Meeting of May 20, 2021

good afternoon i want to welcome everyone to our thursday may 20th 2021 davis county fiscal court meeting if you would bow your head and pray with me our heavenly father we humbly thank you for all the gifts that we receive from you we ask that you watch over the men and women who serve in our armed forces as well as all of our emergency responders i ask for wisdom and understanding for this court grant us humility in our everyday life and give us the courage to make right decisions for all of davis county we ask these things in your name amen amen 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 and once again i want to welcome everyone to our may 20th 2021 davis county fiscal court meeting uh before we get started i would ask and i'm assuming you guys out in uh what electronic land can see the agenda

i'm assuming jordan do they see the agenda okay yeah on the bottom of the screen you'll be able to see the agenda uh look over that and if you have any questions that you would like to ask pertaining to any of the uh items that are on the agenda when they come up if you will let us know if you you can text us on facebook just let us know that you have a question we're on a time delay so we may not get to it right then but i promise you that we will either answer it then or i'll answer it at the end of the meeting also anyone who would like to comment on any about anything other than what is on the agenda or ask a question you're welcome to do so at the end when i ask for public comment takes a little bit but we'll get your comments or your questions in not always sure that we will be able to answer your questions uh quickly but if you give us your name and phone number we'll absolutely get an answer and and get back to you jenny are you ready to go yes sir but judge i'm going to defer to jim hendrix since this is uh okay well the first item is proposed county road aid local government economic assistance funds

we're having a public hearing gym so yes when we do the budget in order to expand the lgea funds which i believe this year we were spending 521 thousand dollars in the proposed budget we have to have a public hearing which is what we're doing now in order to enable anyone who wants to comment on the usage of these funds the budget has proposed uses all of these funds to maintain davis county roads and bridges and that's the entire use of that money so at this point anyone who would want to weigh in on a different news may do so if there is anyone out in electronic land now you say tv land but nobody watches tv anymore during in this time uh you're welcome to give us your comment or deliver another use to us it doesn't have to be right now you can actually write i'm assuming they could send us an email tomorrow or whatever and we would take that into consideration uh that money the lgea money does in no way shape or form cover the total cost of

road maintenance and operation does it not no it's just a portion just just a portion okay uh with that david have you seen anything jordan anything we haven't had any public comment yet uh we do have three folks here in the uh audience today special folks but i don't think that they want to get up and comment on this do you okay with that i'll declare the public uh hearing closed jenny next item item one consideration for presentation a recognized kentucky farm bureau discussion meet winner brandon gillis okay guys it's been a while since we've been able to have anybody outside of folks that we needed for our meetings in uh it's certainly been a while since we've had young folks come in and who have done an outstanding job representing davis county and all of our citizens when i was reading the the kentucky farm bureau news i noticed where brandon gillis won the kentucky farm bureau discussion meet and that's pretty cool i happen to know as daddy pretty well know his mama a little bit i like you better than i do as daddy by the way

uh and i thought it would be a great way to start opening the the courtroom back up by having brandon come in tell us a little bit about the competition and then give us just a little bit of that speech so brandon come on and what i'd like for you to introduce your mom and dad and then tell us tell us what went on with this you got it that's good well i do appreciate that thank you for that it's an honor to be recognized by the davis county fiscal court this afternoon i'm just introducing my parents my very supportive parents christie and judy gillis just a little bit about myself just grew up with a passion for all things agriculture i started out a fifth generation farmer myself and was raised on our family farm in west davis county we raised livestock grain and tobacco and i gained an appreciation for the farm and all that the lessons that it has taught and starting from an early age being involved in ffa 4-h and different organizations and then going on to be involved with farm euro i've enjoyed being able to learn about all aspects of

agriculture from production to policy after graduating with an aggiecon degree from the university of kentucky i was able to join farm credit here in town as a agriculture lender i work with many of our producers across our our area and this is something that now i transition to a different role and have the privilege to be able to lead our kentucky and tennessee team with our crop insurance team at farm credit as our regional vice president i enjoy being able to work alongside my dad and older brother jim in a part-time role on our farm and i've been working on an mba and plan to graduate this fall and earlier this year the discussion meet i had the opportunity to be able to compete on the national level uh the discussion means a little bit of background about it there's really not a speech that goes along with it it is an actual discussion so i'll just kind of give you a little background what all went on that day but american farm bureau they host a lot of young farmer competitions every year where farmers from all across the country compete at a state level and fortunately i was lucky enough to compete at the kentucky farm bureau competition back in the fall and was fortunate enough to win that competition

for the state of kentucky where i was able to go on at the national level to compete with people from all across all across the country different young farmers from all across the country and with that the competition it is a discussion and it's encouraged to have active participation from all members that are on the board the panel it's much like you would see a regular meeting like y'all conduct every every time y'all have a meeting it's very similar to that and the people that are participating in the competition are evaluated based off of their exchanges or ideas as well as information that's regarding the topic that's given to you before you go into the competition and basically what happens is participants are able to build their discussion skills develop a keen understanding of important agricultural issues and basically how we can explore as a group different solutions and reach a consensus at the end and during the fall or during the fall competition i was able to compete with different people from around the state and from there the national competition it was all virtual typically in the in the past you would go on and compete somewhere else

they rotated around the country and some of the some of the topics that we discussed were international trade broadband and connectivity something that's very important to rural communities as we're well aware precision agriculture topics and then also just rural economy in general and some of the people that i was able to compete against at a national level ranged from a professor from the university of georgia in their their ag department also was able to compete with a former state senator from kansas who sat on the senate account there in kansas and another was a part owner and one of the largest ag auction companies in the country so had a very diverse group of people we were able to compete with it's a great networking event i still stay in contact with some of those that i competed with so it's been been great to be able to have a connection in agriculture and leadership across the country from that standpoint and then one of the it's been one of the greatest experiences i've been able to have since my involvement at farm bureau and i just i want to thank kentucky farm bureau as well as the american farm bureau while i'm here and allowing me to compete at a national level in the competition and it also wouldn't