City Council - Regular Meeting

Welcome everyone to Elizabeth Town City Council work session for February 23rd, 2026. I will officially call the meeting to order and if you would bow your head for invocation. Heavenly Father, we come before you today grateful as always for giving us the opportunity to live in a community like Elizabeth Town. We thank you for giving us the wisdom and discernment for good decision making and making sure that we continue to represent the citizens of this city. We thank you for our teammates most of all. We had the opportunity to recognize many of them this past week and milestones that they hit in their career and we thank you for sending them to us and letting them be a part of our team and continue to be successful for our city. They're the ones that do the work. They're the backbone. We couldn't do it without them. Most of all we thank you for great friends, great network. And we praise you and ask all these things in your son's name. Amen.

Amen. If you would join me in the pledge of allegiance. I pledge 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. Madame clerk, when you're ready, if you would please call roll. Thank you, Mayor. Council member Bishop, present. Fulkerson, here. Isaacs here. Jones here. Springsteen here.

Tyler here. You have a quorum, mayor.

Thank you, ma'am. And I mentioned in my prayer a little bit about the employee recognition that we had last week. We had a breakfast forum. It was a great time. We got to see a lot of people that we don't get to see every day because they work in so many different departments. at any time we may have between 370 and 400 employees or teammates that work for the city. And so when we get the opportunity to recognize them and some of the milestones that they hit, it's very important to us. So I have a whole list in front of me. I'm going to skip, if they'll forgive me, the new hires, and we'll go all the way to the 20 year mark and up. And so we had four people that hit the 20-year mark this month. Pat Gelanick from public works, Kim Bell from gas, uh Nathan Gardner from fire, and Melissa Herald Nep from administration. And then the 25-y year mark, police officer Billy Bowling. Uh the 30-year mark, Tim Reynolds from customer service. And then I like to call him the granddaddy. At the 35 year mark, Glenn Sims from public works. So, a lot of great people that have been with the city for quite some time and made a real difference. And uh we want this when we hire people when they're young or whenever we hire them, we want them to consider all jobs in the city a career. And so we work really hard up here to make it worthwhile and and make it something that people will consider as a career. And that way you build your best workforce and you build your best teammates. So we're really proud and a to be able to recognize those folks. With that said, we have Chief Mark Malone here from the fire department and he is going to talk about some promotions and recognitions that he has within his department here lately.

Congratulations to them.

Oh, go ahead.

Thanks, guys. And we also have a firefighter and officer of the year award that we give out. Uh that is based on um Rusty Horn. And I don't know, some of you might have remembered Rusty. He was an assistant chief with the fire department. Him and his brother came on. Ricky Horn came on in the 70s. And Rusty was always trying to go above and beyond the norm. And we've named that the Hugh Russell Horn award. And this year's firefighter of the year uh was recognized for going above and beyond by assisting with a recruit class and taking on some other projects around the department that he wasn't asked to do. He took it on. So this year's firefighter of the year is Hunter Thomas. And this year's fire officer of the year is Thomas Kale. He is recognized. He's really helped us out with our communication. He loves the communication side of things. So, he takes care of actually programming our radios and maintaining our radios. It saves us a lot of money to be able to use utilize him without having to go to a third party. So, uh, we recognize Thomas for his leadership and he is a lieutenant and officer of the year. Thank you all.

Thank you, Chief. Is there any truth that you selected Thomas because you knew his wife was going to be speaking next for CASA? Maybe. That's what I figured.

All kidding aside, congratulations and thank you all for everything that you do. And we can never give you enough praise or or thanks for the jobs that you all perform. And I will tell you that I constantly uh have people in the public stop me to tell you tell me how great you all are. I already knew that. but it's great to get affirmation from the folks that you serve. So, you all are a blessing. You're the best fire department in the state of Kentucky and we're glad that you represent Elizabeth Town. So, thank you very much. With that, Michelle Kale, executive director, Kasa of the Heartland, is going to give us an update of her organization.

Yes. Thank you guys so much for having me this evening. Um, as you know, Kasa has undergone a lot of growth in the last several years. Um when I started in January of 2023, we were serving here in Harden County. Now we are serving in Harden, Laroo, Me, Breenidge, Grayson, and Hart counties. So a whole sixcount region now. Um so Kasa of the Heartlands mission is to recruit, train, and support community volunteers who advocate for children who have suffered from abuse and neglect here within our local court systems. I have a video for you all. So, I know it's not in front of you, but um it's uh a little bit easier and nicer to hear from our kiddos telling you a little bit about our impact. So, we had uh 983 child dependency, neglect, and abuse petitions. And so, those are all child victims who were eligible to be served by CASA in 2025. And approximately 60% of those are from here within Harton County. And of those, we served 312 children. Um, and out of the 312 children that we served, 185 of those were here in Harden County as well. And we're going to see if this video works. If not, it's okay. We can skip it. One of the one of one of the kiddos is my own. Well, ours. Can you believe he didn't even tell me that this was happening? We just happened to both be here at the same time.

Sure.

Um, so as I said, we served 312 children in 2025 and 185 of those were from here in Harden County. Um, which is also maintaining that 60%. So, we're able to keep up with the growth that we have um we've experienced as we've expanded. We'll skip that video, too. Um we have 129 children, though on our weight list that are waiting for CASA, and that's across all six counties. Um so, 97 of the kiddos on our wait list are from here within Harden County. And we've seen those numbers steadily increase over the last several years. Um when I started, we had about 98 kiddos on the wait list. we got it down to 50 and we've seen um a heavy increase in educational neglect cases in the last year and a half. Um so those those numbers have gone back up. Um so I'll just kind of walk you guys through what um I have in your folder. So there's an impact report that goes through um our 2025 impact just here in Harden County. So as I said, we served 185 kiddos. We swore in 26 new CASA volunteers here locally and 38 within our region and um that is only three less than CASA of River region which is based out of Jefferson County. So we are we're showing that we're keeping up with volunteer recruitment like some of our uh larger communities in the state. Um in terms of geography and population, we are the fifth largest CASA program in the state of Kentucky. But in terms of services provided, we are the third largest um for services provided in the state. So we have seen an extensive amount of of growth, but as I said, we've been able to keep up with it with that growth and maintain those services. Um, another exciting uh data point that I want to touch on is our cost per child

served. Um, so it costs about $2,300 per month for the state to provide foster care services for children who are in foster care. And it cost us about 21, sorry, $2,100 per year to provide advocacy for a child. And so CASA is a wise investment for our community leaders because the children that we're working with are reunified or find permanency much more quickly than kiddos without CASA. Um and that number for us in the last several years has decreased. So, um, in 2022, our cost per child served was $2,880, and we've decreased that, um, to about $2,100, which is a we've decreased the cost, but increased the services. So, it just shows that we're being better stewards of those dollars that you all generously invest to us. Um, you also have in your folder a friend of CASA flyer. Um those shirts will be on sale through the pre-sale through the end of this week. And so if you're planning on coming out to the pinwheel planting um we'll get those to you in time for that. And then you also have the um information for the Harden County pinwill planting will be which will be at the Elizabeth Town Police Department on March 26th. Um and then also a flyer for our annual report if you want to look at some of that data as well. Um, but mostly just wanted to give you guys an update on our impact. As I said, we've gone from serving about 120 children in our community um, in 2022 to 185 this last year. So, we've seen an an increase in need and an increase in services and we're happy to be able to step up and and provide that service and meet that need. What questions do you all have for me? I know you can probably hear me, but you

said there's an increase in educational neglect. What is that?

Um, so educational neglect is like truency or uh is primarily truency. Um, and that I don't not that any of you have children that don't go to school. Um, but you know, if they miss or are tardy for three days, they get a notice. Six days, they get a notice notice. And then once they reach that habitual truency, then um then that's when they will refer uh whoever is the pupil personnel um for the district will refer them to Harden County Courts. And they do a lot of preventative um conversations with those kiddos who are on track for that to be habitually truent um just to try to encourage them to go to school and then you know if it continues to be an issue then they'll open up a court case. What we have consistently found is a lot of time it's not just the truency that is an issue. There are other things going on in the home. Maybe some other types of neglect or abuse that you know may be leading to the fact that this child is truent. And so um so we've seen a pretty hefty increase in the number of cases that we have. So much so that our um our family court judges are discussing potentially adding a separate docket day for some of those cases or just to to be able to maintain the family family case court load for dependency neglect and abuse.

Yikes. Yes. Yes. Thank you. Any other questions? Not so much of a question, but thank you for what you all do. Um, and some of the volunteer work and serving at a state level with the administrative office of the courts. Um, I interact with several causes and you all do a wonderful job and I share all about cost of the h heartland all over the state because you all I always refer, hey, check them out and see. So, good job and thank you so much.

I appreciate it. And I'll email you guys those videos because they're definitely worth a watch. Um, I don't know if any of you all know Cindy Trent. um retired from SWOP a while back. Um the video is her and one of her very first CASA kiddos who was 13 when uh Cindy was assigned to her as a CASA and um young lady is now in her her mid20s and she came and did a testimonial for us and it was really heartwarming to hear her experience. Um, she said that when she first got her CASA volunteer, she's like, you know, this is one more person that I have to deal with that's going to come in and out of my life. And she said it it took her a couple months, but she finally realized that her CASA was going to be there to stay. And um, now Savannah, the young lady, like I said, she's in her mid20s. She's married. Um, she just had her first baby last year, and Cindy is still very much a part of her life. and and she attributes a lot of her success um and the stability that she was able to find in life to CASA. And so it's just a a really heartwarming story. So I'll I'll send that to you all to make sure that you get to do that as well. So do you guys have any other questions or anything for me?

Thank you, Michelle. Thank you. Appreciate you as always. Appreciate it. Chief Malone, I meant to say this before Michelle got up to speak, but if you need to cut your guys loose and get them back on a truck, it won't hurt our feelings. or you can stay and we won't judge. Okay, next we have Mr. Steven King who's going to talk to you about Catholic Charities and long-term care. Welcome.

Well, thank you all so much. Um good evening, mayor um and council folks. Uh appreciate the time here. Um I wanted to talk to you all a little bit about um the office of the ombbudzman um at Catholic Charities. Um we actually serve um folks who live in assisted living facilities and nursing homes. Um if they have issues with their standards of care or if their rights are being infringed upon then they call us and we advocate on their behalf. So an unbudsman is just an advocate for a resident that lives in one of these facilities. Okay. Um we um serve um something like how many facilities, Erica?

We serve 13 facilities here in Harden County. Um and um our purpose here honestly is to see if we can get the word out about our program and to see if we can uh recruit volunteers. Uh we are actually looking for volunteer onbudsman which also does require training. Um they go through the same staff training that we go through. Um and then we're also looking for friendly visitors to go into facilities um and visit with residents because something like 60% of residents do not receive visitors for whatever reason. You know family ties or you know maybe their relatives have gone on passed on but we see a lot of loneliness. Um and so we're really looking to um of course bring some some bright spaces to a lot of these folks um in these facilities. Um we were um we had the pleasure of going to Signature North Harden. They actually had recently had a tragedy there. Um their corporate office actually asked um our supervisor if we could go in. We were already on the way. uh we wanted to be sure that everyone in the facility had what they needed and that the employees you know also you know had what they needed. See we were trying to see if there was something that we could also do for them. So we are really here to um kind of bring some life back to these facilities. Right? So even though folks are calling us and they have issues with whatever, right? we still want to be there to support them and we're looking for um other members in the community um to help with that support as well. Um so did you all have any questions for me?

So as far as the volunteers go that you're trying to recruit. Is there an aid? Like I mean I don't know if it's appropriate for youth or youth programs or Yes. Yes ma'am. It would be appropriate absolutely for youth programs. I'm actually speaking to um a Girl Scout troop in Bardstown about them trying to do some things. But absolutely, yes. Um if they are minors, then they all have to have um their parents' consent as well. And of course, we will be sure that everything is in order going forward. All right. Thank you all so much. Thank you for coming. Appreciate having you.

Next, we will open the floor up for public comments. Seeing none, we will cover some city council informationation items. First one is we will not have a meeting next week. Our next meeting will be March 9th, 2026. Any of y'all have any announcements you'd like to make? Okay. Clarification on Nick. March 2nd. March 2nd, 2026. Meetings canceled. Next meeting is March 9th. Yeah, our agenda is correct. Your agenda is correct that I sent you. Sorry.

Good catch. Thank you. Our March that we're canceling the meeting. Marty, don't be here next week. Come the week after. The information I had says our next week is March. You mean you can come if you want. I've been talking. Yeah. Okay. We will go close meeting pursuant to KS 61.810 section 1 to conduct deliberation on future acquisition or sale of real property by the city and to discuss the general nature of existing and possible litigation by the city. If I can get a motion and a second, please. So moved. Second. All in favor? I

opposed. Seeing none. Motion carries. Mr. King, I'm sorry. I meant to ask, do y'all have cards or contact information if anybody's interested in volunteering or had questions? Uh, yes, ma'am. I do have flyers um with my contact information and I also have business cards with my contact information on Absolutely. Yes, ma'am. And I meant to say we don't expect any action coming out.