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Louisville’s Land Bank Authority acquires abandoned properties and then sells them to new owners very cheap, sometimes for as little as a dollar. The new owners have six months to rehab the outside of the house, and 18 months to fix the inside. Last December, a record year for landbank sales, Louisville Mayor Greg Fischer called the program a “win for neighbors and for public safety.”

But reporter Jake Ryan with the Kentucky Center for Investigative Reporting found that of the 316 properties the landbank has sold, almost a third are vacant and in violation of the city’s property maintenance codes. The landbank has the authority to take houses back if the buyer doesn’t hold up their end of the bargain, but they've only actually done that one time since 2010.

Jake joins us today on Recut to tell us what he found out about why those properties remain vacant, and what people living nearby have to say about it.

For many of us, having the internet at home is as important as having electricity, or maybe even water. We use it to watch our favorite TV shows, to do homework, to pay bills.

But inside 40 percent of Louisville's poorest households, there is no internet access. Those families don't hop on the computer to help kids with homework, they don't look up tutorials for home repairs, and they don't play games online or look at social media. These are things we — and maybe you, too — take for granted. But for many Louisvillians, having the internet at home is just not an option.

Internet access is essential for most people anymore, and the city of Louisville has a digital inclusion plan that aims to help low-income residents get connected at home.

City reporter Amina Elahi joins us today to talk about how the plan is working and how it could be improved, and we meet a woman whose life is being changed just by being able to get online at home.

In early August, Louisville Mayor Greg Fisher announced that the John Breckinridge Castleman statue would be removed from Cherokee Triangle.

Debate about the Castleman monument and other controversial works of art was sparked last August when the Castleman statue was vandalized with paint. This happened a day after violence erupted at a white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia. Following the deadly rally, cities around the country —  including Lexington — moved swiftly to relocate their Confederate monuments.

Louisville did not act so quickly; we had nearly a year of committee meetings and public comments.

Now, the statue will be moved. And the conversation is moving ahead, too, to the next question: What should replace it?

We asked WFPL listeners what you thought should go in the statue's place, and we'll hear some of those answers on today's show, with arts reporter Ashlie Stevens.

(Oh! And since you asked, yes, this is pledge drive week! Everything we do at WFPL is only possible because of listener support and that includes Recut. Donate at wfpl.org. And thanks!)

We've seen it before: A neighborhood dealing with high poverty and crime, and offering few economic prospects, is given a boost.

State and federal investments for new projects are approved. Maybe a new, trendy restaurant or bar or coffee shop comes in — thanks to the low property costs — and soon, other businesses follow. Developers begin to buy homes in the area for cheap and flip them for big profits.

Property values and property taxes rise, and before you know it, the neighborhood barely resembles its former self. And the people who've lived there for years, some of them for decades, can no longer afford to live in the place they call home.

There's no denying that West Louisville needs a boost. At one time, jobs were plentiful and businesses thrived. The Russell neighborhood was even nicknamed “Louisville’s Harlem.” But that was a long time ago. Many residents in the west now live in poverty, and rates of crime in the West End are among the highest in the city.

But with major investment for new projects ahead — including a new track and field sports complex, a renovated Beecher Terrace, and a neighborhood YMCA — West Louisville is likely headed for big changes.

Today on Recut, WFPL's Kyeland Jackson talks about revitalization efforts in the West End, and the line between neighborhood renewal and gentrification.

Sitting in our recording studio, we're within about five miles of 15 different drug addiction recovery facilities. From our station, it’s a 17-minute walk to someplace you can get a Hepatitis A vaccine, even if you don’t have health insurance.

We're in downtown Louisville. But the opioid and Hep A epidemics look very different outside of big cities.

In small towns, where everyone knows everyone else, the stigma attached to seeking treatment for substance use disorders can be intense. Plenty of evidence says needle exchange programs help prevent the spread of disease, but they’re politically unpopular.

Mary Meehan and Aaron Payne cover health issues for the Ohio Valley ReSource.

“To talk to people in active addiction is difficult because they don’t want to be associated with the opioid epidemic,” Aaron said. “Even people in recovery sometimes are hesitant to talk about their experience. They’re still afraid of the stigma, so it can be difficult to find people to talk to that have lived through this disease.”

They join us on today’s show to talk about their experiences covering the opioid epidemic and related issues in rural communities.

“We should have a scroll at the top of all JCPS coverage, like what

It’s not the worst idea. I don’t know about you but I find it really hard to keep up — even if you work in a newsroom every day.

Let’s (try to) break it down:

It feels like a "long time ago," but it was actually back in April. Gov. Matt Bevin appointed seven new members to the Kentucky Board of Education, giving his appointees full control. During a meeting the next day, the new board pressured Kentucky Education Commissioner Stephen Pruitt to resign, which he did. The board then named University of Kentucky professor and charter schools proponent Wayne Lewis interim commissioner. Two weeks later, Lewis released a scathing audit of the district and recommended a state takeover.

You keeping up?

At the end of May, the JCPS board voted to appeal the state takeover. Hearings to settle the matter were scheduled to begin in September. But, in July, Lewis offered the district a settlement instead of going through with the takeover. After many meetings, the JCPS board this week voted to take the deal.

We know some terms of the agreement, but the two sides still have to come up with a corrective action plan. If they don’t, Lewis gets the final say.

WFPL's Roxanne Scott has been spending way too many evenings waiting for them to come out of closed-session meetings. She joins us to share what's in the agreement, and what could happen next.

The Parklands of Floyds Fork is 4,000 acres of undeveloped land in southeast Louisville. It’s one of the last undeveloped regions of Louisville, and it’s home to mammals, aquatic animals, and plants — some of which aren’t found anywhere else in the world.

It centers around a 62-mile long waterway called Floyds Fork.

A new subdivision is in the works for the area, and conservationists are worried that the additional runoff and wastewater from homes and apartments would cause the collapse of the stream’s ecosystem.

WFPL’s environment reporter Ryan Van Velzer joins us on today’s Recut to explain how the development could affect the stream. The developers and the conservationists each have their own positions; Ryan tells us what the data shows.

And the whole issue brings up a kind of cognitive dissonance: a place is beautiful, so we love it and want to live there, but in order to live there, we have to take away some of what makes it beautiful (or possibly even destroy it altogether).

Near the end of today’s show, things get a little far afield (pun intended) as Ryan takes us inside the mind of an environment reporter. “I knew car exhaust was bad for me,” he said. “But now I know the mechanism in which it’s bad for me.”

And after today’s show, we do, too (thanks a lot, Ryan).

Recut host Jonese Franklin says she's seen a handful of Star Trek episodes over the years, but isn't much of a fan. "I’ve also seen a few of the movies and I can see how Trekkies are born," she said. "But when I found out reporter Ashlie Stevens was attending a Klingon convention (and that a Klingon convention is actually a thing) I’ll admit that you probably could have heard my eyes roll."

To think that someone could be so devoted to Star Trek — not even the show itself but a species featured on the show — that they would attend a convention about a made up language seemed pretty nerdy.

Then, Ashlie joined us to talk about the convention and the people she met there. And something happened. We realized that we’re all nerdy about something. What seems super weird to one person might be very important to another.

On this episode of Recut, Ashlie talks about her experience at the Klingon convention, and we — along with other WFPL reporters — confess our own nerdy obsessions.

They showed up one day, unexpectedly, like a gift from Santa. One hundred small, black, electric scooters, scattered throughout downtown Louisville.

And then, 30 hours later... they were gone.

It turns out that other cities have experienced the same phenomenon, thanks to a California-based company called Bird.

The city says it had been working with Bird on how to regulate the scooters but that the company launched prematurely. So Louisville asked Bird to pull the scooters and the company complied.

Now, the Bird is back. An agreement between the company and the city allows the scooters to be rented and driven inside the Watterson Expressway. But that agreement expires on September 8.

WFPL's Amina Elahi has been covering the scooter saga and she joins us today on Recut to talk about how scooters could fit into the local transit ecosystem.

Louisville is home to one of the most famous sporting events in the world: The Kentucky Derby. During the first weekend in May, Hollywood celebrities, famous athletes and many other well-to-do put on their best hats and head to Louisville for the first leg of the Triple Crown.

I'm not a native Louisvillian but even I can tell you that Derby is about much more than "The Fastest Two Minutes in Sports." There are concerts and boat races and charity events. Restaurants and bars create special menus. It feels kind of like a holiday.

There are also a lot of fancy parties. And one of the fanciest is Mayor Greg Fischer's. This year, Fischer's Derby weekend guests stayed at the brand-new Omni Hotel, drank bonded bourbon, dined on braised lamb, were chauffeured to the racetrack, and for two days, watched races from the posh sixth floor Skye Terrace at Churchill Downs.

So, who did Fischer entertain? LeBron? Elon Musk? Bill and Melinda Gates? Oprah? Can't say, because while Fisher's invite-only Derby weekend cost taxpayers about $109,000 this year, the guest list remains a secret, all in the name of economic development. Mary Ellen Wiederwohl, the city's chief economic development officer, said that publicly identifying attendees would have a “chilling effect” on their future participation.

As Metro Council is considering an ordinance that would force Fischer to disclose his Derby guest list, city reporter Amina Elahi looked into how other cities operate. Amina joins us today to tell us what she found.