Meeting of February 13, 2024

it's 3:30 I hate to disturb all of the conversations and and everything but uh we do need to start on time so good afternoon welcome everyone just a another typical um uh you know just check your cell phones real quick just to make sure you've got those on on stun or whatever turn them off if you like appreciate that um this is the February 13th 2024 Harden County Fiscal Court regular voting meeting so let's begin and call this meeting to order start with a roll call Square clim here Square Hicks here Square Muse here Square Pennington here Squire Saltzman here Squire Thompson here Squire Whitehead here Squire Yates here judge tall here all right we have our invocation with magistrate Whitehead and Pledge of Allegiance led by magistrate Salzman please play with me Father God

we come to you in prayer today to ask that you bless us with your light help us to serve you through our Good Deeds to others we pray that you fill our hearts with compassion and respect for one another guide us in the direction that pleases you oh Lord we ask you to watch over our families our neighbors and our community may all that we do be in your glory and your name in jesus' name we pray amen I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the repic for which it stands one nation under God indivisible justice for all all right just a few uh few comments uh again thanks for joining today appreciate all of you being here um especially I always enjoy uh our mayor of our northern part of the county still in Harden County right sir all right very good thank you and um so yeah let's

take a moment and uh just review the agenda today we um next we'll approve our minutes from the last meeting uh we have um thankfully and grateful to have some um comments from uh from Fort Knox Garrison commander and uh so we'll introduce him in just a moment uh we'll have uh some presentations actually um our Animal Control uh Mike mcnut is not here and I didn't really expect him to be but so we'll have to U uh bypass that part of the presentations so we we'll have a presentation from Emergency Management uh there's written reports we'll have a time for any citizens concerns or comments and we have two ordinances today to go through and then our uh consent agenda is pretty heavy today and I'll I'll run through that um and explain what's in there and then we'll wrap up with our typical comments at the end of the meeting okay and um as we

um as as we'll be talking about here in a minute uh mentioned Fort Knox uh I just want to uh remind all of us remind myself self of how important Fort Knox is to this community and uh uh I think sometimes we take it for granted I know growing up here you know I could hear the booming uh periodically off in the in the uh background and you know you would think is that is that Thunder no it's a clear sky so that's Fort Knox and uh always think about how important that was and uh what that meant uh to our community and to this uh state to this nation and so uh it's just a reminder I think as we have some Representatives here today to uh be thankful and and remember also from the point of view that um I looked this up today and it was they have a $1.3 billion payroll annually and 4.8 billion with a be billion dollars in annual economic impact to this region so uh is again just a reminder of how fortunate we are to have Fort Knox uh right here in Harden County all right so with that we'll move

on to um approving our Harden County Fiscal Court January 23rd 2024 minutes is there a motion to approve so moved second any discussion hearing none there's roll call Squire Clen yes Squire Hicks yes Square Muse yes Square Pennington yes Square suzman yes Square Thompson yes Square Whitehead yes Square Yates yes judge tall yes motion passes sorry I have a u cough um Dro in my mouth because I still got this call for about a month now so I'm trying not to as soon as I say it U have to cough excuse me so the um next is our informational items and today very happy um to introduce Colonel Chris Richie and and he's our uh Garrison Commander at Fort Knox and uh he's got some information he wants to share with us today so I'll just invite you up to the podium and um

just glad to see you today glad to see you too judge thanks hey leaders I just I really appreciate being here today and being able to share uh some updates we've got here on Fort Knox with our digital air ground integration range I hope by the end of this presentation each of you have an understanding of the development that's been taking place across the last five years so so first off everyone I'm Colonel Chris Richie the Fort Knox Garrison Commander uh lifelong Army brat last time I was at Fort Knox was 2002 uh actually going through tank training out there unfortunately my installation looks a little different now all right but uh we agree unfortunately yes sir so I appreciate you judge tall and the Fiscal Court for affording me the opportunity to talk with you about a range on post that is about to reopen more specifically I plan to highlight what the range is the types and expected frequency of associated training and why we believe it is prudent to address the Fiscal Court as part of helping promote awareness and understanding I'll start by quickly gone back eight decades a significant portion

of Fort knox's Southeastern area which is known as Northeastern Harden County called The Rolling Fork tank range came online in 1943 it was later renamed Yano range after Medal of Honor recipient Rodney JT Yano and has been one of the primary Fort Knox ranges throughout its existence all manner of tank Bradley Fighting Vehicle Aviation mounted and dismounted training have regularly occurred at Yan range through the years as mentioned by judge tall before I came up here and up until the armor School moved to Fort Moore Georgia the range was active about 200 days a year following the armor school's departure in the 2010 2011 time frame the range was still in use for up to 150 days a year that is because there are few ranges that offer what Yano does so units across the Department of Defense come here to train it's a massive footprint and the Rolling Fork River Basin is flat which allows ground units to maintain long line of sights to targets back in 2010 which is again was when the armor school was moving from Fort Knox the Army determined that newer reimagined and more advanced

technological ranges would be needed to improve the training our service members require in order to be best prepared for any future conflicts and thus the digital airr integration range or dagger was was born Fort Bliss Texas and Fort Knox were chosen as two sites for such a capability to be built at active army military reservations so why Fort Knox and particular there are several reasons Yano range already fit the profile for the type of range needed for a dagger so it would cost less to construct a Fort Knox for perspective its improved footprint is about 3,650 Acres when you include the footprint of the impact area which is essentially where ordinance will or would likely detonate or impact we're talking about a 9900 acre facility it's up to 5 kilm wide about 3 miles at some points and 8 kilm long about 5 miles having Yano range in a hot or inuse status causes minimal to no impacts to other Fort KNX ranges the same def definitely cannot be said for