Meeting of April 8, 2025

check your cell phones and we will get this meeting started. So, let's begin and call this meeting to order. Uh, have a roll call, please. 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 invocation. Uh Magistrate Saltzman and the pledge of allegiance. Magistrict Muse. Please pray with me. Father God, we thank you for this time that we can be here uh to do the business of Harden County. Father, we pray that you would guide us and direct us. We thank you for everything that you've given us. We pray, Lord, that you would be with those that uh have been displaced from their homes with the flooding. I pray that uh you would give them a special touch. Uh Father, we pray for all of the uh responders that are out there working through the flooding. And uh we just pray for uh your guidance uh as we try to navigate this. Father, we uh thank you again for this time that we can be

here to do your work. And uh we just pray that you would uh guide us and direct us in our conversations today. And uh we thank you for everything you do for us. Uh we thank you for uh this uh season of everything coming alive. And I thank you for uh in a couple of weeks we'll be celebrating uh the birth of your son Jesus. I'm I'm sorry, the resurrection of your son Jesus uh our savior. Thank you and amen. Amen. Amen. Algiance 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. I neglected to say while we were here, this is the uh April 8th, 2025 Harden County Physical Court regular voting meeting. just in case you're in the wrong route. Okay. All right. Next, uh uh would like um to just to comment on a couple things. First, I'll uh as usual kind of go through the agenda. Uh fairly, um simple agenda today. We have someformational

um presentations uh today that we'll go through and then uh some department reports. Um after that any uh citizens concerns or comments and then we have the um kind of a short uh consent agenda today and then finish up with any comments. So that's that's the agenda. Uh again thanks for joining. Um it is good to see all of you here today. We have some presenters here I see. Um I just wanted to comment to kind of bring um anyone that's that is interested up on maybe status of flooding um that in the county. It's uh uh we're we are seeing some positive things more in the southern part of the county and Glendale and White Mills with the Nolin River um you know receding and which is a good thing. Uh there's been quite a bit of damage uh in for for homes and various different people flooding in their homes um in those areas uh all the way down in Sonora and Upton East View um you know still have roads that are closed. I

believe the last time I looked on the list of of county roads are still about 28 or so roads down from I think 37 roads yesterday. Uh so things are starting to improve in some parts of the county as we move on. Of course in Elizabeth town of Radcliffe Vine Grove we're still dealing with some flooding and uh and uh you know making some progress there. Still have some displaced folks um that are uh struggling still. Uh we move on north into Kohl'sburg. Uh thankfully Rolling Fork River is is receding has started to recede a little bit. Um I was there late yesterday and it had gone down maybe a couple of inches. So at least it's going in the right direction. But Kohl'sburg is is in a terrible mess. So u uh there were a a lot of uh rescues, water rescues that u that were happening u over the weekend. And um I'm happy to say there were no there's been no fatalities. There's been uh that I know of any injuries uh that I and so those

are all um you know at least a big part of because of the u the people that are out there, the first responders and people that are doing all this work of rescue and and working u tirelessly all day and all night. Um, I have to give a a big shout out to U. Joyce Scott who's our emergency management director and he is um he is hitting it. I mean he's he didn't sleep last night and um I was with him this afternoon at West Point and um he's pretty tired and so but he sticks with it. Um he has a huge amount of help around him. uh his volunteer fire department um in Valley Creek uh they um are there helping him uh volunteering uh and just I I I don't even know the list is so long of how many people and organizations have come together in this community to work through this disaster. We have uh right now the the the focal point I guess you would say is is West Point. Um the Ohio River continues to rise even now. Uh hoping

that it will crest very soon. Uh maybe tonight is the last I heard. And um so it is uh if you've been to West Point, if you know where the fire station is, the water is up to coming up the steps there beside the fire station and it's almost even with the fire station coming uh ready to come up onto the road there a little bit. So, we're hoping that it doesn't get any any further up than that. Um because it's it's already um affected probably 75 to 100 homes in that area. Kohl's probably a similar number, 75 to 100 homes. And then that's not even counting all the other homes throughout uh and businesses for that matter out in the county and in the in the cities uh that have been impacted by all this water. So, um it's still a huge effort going on there. There's a shelter that's open. Uh Red Cross uh showed up last night and um have that shelter open. They have food available um from right there by the city hall there in West Point for any of the West Point people that need food. um one uh Mike

McNut, our animal control um director and um some help that he has from his department uh have been asked to bring some resources over to the shelter for animals that u some folks have there that they need to have a place to put them at night and and kind of keep them under control. So he's in the process of doing that right now, which is why he won't be here today to present. So um so anyway, all that to say that um I mean it's I'm very proud of our county and our communities coming together in so many different ways. um you know, our our EMS, uh 911, uh pitching in uh multiple ways, volunteer fire departments, um the fire departments in our cities, um I mean, it's you can just go down this list, the road department, sometimes you don't think about them, uh but they're out there trying to clean up debris that's left from the flood. you know, things out in the c country roads. Uh you know, you have a bunch of uh uh corn stalk stuff that just gets left on top of the road and it makes it impassible. So, uh you know, we have

some roads that have been damaged and so they are trying to start start to work on some of those as soon as the water recedes where they can get to them. So, there's just a multitude. I mean, we have our jailer back here and and you know, our uh detention center pitching in. I was at West Point and they were helping unload uh pallets of water and um MREs and different things that that could be utilized if needed. And uh so it's uh the sheriff, he's in here right now and um uh him and his deputy and and others that are patrolling uh some of these areas. Um so it I'm I know I'm leaving somebody out. It's just I could just keep going of of how much uh teamwork and collaboration that's been going on. Um so um it's much appreciated. We're not out of the woods. Um next next steps, of course, we do have a uh a person from FEMA that has been assigned to Harden County and so he uh we're getting to know him. He's getting to know us and we've been taking him around the county to show him u how much damage that there is. So, uh, we won't have any trouble hitting our, uh,