Meeting of September 22, 2026

silenced. All right, with that we'll get started. Uh, this is September 22nd, 2026 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. — Squire Pennington here. — Squire Saltzman here. Squire Thompson — here. Squire Whitehead — here. — Squire Yates here. Des — here. Uh, next we have our invocation. Uh, Paty Whitehead and pledge of allegiance Kenny Saltzman. [clears throat] — Please pray with me. Lord, we come to you today to ask for your guidance as we make decisions for our community that will affect us in months and years to come. Grant us the patience and grace we need to work together to move our county forward. Father, we ask that you guide us with your strength so that we may continue to

show respect to one another in all we do personally and professionally. Bless us with strong moral values and integrity. — Bless us with loving and caring family members. Shine your light for those who are suffering from illness and loss and those who are struggling with personal challenges. All these things we ask in Christ's name. Amen. — Amen. Amen. — Me the pledge. 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, justice for all. Again, thanks uh everyone for joining today. It's good to see all of you and those watching on TV and streaming. Uh we'll take a quick review of the agenda as usual. We have the approval of our minutes from the last meeting. Uh we have a special presentation uh today, Harden County Museum, and we have a couple of uh office

reports and then we have a a typical time that uh citizens that have any concerns or comments can come up and and speak. Uh we have two ordinances to vote on and then we have our consent agenda that get into detail when we get to that and then our typical time of comments and uh we do at the very end have a close session today and uh uh as we did last last meeting uh we won't have any business after that. So, um you'll be welcome to leave if you want or you can stay and we'll just come back and adjourn after that close session. Okay, that's the agenda. So, with that, we will move on to the next item of business and that is to approve the Harden County Physical Court September 8th, 2026 minutes. I need a motion to approve. — So, moved. — Second. — Moved and seconded. Uh, any discussion? Roll call, please. — Squire Clem, — yes. — Squire Hicks, — yes. — Squire Muse, — yes. — Squire Pennington, — yes. — Squire Saltzman, — yes. — Square Thompson,

— yes. — Square Whitehead, — yes. — Yates, — yes. — Tall, — yes. Motion passes. All right. Next up, we have our special presentation today. Tim Asher is going to uh give us an update of our wonderful museum. — Thank you, Judge. Um Squires uh try to make this brief. I gave you a write up on what we've been doing and uh you can read that at your leisure. I know you have a lot of things on the agenda. Want to share some a few things with you. One thing is that our board adopted a mission a vision statement this year and if anybody asked you what what do you do at the Harden County History Museum, it is we collect and preserve Harden County's rich history. Uh we're dogone proud of that and have been using that if easier than going through all the other things. But uh I'd like to tell you a little bit about tourism that we've generated. Um, we have a wonderful story to tell here in Harden County and the world wants to hear it. Uh, we had visitors. We've had 38 uh of the 50 United States. We've had

visitors from those areas. Um, that's more than last year. Uh, I've had international visitors from Mexico, Guam, Korea, and England. Uh now of course 72% of our those visiting the museum are from Kentucky and twothirds are from Harden County but uh we have a lot of activity on our uh web page where they can do research. We get a lot of requests uh there. Uh and as far as the total number of individuals who's who visit the museum every year it's about 5,000. Uh we have ATTHS, Ancestral Trails Historical Society. Um they are [clears throat] our partners and we've offered them space in our built in the building. And uh this year we've also made space for the Harden County Historical Society. So everything history in Harden County is in that building. Um uh we've had probably 200 more visitors than we had last year. We've had uh 2100 who have been to the museum this year. And I think I told you we developed a

cultural heritage plan last year. And one of the things that and what we're trying to do with that is to have programs and plays and and speeches and things that bring people to Harden County. It's interesting enough that uh it's something they want to either um if they're here, we want them to change their plans to where they'll stay one more day so they'll go to our programs or they'll they'll bring their family back. And October 10th, we have a we're planning a heritage day. We're doing this with the historical society and ATHS at Freeman Lake Park. And it's kind of a colonial Williamsburg uh kind of event. We'll have period music. We will have demonstrations on uh different things that let's say they they would make in the 1800s. We have food vendors. Uh and it's it's two-pronged. It is uh the first goal is to share our history with them. And uh the second goal is to raise money for the preservation of the Lincoln Heritage House uh there at the lake. And you know there are a number of uh of [clears throat] cabins that are there. One is the Sarah Bush Johnson and we have lost that to the elements. — Uh [clears throat] we're going to have

to tear it down. So we certainly don't want that to happen to the uh Lincoln Heritage House. So we'll be raising money for that with this. We hope to do it every year. Uh we're working on historic home tour. Uh we have a new board member who's an architect and instead of me writing everything, I'm going to think I'm going to turn that loose to him. He does he'll do a better job. Uh we have uh I think I told you we have published weekly articles on Harden County history on our Facebook page and last year we we published one for every week. So that that's a lot of material. Uh community visits. We we try to take the museum into what I call the community pride festivals that everyone has every year. And this past year went to Stevensburg, went to West Point and Radcliffe last weekend. It was hot — but uh had a good discussion with everyone [clears throat] and we share stories and they share stories and we learn and take that back with us. Uh we have had a number of speeches this year since I've spoken with you. Uh Jerry Bransford talked to us about the contributions of African-Americans in

the development of Mammoth Cave. And Gary West, you may know Gary, he's an author of many books. But what he spoke to us about was the murder on Younger's Creek. Had a full house and he even had to have a police escort in case someone uh unless he told more than he should have in his book. He had uh there was a lot of hush hush around that. So he got to the bottom of it and shared that with everyone. Uh the building, we we spent a couple of thousand dollars on the building, just the museum with painting, fixing, you know, we appreciate everything that the court does, but we don't ask you for everything. Uh there is we continue to have a problem with the roof joint between the old loading dock and it's just a trickle of water. It's not a lot, but uh we're working on that. And uh we have added a couple of we do have a um highdefinition camera security system uh in in inside the building. And we had an event this year around the 4th of July. We had some red, white, and blue um wreaths that we put on the windows.