Meeting of August 29, 2023
Fiscal Court Meeting - August 29th, 2023 · Watch on YouTube ↗
Summary
The Hardin County Fiscal Court met on August 29, 2023 for its regular voting session. Judge Executive Tall opened with updates on safety initiatives, the Blue Oval SK infrastructure push, opioid strategy, broadband expansion, and a new road improvement standards document, before the court moved through department reports from the Coroner, Sheriff, and County Clerk.
The Coroner reported a rise in overdose deaths, including a new concerning substance called kratom, along with accident and suicide statistics. The Sheriff reported strong call volume growth and highlighted a dramatic incident involving a drone used to track an armed suspect. The County Clerk reported steady vehicle and real estate revenue, a successful delinquent tax sale bringing in nearly $300,000, and announced changes to November polling locations, including closing the Pritchard Community Center site for safety reasons and adding sites at the Clerk's office and Colvin Community Center.
A resident spoke at length about excessive speeding in the Settlers Crest and Serene Oaks subdivisions, urging the court to use traffic-calming tools such as speed humps as new development from Blue Oval SK arrives; magistrates acknowledged the issue and noted stop-sign changes already being explored.
The court passed on first reading a large FY2023-24 budget amendment (largely library bond pass-through funds and road carryover) and a new ordinance establishing design standards for county roadways. A resolution to buy three new ambulances for about $273,000 each sparked debate over rising prices, with one magistrate favoring used ambulances and waiting, but the motion passed 8-1.
The court then approved a large consent agenda covering financial transfers, equipment purchases (a skid steer, a coroner's truck, a boiler), grant applications (litter abatement, cybersecurity, farm animal disposal, coroner vests), a reappointment to the water district board, and committee minutes, after rejecting an ambulance remount bid due to timeline concerns. Magistrates gave updates on upcoming community events and committee meetings before entering a closed session regarding pending litigation, after which the meeting adjourned with no further business.
Agenda (13)
- 7:54
Judge Executive opening remarks
Judge Tall reviewed the agenda and gave updates on safety initiatives, Blue Oval SK infrastructure planning, opioid strategy, broadband expansion, and a new road improvement standards document.
- 16:39
Approval of August 8, 2023 minutes
The court approved the minutes from the previous meeting.
- 17:18
Coroner's report
Coroner Pat Elmore reported on accidents, overdoses (including a new substance, kratom), suicides, and autopsy statistics for June and July.
- 23:15
Sheriff's report
Sheriff John Ward presented arrest, citation, and call statistics, and described a drone-assisted apprehension of an armed domestic violence suspect and a July murder case.
- 27:45
County Clerk's report
Clerk Brian Smith reported on vehicle and tax revenue trends, a successful delinquent tax sale, voter registration trends, and changes to 2023 election polling locations including closing Pritchard Community Center.
- 36:27
Citizens concerns
Resident Dave Poorman spoke about excessive speeding in the Settlers Crest and Serene Oaks subdivisions and urged the court to apply traffic-calming measures as outlined in the state's complete streets manual.
- 46:56
First reading of Ordinance 3321 - budget amendment
An amendment to the FY2023-2024 budget for about $6 million in unfunded receipts, mostly library bond pass-through funds and road carryover, was approved on first reading.
- 49:13
First reading of Ordinance 336 - road design standards
A new ordinance creating design and construction standards for county roadways was approved on first reading, with engineer Charlie Allen available for questions.
- 50:10
Resolution 2023-171 - ambulance bid
The court debated and approved a bid for three new Type 1 ambulances at roughly $273,000 each, despite concerns about rising costs.
- 58:15
Consent agenda
The court reviewed and approved a large consent agenda including financial transfers, equipment purchases, grant applications, a board reappointment, a road department job description, and committee minutes.
- 1:08:13
Magistrate and official comments
Magistrates gave updates on community events, town hall meeting recaps, committee meeting schedules, and thanked staff and the retiring engineer Charlie Allen.
- 1:18:15
Closed session on pending litigation
The court voted to enter closed session under KRS 61.810(1)(c) to discuss pending litigation against the public agency.
- 1:58:19
Adjournment
Following the closed session, the court adjourned with no further business conducted.
Motions & votes (8)
- 16:42
passedApprove the August 8, 2023 fiscal court meeting minutes
unanimous roll call vote
- 48:37
passedApprove first reading of Ordinance 3321, amending the FY2023-2024 budget by about $6 million
unanimous roll call vote
- 49:21
passedApprove first reading of Ordinance 336 creating road design and construction guide
unanimous roll call vote
- 50:16
passedApprove Resolution 2023-171 for a bid to purchase three new Type 1 ambulances
8-1, Magistrate Hicks opposed
- 57:33
passedCall for the question to end debate on the ambulance bid motion
- 1:06:38
passedApprove the consent agenda covering resolutions 169-189 and committee minutes, with resolution 172 rejected
unanimous roll call vote
- 1:18:15
passedMove to enter closed session pursuant to KRS 61.810(1)(c) to discuss pending litigation against the public agency
unanimous roll call vote
- 1:58:19
passedAdjourn the meeting following the closed session
Transcript (61 segments)
- 5:32
looks like it's 5 30. so time to get things going here it's uh uh great to see all of you here today with us we appreciate that I just want to say welcome to all of our elected officials notice that our state senator Matt Deneen is here today so thank you sir for being here with us and of course all of our department heads and our staff here that help us pull all this together and of course all of our citizens that are here to invest in their in their County Government so just one note uh cell phones if you would just check those make sure that you have those turned off all right so this is the August 29th 2023 Hardin County Fiscal Court regular voting meeting so let's begin and we'll call this meeting to order let's go ahead with the roll call Squire Clem here Squire Hicks here Esquire Muse here Squire Pennington here Squire Saltzman here Squire Thompson here
- 6:44
Squire Whitehead here sorry Yates here judge tall here okay next is our invocation and Pledge of Allegiance by Larry Hicks and magistrate EG Thompson father we thank you for this time that we could come and just talk to you we just asked you to be with this meeting today that everything we say and do will be to glorify you we just pray that this country will turn around before it's too late we just asked all this and your prayers up lift up to you just be with us today leaving God and direct us being with all the families of representative here father keep them safe and keep them healthy in Jesus name we pray amen amen could you join me in the place to play pledge allegiance to rely on the United States of America indivisible all right so um just a few comments here again thanks for joining today and participating we
- 7:59
do have a pretty full agenda today and let's just review it real quick so we'll have our approval of our minutes from our last meeting uh we have several departments and office reports from the coroner and the sheriff and the clerk some reports that were in the packet we'll have a time of any citizens concerns or comments we have two ordinances to review today and a resolution so we'll get to those later um I am going to make a bit of a change to the agenda we're going to move the closed session to the end so we'll go ahead and write into consent agenda I'll go through and explain um what seems to be hundreds of resolutions on in that so we'll go through and look at it and then we'll have our comments at the end then we'll have the closed session uh we'll break out for that and then when we come back we'll we will adjourn so that's that's our agenda for the day um just uh I just wanted to have a few
- 9:12
other comments kind of bring bring everyone up up to speed a little bit uh just just a a couple of minutes um just it really just kind of review some of the goals as I look back over the last six seven months one of the things and I've got about six or seven things I'll just mention real quick uh the safety safety mindset is something that we've been really focused on um in in our government here and so we we talk about it a lot in our weekly meetings and um just as an example we our Emergency Management uh folks went over to one of our buildings and did an audit for safety it's not something that we have to do by any means but um and there were some some items that can be improved upon so which is something that we're always looking for is Improvement so just as an example of one of the things that we've tried to implement and will continue to do so our emergency service advisory team is still meeting we've had about four or five meetings now and we will continue to meet with multiple people out in the
- 10:24
community that are experts in the area of fire and emerge Emergency Medical Services and really just trying to pull together a plan for the next five to seven years of what this County needs to do as we go forward so it's it's these these meetings have been very productive and will continue to meet and continue to pull together that plan and that strategy for the future uh another big thing that we've been looking at is blue oval SK and and all really the southern part of the county what the strategy is the infrastructure needs uh how much cost uh there is in in actually implementing some of these things when you talk about sewer and water talk about some additional emergency services that will be required in that area not just a service uh blue oval but also others that will be moving into that area of the county so we've we've been working hard I know that um the Vicki Meredith our Deputy judge executive that she's been one of her big tasks has been pulling together uh good strategies available along with our
- 11:39
engineer Charlie and others that have been working on that and um so we're going to be providing some of this information to our legislators and uh that have asked for it and including our state senator in here and some of our representatives and provide this information to them so they can begin to provide you know provide that information to their committees and and try to help us in this County as we push forward and understand that we're going to need some help financially uh to to put some of these things in place so anyway we're I know that they've been asking for it and we will be providing that to them uh even this week so another thing that I've been concerned about is opioid crisis that is in our country in the state and and right here in Hardin County so talk to our County attorney about it and some others that are involved in this effort in our County and there's lots of activity to to work on these types of things and and the abuse abuse drug
- 12:50
abuse and so in um anyway I'm just trying to figure out what's the strategy for the county and so we're still working on that I had a meeting or two and we're and just really kind of a loose type of thing right now just trying to understand Who's involved what are they doing does there need to be more of a appointed effort a point person even because we do have some opioid money available to us and will be available to us so we'll have to figure out how to best utilize that going forward so we'll we'll be still working through that and I just wanted to let you know that there's some effort in that area Broadband expansion for Hardin county is something that we that had not been too much work done on and I've asked Mike Leo our director of 9-1-1 director to uh to kind of head that up and so he uh happily jumped forward and said yes I'd love to do that first it was something like that I can't remember but so he uh so we've been meeting with various different entities on that and we feel like there's one good possibility of a company and working with possibly with
- 14:05
our Nolan recc Cooperative with their infrastructure that they already have out there and and trying to find ways to get Broadband high-speed internet out to people in our County that are not serviced or they're underserved so we've got some efforts there and I'm pretty uh excited about the possibilities there and the last one I wanted to talk about was our road Improvement system plan and just some things that that our engineer again Charlie Charlie Allen and and Dwight Morgan and just others that have combined to to try to figure out how best move forward with improving our roads as we start to look at more you know more traffic on those roads and and you know need for more roads and subdivisions and all the things that are coming our way so I'm very excited to be as a matter of fact it'll be one of our things that will be both I guess my microphone wasn't on was it