The Lexington Times
Free, AI-powered local news for Lexington, Kentucky
The stories running under Lexington.
Town Branch is a hand-produced podcast from The Lexington Times digging into the stories running under Lexington, Kentucky — the slow-moving civic currents beneath the daily news. Hand-produced episodes, not daily.
Episodes
Misery for Rent, Then and Now
A longer, commentary-and-analysis episode. In 2000, the Herald-Leader spent four months inside Lexington's worst rental housing and the city agency that was supposed to police it — a series called Misery for Rent. Twenty-six years later, The Lexington Times re-read every page. Kay and Pete trace what actually changed: the family empire that rented misery at three hundred dollars a month, the neighborhood where those same blocks now sell for a quarter million, the renter protection that lasted six days in Frankfort, and the question that never changes — who absorbs the risk, and who collects.
Who Keeps the Receipts
This week The Lexington Times launched two free databases putting six hundred eighty-nine million dollars of Kentucky political money — campaign contributions and Frankfort lobbying — into one searchable place. The same week, we reported that twenty-four years of Fayette County election results survived in exactly one reachable spot: a nonprofit's server in San Francisco. Kay and Pete on money, memory, and why public records only survive when somebody bothers to keep them.
What the City Bought: Lexington's New Budget
Council passed Lexington's new budget fifteen to nothing — eight hundred forty-seven million dollars, no new taxes, and a long memory of last winter. Kay and Pete decode where the money actually goes: the five point one million dollar snow plan with a beet-juice de-icer, thirteen million in paving, a brand-new pothole fund, money for the Dirt Bowl courts, and the two point seven five million the council added on its own.
Fifty-One Cents on the Dollar
In January, at a nine a.m. meeting no reporter attended, Lexington's police and fire pension board set the city's contribution at 51.24 percent of payroll — about fifty-two and a half million dollars in the budget council just adopted. Kay and Pete explain the fund in plain English: the three hundred eighty-six million dollar hole, the retirees losing ground to capped cost-of-living raises, the push to sweeten benefits anyway, and why the whole fight lands in Frankfort in twenty twenty-seven.
Two of Every Five
The Lexington Times read thirty months of Fayette County deed records — every one of the 18,969 transfers since January 2024. Companies bought one of every eight homes sold on the open market, and two of every five priced under a hundred fifty thousand dollars. Kay and Pete follow the paper trail: a cul-de-sac that sold before lunch, a Hamburg mailbox behind sixty rental homes, and a Manhattan landlord signing its mail through a New Hampshire post office box.
The Eighteen-Hour Resignation
Fayette County's superintendent emailed his board chair at 3 a.m. asking to step away, the district announced his resignation by evening, and he took it back before bedtime. Kay and Pete walk through the whiplash week at FCPS — the unanimous vote that put Demetrus Liggins on paid leave, the ninety-five million dollar loan underneath it all, and who's steering the state's second-largest school district now.