Meeting of May 13, 2025

if you wouldn't mind checking your cell phones just to uh help out there a little bit. Make sure I check mine after saying that. Okay. So, let's go ahead and get started. This this is May 13, 2025 Harden County Fiscal Court regular voting meeting. Let's begin and call this meeting to order. And start out with our roll call. Square Clim here. Square Hicks here. Square Muse here. Square Pennington here. Square Saltzman here. Square Thompson here. Square Whitehead here. Square Yates here. Judge Tall here. Uh, next we have our invocation of Magistrate Thompson and Pledge of Allegiance. Magistrate Kicks. I invite you to join me in prayer. Father God, we praise you and thank you that you're mindful of us, that you're present here today. Lord, we invoke your Holy Spirit to be present among us all. We pray your blessing would flow through on one through us

all. Lord God, guide our thoughts. Uh make them thoughts and thinking that's clear and it would honor you and glorify you. Father, we thank you for the service we get to do. And we thank you, Father, for the privilege of serving. Uh we lift up to you those who serve in so many ways their fellow man. You you call us, Lord God, to be servants of one another. And we thank you for that. We pray Lord your blessing on each one today who gathers around this table to make decisions uh that uh will benefit uh our community that will honor you and that will uh glorify you and uh bring what is good and right to this community. Lord bless uh those who are out there on the front edge of things dealing with the crisis that come at us regularly. Help us to realize, Lord, that no matter what the crisis, it's it's in your hands and you have all authority. We praise you and honor you for that today in Jesus 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. All right, just um maybe a a few comments here. Uh again, thanks for joining today. It's great to see all of you here, all of you here. Um we do have a bit of a packed uh agenda today and we will start out with um approval of the minutes here in a moment. Uh we have a public hearing to go through. uh a couple offormational uh items and we'll move through those and then we have several presentations uh about planning, public works, engineering, coroner and road department. Uh after that we'll move on to the citizens concerns or comments. The next item, we have three ordinances to talk about and vote on and then we have the consent agenda and after that some some comments. Okay. So uh with that

um also I just wanted to just a a brief note about I guess just to keep in remembrance that there are still things going on with the flooding disaster. Um I am happy to say uh that our road department's worked hard and everybody else to finally all of our county roads are are open. took a long time, but thankfully they they're all open, so that's a good thing. Uh we are just one note, we are waiting on uh our president to add the public assistance to the disaster. Um we we do have um uh a lot of um a lot of money that we've spent um the county has the cities um you know the state on repairing roads and various different um infrastructure. So, uh, we're hoping that we'll be able to get that public assistance, uh, added to the disaster and and, um, we've been keeping track of of all that so that we'll be able to, uh, apply for it whenever the time comes. Uh, we do have, um, a presenter that will be coming up here in a moment

to talk some about, uh, the small business and, um, I'm not sure if FEMA is here. Does anybody know? I don't see anyone from FEMA. but u they may show up late. We'll see how that goes. All right. So, just uh moving on, we uh next on the agenda is to approve the Harden County Fiscal Court April 22nd, 2025 minutes. Is there a motion to approve? Some moved. Second. Moved and seconded. Uh any discussion. All right. Hearing none. A roll call, please. Square Clim, yes. Square Hicks, yes. Square Muse, yes. Square Pennington, yes. Square Saltzman, yes. Square Thompson, yes. Square Whitehead, yes. Square Yates, yes. Judge Tall, yes. Motion passes. All right. Next item. Uh, we have a a public hearing on the county road aid and local government economic assistance funds. And this will be conducted by Jenny Oldm, our county attorney. Thank you, Judge. So, the purpose of today's hearing um is to obtain citizens comments and input on the expenditure of county road aid and the local government

economic assistance funds um for building repair and maintenance of county roads. Um section 157A of the Kentucky Constitution authorizes the state to make aid to counties for this purpose. Um there's various formulas u in statute that calculate our amount. The amount um upcoming in county road aid is 2,214,663 and for the local government economic assistant fund there will be $272,341. So if anyone's here who would like to provide comment or input into the use of that by the county, um you can come to the podium. Uh, seeing none, I'll close the hearing other than u making sure we have in the record that we published notice of today's hearing in the news enterprise May 7th, 2025 and on our on our website May 2nd, 2025. So that will close the hearing. Thank you. All right. Thank you. All right. Moving on. Items. I'm going to start out with a proclamation for tennis month and um and basically is saying let's let's get out and exercise. And so I'm going to do

that. We have um a person here today that will accept the proclamation, Karen Henson. And so I will go ahead and read this. And if then if you'll come up and uh if you don't mind if will you mind coming up to the podium and then I'll read it and um and present it to you. And if you have any comments, either you or your friend, then you're welcome to to make a few comments if you'd like. All right. So, this is a proclamation. It says, "Whereas tennis is fun, easy sport to learn, and a great way to stay in shape. And whereas playing tennis provides a strong foundation for fitness, helps develop coordination, flexibility, and strength, fosters self-esteem, and confidence. And whereas participation in tennis has been proven to improve personal health and fitness in many ways, including lowering blood pressure, burning calories, and lowering stress levels. And whereas tennis is a sport of lifetime of a lifetime which any person of any age or ability can play. And whereas throughout the month of May 2025, citizens of of the county of Harden may celebrate play tennis month as an opportunity for individuals and families to learn more about the game of tennis and its many positive social and health benefits. Now

therefore, I, Keith Tall, Harden County Judge Executive, on behalf of all the citizens of Harden County, and by virtue of the authority vested in me, do hereby proclaim the month of May 2025 as play tennis month. [Applause] Thank you so much for recognizing um our sport. Um I'm with the Etown Tennis Commission and also coach for the Elizabeth Town High School tennis team. Um tennis is a great sport and we are growing our programs. Obviously May is a great month for this because we are getting into the summer when tennis is very popular. We're going to have a block party uh to kick off our events on May 31st. So, come on out to the facility at Freeman Lake and at 2:00 and have some fun and some free food and hope to see you all at the courts soon. All right. Thank you. This Hey, Judge, can we take a picture because she's got to get to the um the courts. They're having their regional tournament today. Yeah, we can take a picture. Yeah, let's just get a quick picture for for her so she can share that with everybody cuz I know she's got to get back and coach some of them. Let's do it. [Music]