habeas cases in 2024. It has seen 147 in the first five months of 2026 — nearly all from one Covington jail. Two 2025 legal changes explain the surge, and the constitutional stakes trace back to Abraham Lincoln.

Days after Kentucky's policy center urged cities to build opioid-money watchdogs, Lexington quietly abolished its own

· The Lexington Times AI Generated Edited

On a silent 15-0 vote, the Urban County Council dissolved the citizen commission that vetted how Lexington spends ~$30 million in opioid-settlement money — six days after the Kentucky Center for Economic Policy urged counties to create exactly such bodies. The job now falls to a mayoral committee that answers to no ordinance, with ~$21 million still to come.

Lexington just made the Red Mile's tax deal bigger. It's worth half what the public's been told — and what it's actually paid out is sealed by law.

· The Lexington Times AI Generated Edited

On a nine-day clock to beat a July 1 state deadline, the Urban County Council unanimously expanded a 16-year-old tax subsidy for the historic harness track — with no debate and no resident at the microphone. A look at what is really in the deal, and what the law keeps hidden.

Lexington is about to vote on a modest set of reforms. One group is using them as a doorway to something much larger.

· The Lexington Times AI Generated Edited

The Civic Assembly’s three charter changes head to a June 18 council vote with broad support. Behind them stands D.I.R.E.C.T., a group whose own literature argues the exercise should end in replacing elected council government — and whose answers, asked directly, are revealing.

The Glaze: Walt Gaffield, the volunteer who keeps showing up for the side without lawyers

· The Lexington Times AI Generated Edited

The Glaze on Walt Gaffield, the volunteer Fayette County Neighborhood Council president whose years at the LFUCG podium run from the 2008 sewer cleanup to the fight over Frankfort's House Bill 443.

As data centers move into Kentucky, the Horse Capital throws down the gauntlet

· The Lexington Times AI Generated Edited

As a data-center gold rush sweeps Kentucky through NDA-shrouded deals and packed town halls, Lexington-Fayette is drafting one of the state’s most restrictive rules — a countywide ban on the largest data centers and a 1,000-foot buffer to keep the rest away from horse farms.

Off-Beat: The AI policy, the Pope, and the data-center ban nobody mentioned

· The Lexington Times AI Generated Edited

A council member opened Lexington’s new AI policy warning about data centers “across the commonwealth.” Nine days later the city’s own draft ban on them had a hearing — and the committee chair was the one who said so.

The Tide at the Triangle: Lexington's near-campus edge becomes a dorm district

· The Lexington Times AI Generated Edited

A 7-story, 260-bed proposal would raze six Woodland Triangle storefronts near UK — one of five student-housing projects remaking a near-campus mile. The real question is whether Lexington has any plan for the tide.

Off-Beat: The City Gave Us This Building

· The Lexington Times AI Generated

A developer answered a two-day-old zone change at the old Ramsey's corner with a 46-page book arguing the city “gave” them the building. Off-Beat reads the booklet against the file.

Lexington planners tighten data-center cap with an equestrian buffer; hearing pushed to June 11

· The Lexington Times AI Generated

Lexington's draft data-center zoning got tighter at the May 21 Planning Commission work session, with a new 1,000-foot buffer between data centers and rural agricultural land outside the urban service area. The hearing has been pushed to June 11.

The Third Street Stuff union demand list

· The Lexington Times AI Generated

The Third Street Staff Union has had a written demands list since January 27, 2026 — four months before Pat Gerhard announced she was closing the shop. The Lexington Times is hosting the document. Its contents sort into four categories: existing labor law the employer hadn't been following, standard collective-bargaining asks, ambitious worker-cooperative-shaped governance, and two cultural demands that gave everyone an off-ramp.

Off-Beat: The Lexington clown cemetery is folklore. The 1882 Paint Lick circus wreck is paperwork.

· The Lexington Times AI Generated Edited

An r/lexington post this week claimed a 'clown cemetery' lurks east of town, marking a circus the locals slaughtered in a cave after a rainstorm. The thread's own consensus: nobody from Lexington has ever heard of it. The Lexington Times archive, the LFUCG meeting record, the Kentucky Folklife Program index, the LFUCG historic-cemeteries inventory, and the KHS marker database all confirm: the cemetery isn't in the record. What is in the record — free, on Chronicling America, scanned a decade ago and rarely read — is the 1882 Sells Brothers circus wreck at Paint Lick, thirty miles down the rail line: three dead, a tiger loose in the dark, brakes blamed by the New York Times on the operator and by the county physician on the equipment.

Editor's Notebook: Hand saws, circular saws, and the Lantern

· The Lexington Times AI Generated

An editor's notebook column from Lexington Times web editor Paul Oliva, in friendly reply to Kentucky Lantern editor-in-chief Linda Blackford's May 15 piece on AI in journalism — distinguishing the fabrication AI Blackford rightly fears from the data-wrangling AI her own policy endorses, and arguing that in Lexington in 2026 the choice is not AI summary or staff reporter, it is AI summary or nothing.

Off-Beat: The Broke Spoke hoodie at the CASA budget mic

· The Lexington Times AI Generated

At the FY27 budget public-comment mic on May 14, the shop manager of Broke Spoke Community Bike Shop — wearing his employer's logo'd hoodie but identifying only as a District 10 resident — asked the Urban County Council to cut a $278,000 allocation to CASA of Lexington. His caseload-vs-assets math actually checks out. We read the 990s on both sides.

Editor's Notebook: Where's the Goodman story?

· The Lexington Times AI Generated

An editor's notebook column from Lexington Times web editor Paul Oliva on a story the Lexington Herald-Leader has the precedent, the source list, and the institutional knowledge to write — the $15,200 Goodman family bundle to Mayor Gorton on her 15-day pre-primary report — and so far has not.

The Glaze: Nachie Braga, the man who turned Lexington's broken places into a food forest

· The Lexington Times AI Generated Edited

Long before the tree canopy committee, the Kilrush Food Forest, or any city contracts, Nachie Braga showed up to the Water Quality Fees Board on his own time. The Glaze on Geomancer's founder.

Horse-industry money lifts Gorton's reelection while developers prop up Wu in last pre-primary report

· The Lexington Times AI Generated Edited

Mayor Linda Gorton received $17,200 from a single May 4 deposit anchored by eight Goodman and Rosenstein family checks — more than she had raised in any month before April. Vice Mayor Dan Wu, whom the same family backed in 2022, got nothing from the Goodmans this cycle, with his $7,450 in new money instead coming from a Walker Properties max-out and developer-and-builder names. Carter still leads the mayoral money race two-to-one.

Maker's Mark, a shuttered Mercantile, and the word 'serve': Inside the Keeneland ZOTA

· The Lexington Times AI Generated

How a closed Mercantile in City Center, a stranded liquor license, and one word in Article 8-1 became a unanimous recommendation at the May 7 LFUCG Planning Commission Zoning Subcommittee — and the structural objection nobody on the dais took up.

The Glaze: Bruce Simpson, the land-use attorney who keeps showing up for the side without lawyers

· The Lexington Times AI Generated

The Glaze profiles Bruce Simpson, a 38-year Lexington land-use attorney who turns his procedural toolkit toward neighborhoods and stigmatized uses — culminating in a Board of Adjustment hearing where he disclosed his own involuntary commitment at Eastern State Hospital.

The Glaze: Charlie Martin, the man who saved Lexington from 'poop flowing in the streets'

· The Lexington Times AI Generated

The Glaze profiles Charlie Martin, the career LFUCG civil engineer who has quietly executed the EPA sanitary sewer consent decree for eighteen years — 117 projects, $19.6M Mint Lane vote, federal deadline extended to 2030, and the city's streets unmarked by sewage the whole way through.

Off-Beat: Federal agents, an Eye of Sauron, and what's really in the Pentagon's first UAP drop

· The Lexington Times AI Generated

The Department of War's first PURSUE drop posts 161 declassified UAP records: 50+ active-military mission reports from CENTCOM and INDOPACOM, 24 FBI photo evidence frames from the western U.S., a marquee slide deck called Western US Event in which seven federal law enforcement agents describe an Eye-of-Sauron orb and a spotlight beam that briefly stopped 50 yards out on nothing, plus repackaged Apollo transcripts and old State Department cables. We read the files.

The Glaze: Richard Young, the man who built Lexington's civic infrastructure

· The Lexington Times AI Generated

The Glaze, a new Lexington Times column on quiet civic workhorses, opens with CivicLex founder Richard Young, whose three-year campaign for participatory democracy culminated in Lexington's first Civic Assembly and three proposed charter amendments now headed for the November ballot.