Meeting of January 9, 2024

so we'll go ahead and uh get started just uh want to say though good afternoon and welcome everyone again just to check your cell phones if you would before we get started uh this is the January 9th 2024 Harden County Fiscal Court regular voting meeting let's begin and call this meeting to order roll call please Squire clim here Squire Hicks here Squire Muse here Square Pennington here Squire Salzman here Square Thompson here Squire Whitehead here Squire Yates here judge tall here all right next uh we'll have our invocation by magistrate Thompson and the Pledge of Allegiance by magistrate Clen would you pray with me Father God uh today in the quiet and Stillness hear our voice hear our prayers Lord we thank you for this community for our County for our cities here for our state and our

nation Lord For All Those who commit themselves to serving through our government and for our government we we thank you and we thank you Father for those willing to step forward and do what is Right today Lord God we pray that you would bless this meeting that uh all that we do would be good and right before you and and good and right for the people we serve bless us today as we meet and as we act on the business of this County I pray in Jesus name amen amen Al to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which stands one nation indivisible with liberty and justice for all all right I just have a few uh opening comments here uh again thanks again for joining today our first court of 2024 so I just want to say Happy New Year to all of you I hope uh your

Christmas was joyful and um a joyful time with some you know family and friends so um um I I I do know that I don't think he's here our um Emergency Management director Joy Scott he he was sick the whole time so um I felt felt really bad for him and his family but he is back with us and heal healing up and healed up so glad to have him back to 2023 was a very eventful year I think um I don't have maybe a lot to compare to necessarily but um it seemed eventful to me and uh I just want to take a few minutes and and review maybe a few accomplishments uh as I see them and maybe as we look forward to 2024 and um speak on that just a moment so um uh first of all I'd like to um talk a little bit about the a comprehensive study that addressed the blue oval uh battery plant impacts on Harden County that was completed midye and that was led by by our Deputy judge

executive Vicki Meredith and this study focused on Water and Sewer uh emergency service infrastructure expansion especially in the Glendale planning area so we we um we felt like this was uh we had basically a timeline to deal with here because the main one of the main purposes of pulling this together was to uh identify all these things and get with our legislators uh they start to have committee meetings and everything you know even middle of uh middle of the year in preparation for the session then they're in that they're in right now but this this did require a lot of collaboration um and partnership with Harden County officials Elizabeth Town City officials uh water districts uh industrial Foundation Planning and Development Kentucky Economic Development um BOS uh Linc and Trail ad you know I could I just keep on going it was just a a huge I think uh adventure of pulling a bunch of uh organizations and people together and working together to come up with um uh some some a really

good idea of where we need to go over the next years and uh and prepare ourselves for growth in this County so um I'm very proud that we were able to do that um you know I guess uh the proof is in the pudding as they say as we as the U legislators are meeting and discussing these things now and uh we we made a bunch of trips to Frankfurt and met with uh Senator Denine and and our Representatives um lots of different meetings discussing these things uh reviewing them with them answering their questions so um I I feel like we did our due diligence in preparation and I know there's more work to do even now as they meet and go meet with them as they ask and request and continue to work through this this session so at the end of it of course the results I hope that we are able to funnel some much needed money millions of dollars worth into this County to help us to prepare for growth in addition to that we we had uh a lot of effort uh put into emergency

Services uh we uh developed an advisory team that was established and led by uh Joey Scott our Emergency Management director and the makeup of this team uh gives really gave us a a seasoned bunch of people and fire and ambulance services 911 uh just u a really good crosssection of very um uh very knowledgeable people and you add up their experience it you know hundreds of years worth of experience so I was very pleased that we were able to to meet multiple times starting in April of last year and um we were able to uh some of the achievements I guess uh in 2023 from this team is that we were able to evaluate a lot of our current state of emergency services using um some of our knowledge their knowledge and 911 response data that is readily available and able to get a a feel for what the current state of emergency services in Fire and ambulance specifically and so um through those

meetings and you know late summer I believe you know into the fall uh the team recommended a detailed study by a thirdparty consulting firm that would dig really dig deeply into what what uh the Services look like right now and understand what the current state is and then U provide us with a detailed future plan if you will about a six-year uh study uh six-year strategy for Harden County and um so hopefully we will be able to start this study uh early this year and as soon as we can and be able to get the results of that study you know later this year probably at least six months maybe longer than that before they would be able to complete it so look forward to those results uh in addition to that uh another U topic or another initiative was uh to work on uh increased or emphasis on increased transparency with an everyone included budget process that we implemented last year with um a new finance committee structure in

conjunction with leadership of our Treasurer Lisa pman and um even though it was a little messy at times and you know stuff that was to be expected and I really expect that we'll we'll try to do the same type of process again in in 2024 be starting up here pretty soon actually other uh transparency and communication improvements include full access to all of our resolutions and um ordinances before further voted on except for some private Personnel information uh emphasis on social media as a tool to inform our citizens in this County we saw about a 33% growth in that in 2023 we have some website improvements that we're still working on uh increase in local radio communication I know we work quite a bit with quick SE and others and um and then of course we adjusted some fiscal coure times and agenda and U of course the U uh quarterly Town Hall meetings that have been moving around through the county having one coming up um this month