Meeting of April 20, 2023

I'd like to call the meeting of uh Thursday April 20th of Davis County Fiscal Court to order and uh commissioner Marksbury would you mind leading us in a prayer and a pledge sure would you pray with me please Lord God help us to have the courage boldness and wisdom to make the right decisions for our County you declare in your word in Isaiah 5 20 21. woe to those who call evil good and good evil who put Darkness for light and light for Darkness who put bitter for sweet and Sweet for bitter who are wise in their own eyes and clever in their own sight also from the message version of the Bible in second Timothy 4 3. you're going to find there will be times when people will have no stomach for solid teaching but will fill up on spiritual junk food catchy opinions that tickle their fancy they'll turn their backs on truth and Chase mirages but you keep your eye on what you're doing accept the hard times along with the good keep the message alive do a thorough job

as God's serpent please bless us As We Gather today not only as servants to our community but also your servants who have been put into office for such a time as this lead us to success in all we do in Jesus name we pray amen say the Pledge I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands one nation under God indivisible with liberty and justice for all thank you thank you commissioner marksberry um Jenny item one consideration for presentation a court appointed special Advocates Casa executive director Ashley Evans Smith to discuss child abuse and neglect in Davis County in ways we can make a difference welcome come up and share some wisdom with us thank you so much for the opportunity to be here this evening I know I won't be sharing all new information to some of you my predecessor was Larry's wonderful

wife Rosemary and so she's done a tremendous amount in the community to spread awareness and that's exactly why I'm here April is child abuse awareness and prevention month and at Casa court appointed special Advocates that is exactly what we do we recruit and train community volunteers who then advocate for abuse and neglected children in the family court system and that is an extreme need here in our community over the last few years we've seen some changes and we've we've grown a little bit we've come a little bit further in this in this effort in the state of Kentucky but in Davis County we've actually gotten worse in a lot of ways and we have more children in foster care we have more children involved in the family court system and a wonderful way that you can give back to your community is by engaging in volunteer services like cost of Ohio Valley where you can become a community volunteer and be a voice for a child who has been abused and neglected so I know I want to keep it brief tonight you all have a wonderful agenda to go over but I did want to share that with you as an opportunity and I thank you so much for the opportunity to do that well thank you and thank you for all that you do for our community and for the children and these situations I know you're the you're the

director for Casa if you don't mind just sharing briefly having somebody if somebody wants to be a court appointed special advocate for children how do they go about that we need to do hard to put the microphone down sorry um the first thing they would need to do is contact our office and from there we would set up a short interview um to make sure that we are right for them and they are right for our program the only requirements are that someone be over 21 and they are able to pass a background check and then of course that they're passionate and and want to serve children after that it does take an extensive amount of training so there's a 30 hour pre-service training that we offer in-house of course at no charge to anyone who wants to be a volunteer and if anyone is interested I would highly highly recommend taking that because you would learn a tremendous amount about just our community and how much the need is in the community you would learn about poverty and child abuse and neglect domestic violence substance abuse and how those impact children after that to be a court appointed special Advocate you actually have to be sworn in so after completing the training you'll be sworn in by one of our family court judges and then I would

collaborate with a staff at Casa to be a assigned your first case and begin getting to know a child and advocating on their behalf and and if I may keep asking questions absolutely how many how many children might a person be an advocate for that's one of the wonderful things about Casa and that's really unique about our role is that our volunteer Advocates have the opportunity to focus on the children that they serve they are only ever assigned one or two cases in a situation where they might be really passionate and have the time to contribute to that in those cases they would be serving a family so it could be one two or three children but they would just be serving one family while they are being a casa Advocate okay thank you any Commissioners have any questions or comments just one for clarification Ashley great it is great and it's difficult work very heart tearing whenever you hear the stories of many of our children and what they live through every day but how many cases do you currently have and how many are really on the books that you need to serve right now Casa is serving 123 kids

a year about any at any given time about 80 children and that's just a small number here in Davis County we're only serving about 20 percent of the children involved in Family Court we have a waiting list of children who need a volunteer they've already their case has already been a Santa Casa we have about 15 cases on our waiting lists that are waiting for a volunteer we do have a training that just started this week it started on Tuesday we're training seven new volunteers but even with those numbers you see it doesn't add up there'll still be some on the waiting list and more coming in okay thank you thank you thank you for what you're doing for the children thank you thank you guys thank you for being here to help us bring awareness to this B County Clerk's access fees Leslie McCarty our accounting clerk welcome thank you so every four years a county that is over the size of 70 000 in population the county clerk has to turn over their clerk fees or what is called excess fees to the Fiscal Court and this is what I'm turning over after

my very first term which ended last year so I am turning over to Fiscal Court one million 714 000 14.25 so who it is good news we'll take it did she hand that to you [Laughter] Jordan's like yes really glad that went to our County treasure instead of certain other people up here that might want that over here it's in good hands now so thank you very much for all you do for our citizens see Treasures report for March 2023 Mr Johnson yes judges of March 31st 2023 the total cash balance is 66 million 652 436 dollars for all funds general fund balance is 30 million one hundred and twenty seven thousand seven hundred and thirty four dollars all funds are operating within the expected ranges and I have nothing to report thank you any questions for our Treasurer no

next time two consideration for approval a minutes of the April 11 2023 Davis County Fiscal Court meeting I'll make a motion to approve second an emotional second any any changes additions or deletions hearing none all those in favor signify by saying aye aye be all claims for all departments motion to approve second and a motion to Second any questions for our treasurer getting none all those in favor signifying saying aye aye C payments to Ernie Davis and Sons Mechanical Incorporated and Bluegrass engineering for the Jack Hinton and short station roads water main extension motion to approve second got a motion second Mr Johnson yes judge this item is regarding the Jack Hinton Road water main project that is being funded by a Kentucky infrastructure Authority grant for which Fiscal Court serves as the Fiscal Agent Blake edge with gred made us aware that there's a delay in the appropriative funds being released by KIA due to their legal review process to date as the Fiscal Agent Fiscal Court has been paying invoices for the project