City Council - Regular Meeting

Welcome everyone to Elizabethtown City Council work session for August 10th, 2026. And I would like to ask Councilman Tim Isaacs if he'd lead us in the invocation, please.

Pray with me. Dear Lord, we thank you for your many blessings as we come together on this beautiful day. We pray for your guidance that we consider the business on the agenda. Help us to focus on what is in the best interest of the city as a whole and not any one individual or small group, including ourselves. Help us to never forget that the opportunity to serve is a gift we should never take for granted. Thank you for respectful discourse and for those who have taken the time from their day to be here in this meeting, both in person and online. Help us to never forget how blessed we are to live in a nation where opinions can be shared openly, even when we don't agree with one another. Finally, Lord, protect those that dedicate themselves to protecting us. Keep our first responders safe as they do their work. Be with our educators, Lord, as we begin a new school year. Guide them as they work to help our children grow and mature and see the potential that you have instilled in each one of them. In your name we ask it. Amen. And if you'd join me in the Pledge of Allegiance, please.

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. At this time, I will call the meeting to order and ask Madam Clerk, if she would please call roll.

Yes, sir. Council Member Bishop. Present. Fulkerson?

Here.

Isaacs?

Here.

Jones?

Here.

Springsteen? Here. Tyler? Here. Mayor, you have a quorum.

Thank you, ma'am, and good afternoon to everyone. We are glad that you are here. We have a few updates that we want to make you aware of. We're going to start with Rita Davis, who is our stormwater director and does a great job of it, and she's going to give us a stormwater update on Henry Street.

Yeah, so we've been working hard on our Henry Street capital project. The project runs from West Dixie, thereby back home, up to Beach Street. And a lot of this is in the backyards of the homes that front North Miles and Henry Street. So, our consultants, engineering consultant, advisors, they are currently working on the 90% plans. So we've gone through the 60% review process and we've also done a walk through on July 14th. We did a walk through to help them develop the 90% plans. We also have a pretty extensive easement acquisition process that we're going through. We need 54 easements because this is an older part of town. It wasn't platted with the easements in the back like our current standards would require. So we currently have received about 23 of those 54 easements. And we have about five additional property owners that we've made contact with, and it sounds like they are amenable to granting easement if we work through some specific details to their properties. To help us... Address specific details with regards to as many properties as we've got. We've put together a memorandum of understanding to kind of accompany the easement document and those that would be different types of. Property specific accommodations like a pet that needs to that requires being contained, you know, in the interim where the fences are removed for the project and those kind of things. So, 1 thing with the that we maybe are requesting some input on the council from long restoration has historically with some of these projects been a difficult. thing to achieve for specific property owners and so we've bounced around ideas as far as having that can be part of the contractor's responsibility to get that lawn restored to the end or potentially doing a separate contract for a lawn restoration for a specific landscaping company to come in and take care of that. So yeah, so we are kind of bouncing around some ideas as far as how to handle There are some pros and cons to both, but bouncing around some ideas as far as how to handle, since this is entirely in the backyards of several homes that are trying to figure out how best to restore yards, especially whenever you've got fences that are being put back up and that kind of thing where it would make it difficult to access through yards that have already been restored. So that's kind of something that we are requesting input on and I think Ed might have some input on that as well. Is that good?

So basically what she's wanting your all's opinion if you would chime in with your thoughts of whether or not when we do that project, when we go in there and we tear up the ground and the multiple yards or properties that the different people own in that corridor, whether we just want to figure up a fee per square foot and write them a check for it, or if we want to be responsible like we've done in most other projects that we've done in restoring their property.

One of the residents is here, Rick Walters. What would be your preference? No.

Okay. So, yeah, so we can, okay, yeah, so we'll just look into either subbing that as a separate contract or putting it on the primary contractor for the project.

Sorry, not meaning to, but, like, has that been one of the issues with individuals to sign the easements? Because I know we've discussed easements for a little period of time.

The lawn restoration is usually not, it's usually we had one lady who had some banana trees that she wanted to make sure we're not going to be disturbed with the project. So we've revised easements to make sure that we're avoiding those. So I don't know that lawn restoration is the main kind of driver of the folks who are wanting more before they sign their easements. Okay, thank you.

But overall... On a lot of our projects we're starting to That's the most important aspect to the homeowners I mean Rita's gonna put a pipe in the backyard of all these folks and once the pipes there and it handles the drainage I mean, it's it's not seen but but their lawn and their fence is something that they still deal with and on guess more of our recent projects that seems to be the struggle to complete things and make sure the property owner is satisfied with the work we've actually started changing some of our standards and are doing more sod installation in certain aspects just because it takes immediate uh... restoration instead of seed and straw and getting contractors back in and as Rita pointed out because of the number of easements that we have to obtain in this area our concern with that lawn restoration is that uh... the third house down we may struggle with and trying to get access into that to restore that lawn and do things so we're looking at Some other areas, and like I said, the one that we wanted to ask about was just to pay folks and say, it's now your responsibility. One of the things that we've talked about for the restoration, if we do sod, is that requires watering immediately. I'm sure you all will hear from the property owners that, wait a minute, I'm having to spend more on my water bill. So I mean, that may be something as part of the project that we come back to you all at some point and say, as part of the easement, as part of this memorandum of understanding that Rita and her staff are preparing, that we may do a homeowner allocation to help pay for that water bill to make sure the lawn is restored properly. One of the things that they're still, as she said, they're about 90% plan, But one of the issues is fencing. I mean, this is rather large pipe that we're putting in the ground. And if we have issues, we need to have access to it. So the easements are being written that we're going to do initial restoration of fences and things. But if we have to come in in the future, that is... in our easement and we have the right to remove and take it out. So again, that's something that Rita and her team are having to explain to property owners. We've had some meetings. We'll probably still have some neighborhood meetings before we start the project once we get it awarded so people understand. But like I said, we wanted to share some of those issues that we're trying to work through to make sure we have a good product for the residents there. And like I said, if we don't want to pay and do that, we may break the landscaping portion out as a separate contract then, but get into the timing. It'll become a scheduling with the main contractor and then the timing of restoration. And I was talking to Mr. Walters before the meeting, and that becomes critical when you try to restore somebody's property. I mean, you know, if we were trying to do it today, I don't know how successful we would be in the middle of August when it's heat indexes of 100. We may have to work through some scheduling and make you all aware of that as we proceed and deal with the residents that way too. Are there other guidance that you all, I mean,

we okay if we separate it out is sod a good idea it adds cost to the project so i mean that that's where you we're impacting the budget that we may bring to you all so that's i'd be fine with the sodding because i think that's that's going to be a little bit easier to get done and get the restoration going with sodding versus seeding it and strawing it and all that the question would be that if if mr walters wants the city to do it is this an all or none That's probably the best way to work is if we're going to do the landscape, then we're going to do that and break that out.

And that's the discussion we've had, Marty, at our level is could we do this voluntarily and how effective do we think that way? And we're not sure we would be effective if three people said, oh, yeah, give me a check and I'll take care of mine. And two people said no. And then we've got to tell a contractor.

okay these two yards you're not touching but the third one down here you've got to do something with so yeah it is kind of a all or nothing kind of thing so okay i think definitely the sod the important part of that of course is going to be the watering factor too that comes back because i know there were um it was a different obvious a different project and there were some water questions that individuals had so um i think that's It's an immediate fix, but they still have to water.

We'll work on that aspect, too.

We can certainly put the watering aspect on the property owners and put that in our MOU document so they know that that's expected of them.

I think they're going to be excited not to have water when it rains and floods, right, Rick? More so than probably a bigger concern than the grass, but yeah.

So yeah, hopefully we can get the rest of these easements.

Any other questions for her on Henry Street? James Gray, do you mind to come up and help her? I want her to give us an update real quick on Wawa's and what they went through and what our response was and what our responsibility was, if she would.

Yeah, so let's see. So July 20th, Wawa had a spill. They were doing a fuel filtering operation, and the valve ended up shutting on the tank, and 1,500 gallons of fuel spilled into the private catch basin on Wawa's property. Now, that catch basin is connected to a 66,000-gallon, roughly actually over that gallon, underground detention system. Immediately, we had the state fire marshal, the Elizabethtown Fire Department, Stormwater Department, and the Kentucky Department for Environmental Protection Emergency Response Branch have all responded. And we've been monitoring, checking the downstream catch basins to see if anything has left that Wawa site. And we've determined that nothing has left the site. It's all collected into the underground detention basin. So Wawa is planning to... Kentucky Department for Environmental Protection is kind of the regulatory agency for overseeing the cleanup of the fuel spill. So they will be digging up their underground detention basin to remediate all the soils that are underlying that detention basin and then put clean soil back and reinstall that detention basin. So that's why their grand opening was delayed. They are now having to do a little bit more site work than they were originally anticipating to remediate that cleanup.

Any questions? Got anything to add?

I think 1,500 gallons sounds like a lot when you say it. But in the big picture here, it was about 25 bathtubs of liquid going into an area that holds 1,100 bathtubs full of liquid. So it was a lot of fuel, but I mean, there was adequate storage on the ground, nothing left. So, I mean, it was all fine. We originally didn't report this because it's a private matter. It didn't enter a public system. There was no public safety issue. We do illicit discharges daily. We never report those. Most of them is no more than somebody washing a car or pressure washing something and getting a little bit of soap out in the street or something. It was all safe. We all have children and grandkids that live here. Of course, we don't want anything bad to happen either.

And no doubt if there was an issue or there was an immediate threat of danger to the public, we would have immediately notified everyone. But to your point, this isn't the first time that we've dealt with this. And the fire department folks that are sitting back there can also tell you we respond to fuel spills occasionally. And what do you all have, Mark? 40, 50 runs a week? we don't report all 40 or 50 runs that the fire department makes a week, unless somebody asks us about it, being a news source or a news or media source. And I think Amy, correct me if I'm wrong, we got one email from the courier journal. So that was all the inquiries that we, that we had. But anyway, it was under control. Our folks did a good job. We're not the investigating agency. The state is, and we expected the state to cut a press release because it's their investigation or Wawa to cut a press release because it's their business. And, uh, It probably didn't happen as timely as it could have from both of those different independent agencies and, and businesses. So because, uh, people were inquiring, that's why I had Amy released what she did today, but. Just wanna make sure we're clear on that. I appreciate you all updating us on that.

We've been out there countless times, too, even after the initial, we spent two whole days there. After that, we've been stopping in several times a week to see how the progress is going.

Y'all good? Thank you. Mr. Pope, you're back up with the project update.

I am not gonna review on the memo we sent you all on the projects. I'm not gonna review every one of the projects, but there are a number that we wanted to highlight. with you all. Seth talked a little bit in his presentation about the American Legion Park and those improvements. Now that that project is finished, we just wanted to highlight a couple things. One, the new pavilion has restroom facilities in it, so we now have removed the port-a-johns from the park. uh... i think seth may have mentioned if he didn't uh... the fun topia is very popular uh... this time of year at the beginning of the school year and at the end of the school year with uh... school bus loads of children and having two port-a-johns available for six and eight busloads of kids didn't work the best in that park so that's been a big improvement we also built a shade structure by the pickleball courts we heard from that group that they host tournaments and registrations and those kind of things so we tried to accommodate their need a little bit and The park did not have really good pedestrian access, so we built a sidewalk down to Miles Street, which has helped tremendously people accessing that way. There's the stage structure. I forgot I was supposed to click through. There's the pedestrian access. The food court has done really well with... area too and I think Seth gave you some numbers I'm gonna follow up that with some final numbers here with you all in a month or so now that the pool closed this past weekend the next project we want to just highlight briefly with you all is the Commerce Drive extension this first slide shows the rework of the existing section, what's been termed the northern section of the roadway. A lot of work in the last couple weeks has been in dealing with the businesses and property owners out there to make sure they're One, their access was open during construction, which has been quite trying, to be honest with you. It's hard to rebuild an entire roadway and keep it open at the same time. But also to make sure that, like I said, their customers could go in and out. The businesses have been great in that area, I will tell you, on working with them. um the contractor uh we've had very few issues um but there always are with construction uh like i said especially in trying to keep entrances open where when you're trying to pour concrete when you're trying to put a new concrete entrance back in for somebody but keep it open at the same time but like i said it's um the interconnection of those departments or those businesses. And I know a lot of people sometimes question the city on why we make businesses interconnect with each other and provide access to somebody else. Well, during a construction process like this, that interconnection has played well for At one time, I think both of Duff's direct accesses to Commerce Drive were closed for construction, but customers still got to their restaurant because they had shared access with the hotel adjacent to them. So, like I said, the fact of interconnection has worked well. times like said we've just got a couple slides showing you the the progress the base asphalt is now down the entire length of the roadway they're finishing up I said a lot of concrete entrance curb work the multi-use path is is going down some of the sidewalk has already been completed on the if you will the interstate side of the The roadway, they'll be now working on that north end around the existing businesses and they redo their entrances they'll be redoing a lot of the sidewalk in that area because Commerce Park that's the overall subdivision where a lot of those businesses are located was done in the 90s and at that time the city sidewalk standard was a four foot wide sidewalk we've since changed that standard to a five foot wide so we're upgrading those sidewalks as we're going through the project also. And then we've got a couple slides, just recent aerial photos of the Steel Grove Amphitheater and its work. You can see the parking lots are taking shape. A lot of that site grading is now completed, and they're now working on the erection of the main stage. The next project to talk about is the work we did out at the north end of Freeman Lake Park. That work, both the restroom facility, again, getting rid of port-a-johns that were housed out there, the restroom facility and the parking lot, total projects a little over a million dollars, but the city received a million-dollar grant for the project, so we're getting a parking lot that is going to be least twice a little bit larger than twice the size of the the previous lot so we'll be able to keep 85 to 90 cars out in that area and better handicap accessibility access from the parking lot down to the trail system into the restrooms also you can see the the parking lot under construction in those those slides Um, project that we just completed in the last 2 weeks is the roundabout out at veterans way in town drive in this slide. I would point out 1 of the things I know the roundabouts get a lot of discussion in our community. But as part of this project. We also. put in a multi-use path that again fits into the city's master plan for pedestrian and trail access and so there's now a path that ties in to the mall and it will be upgraded as we redo town drive but you We have a connection to the sidewalk along Town Drive all the way down to Sam's Club down at Ring Road. So we've now completed that loop. Like I said, we will continue in that effort as we redo Town Drive in the upcoming years, too. I think the thing that's got a lot of the discussion about this roundabout has been the appearance of the Center Island. So that was an effort... This is the first one the city totally controlled the design for and we wanted to improve the appearance. So I think the other roundabouts that you see in our community in the future, at least the ones the city has complete design over, will be more attractive to the motoring public. I would still remind people it is a roadway and keep your eyes on the vehicles and the roads and don't need to look at the beautiful landscaping as much, even though it is very attractive and we're very proud of it. Finally, I want to make you all aware, I know you put annual budget for us for sidewalk improvements and other grant funds, so we just wanted to highlight some of those. The first is the project down on West Railroad Avenue. This is about a half million dollar project where we did some sidewalk improvements. We upgraded the pavement width of the street and were able to, on one side of the street at least, put in a curb and gutter system, collect the storm water, We were not able to do that on both sides of the street because, unfortunately, the side closest to the railroad is not part of the city's right-of-way, and we couldn't make improvements to that. It's railroad property. But we did this project. It's about a half million dollars, a little higher than some of our other projects just because it's used with federal funds. And federal funds, they have to pay higher wage rates on some aspects of things and purchase materials a little bit differently. But again, this was about a half million dollar project, all paid with federal grant funds. There's no city money in this project, but it's a nice improvement to that neighborhood. And like I said, this shows the going around the curve and the improvements we made as we're going to move back into the rest of this neighborhood, which brings me to the point that because we are targeting this area, we've had two neighborhood meetings. The Central Avenue Baptist Church has been kind enough to host those meetings for us. And one of the things that we've heard from the neighbors is they would like to identify their neighborhood. but they don't have a name, they don't know what to call themselves, so we've sent a survey out. We hope to get responses from folks on a name for that area instead of just calling it east of downtown or north of downtown, and we've called it all kinds of things, We have to have many directions on the same area, so it's north and east. So we hope to have a name. We've asked folks to get that to us by the end of this month. So at a September meeting, we may tell you that we've got a new neighborhood name down in there. And part of the development activity then we will have is we will try to do some neighborhood signage and some gateways that will help help identify that area. As I mentioned, like I said, you all are generous enough to put money in the budget for sidewalk improvements and I'm really proud of the effort that our sidewalk team has done in identifying projects, working with some neighborhoods and making improvements. And we've done sidewalks all over the community. We've filled in gaps that we're missing. We put sidewalks in places. high-density residential areas. We've made some sidewalk connections to some commercial areas. We've made sidewalk improvements around schools. Our target for this year, so this time next year I may have a slide showing that, is going to be along Clifford Drive, giving better access to the Helmwood Heights School. We've tried several times in the past to received some grant funding for that under a program that the Transportation Cabinet runs called Safe Routes to Schools, but have not been successful. So we're gonna use the money that the council budgets for us. But one of the neighborhoods that we just finished up in is up along Skyline Drive in the Glendale Hill neighborhood. Uh, when the city redevelop that area back in the eighties and early nineties, um, sidewalks were not a priority at that time. And because of budget constraints, the sidewalks were eliminated. from the work we did. So we've gone back in and Skyline Drive now has a sidewalk. This is around the intersection by the Wesley Hilltop House, and this is coming down through that area, but that's now been completed. We've got the sidewalk project going on North Main Street. They actually have the, just about finished on the, west side of that uh... effort or the north side excuse me the final thing that i wanted to highlight for you all i know we talk about traffic calming during budget with you all and you give us uh... funds to do that and i just wanted to highlight a project that we just finished uh... that fits into that traffic calming effort this is the intersection of meadow lane and poplar drive so it's gives access we have a lot of kids who walk in this area up to morningside elementary into tk stone middle school and we put the crosswalks in recently and just last friday we finished up and we put delineators in so Poplar Drive is a through, so there's no stop there, and that road is about 30, somewhere 34, in some places 36 feet wide, so it's nice and straight, and they don't stop, and it's wide, so we have... people who don't always do 25 miles an hour in that area, and we've got school kids. So these delineators are a first step in our effort to say, can we choke down Poplar Drive to slow the traffic down at this intersection? And so these delineators have been installed and they choke that width down on Poplar to 26 feet, which is two 13-foot drive lanes. They go back from the intersection 25 feet because the city ordinance says you're not supposed to park within 25 feet of an intersection, so that's the magic behind that distance. It then does protect the folks along Poplar who would like to park along the roadway. And our engineering department laid this out. It's one of the things that is in the city's safe streets for all implementation program where we have said our goal is to get to zero pedestrian fatalities by the year 2050. So this is an effort to make crosswalks safer for school kids. It's also a rather inexpensive way to do this before we go out and build curbs and change things. So it's an effort on our part to say, here's a use of some funds and it may lead to something else in the future. So, like I said, there's some other projects that we put in the memo to you all just to give you updates on where they're at and their process of completion, but we wanted to highlight some of the things that, like I said, some of it we've worked with design professionals on, some of it has been done Um, in house by our team. So, um, I said, just wanted to make sure you all were aware of how we're spending some of the money you all budget to try to address, um, neighborhoods throughout the community too. So. If you all have any questions, I'll be. Happy to answer that.

I do have one. So on Commerce Drive, when do we, and I don't like to say completion dates, but estimated dates when that'll be usable to get from interstate or the 96 exit down?

Internally, we are debating that. because there is some feel that we need to keep it closed while we still have a lot of construction activity at the Steel Grove. There is also some thought that says this street is going to give access to other areas of our community. And it's really designed to be, even though it's taking place at the time of the steel growth project, it is an independent project. Based on construction schedule, you will probably see an ordinance from us in September asking you all to accept it, and I know this is gonna sound funny to folks, but even though it is a city project the city is building, we still have to officially put it in our maintenance system, so you all have to take action to do that. By state law, by default, all city streets, once accepted, the speed limit is 25 miles per hour. Because this is a commercial collector street, that speed limit will be higher, so you will also have to take action to do that. Right now, I think our recommendation is that the speed limit be 35 miles per hour in that section. But like I said, I think you'll see us bring all that information to you all in September. They're doing a lot. This kind of weather, hot and dry, contractors love, especially when they're putting down asphalt and those kind of things. So hopefully they'll make a lot of progress in the next couple weeks that way. They've got to do some finish work. And as we talked earlier, doing the finish work where they grade and have to seed and straw, It's not the best weather to do some of that. But I mean, there are ways to substantially accept the project and allow traffic on it while they still then have to make sure they get their final grading done. They've got to get the multi-use path in. So there's still some other activity along the roadway. But like I said, I think you'll see us before you in September accepting into the maintenance system and then we'll

probably have a recommendation to you all if we're going to open it immediately or keep it closed another 30 days or so okay thank you i'm excited i'm looking forward to that new road to pick up kids and drop off kids anybody else i actually ran i don't often but um today i happen to end up driving from

poplar um and meadow and all through there from all the work that we've done from morningside drive that's the street i was trying to think of from morningside all the way down to poplar looks amazing through meadow i mean i know it's taken a couple years to um do that but the differences are huge and especially with kids walking and uh getting picked up uh from school i i think it'll be yeah that's what i mean that's huge improvement that's a

I would agree with you, Julia, the effort that you all allowed us to fund that and do it over multiple years. I mean, and like I said, we had a number of neighborhood meetings with those folks. And I mean, it really transformed that area to take areas that didn't have sidewalks or had sidewalks that were so crumbling that it wasn't safe to walk on to now have a good access to those schools is really important, I think. Thank you, sir.

Last week we received an email from a young lady that I thought was very well written and put together. And she made, in my opinion, a really good argument for her case. And what she was concerned about was she had spoken. at our planning commission a couple weeks ago, and she wasn't comfortable about not necessarily stating her name, but she wasn't comfortable about stating her address and where she lived in the city. And the more I thought about it, I didn't think that that request was out of line, and I thought it was something that we probably needed to look at. And so I asked Judge Howard if he would research that a little bit and see what the requirements were for speaking at a public meeting. And so he's put together a sheet, and I'm gonna have him address some of those if he would.

Okay, I can do this in three minutes or 30 minutes. I would prefer to do the 30-minute version, but I'm not sure you all will stay with me. Okay, we're used to getting paid by the hour. So anyway, I actually started in June in looking at the law as it relates to public hearings and public comment, okay? Because we had a person who expressed, not for themselves, but for others, about, you know, since we moved into this facility back in January, I think it was, we livestream our meetings, which is a good thing, and I think it's people like that, and we want to continue to do that. But then that challenges us in people giving personal information, street addresses. Obviously, if we're live streaming, we cannot redact those as we could initially. previous times So I began looking at it then and as the mayor said we had an email on August the 2nd from an individual that spoke And she it was very thoughtful very thoroughly researched and helpful frankly and her concern was That by in a live stream identifying her address that she may be doxxed. Now, Amy challenged me to use the word doxxed today because she knows that she and the clerk have tried to explain to me, who does not participate in social media, what that term means. And all I can say is I still don't understand it, but I believe it to be a negative event, okay? And so a legitimate concern and so the question becomes then You know, what do we do? in order to accommodate that reasonable request and so the short story is there's Legally a difference in the standards between attending a meeting and speaking at a meeting there is a difference between when the City Council conducts administrative hearings which is very rarely in legislative hearings so all if you If anybody wants to stay afterwards, I'll be glad to give you the 30-minute research on all of that. But that has caused me to look at our policy, the E-Town City Council policy, on this matter that was adopted back in 2020. So it's been six years. So I think it's time to update that, and that's what I have passed out to you. modifications that i would recommend under three attending if you are just attending but not speaking okay we request that you sign the attendance sheet in order to have accurate minutes okay The law is that we may request that, but we cannot require that, and we do not and have not. But I think we should probably state that in our policy. So that is the first revision. In paragraph four, as far as members speaking at a public hearing or in the public comment section, The law is that they can be required to reasonably identify themselves, okay? And so we have that in there. I think that what we should add is that the name and address is at the discretion of the presiding officer because there could be circumstances. If we had a victim of domestic violence who wanted to come and say that, He or she appreciated the victim advocate that we have and you all have funded at the Elizabethtown Police Department. That's somebody we would not want them to identify their name or their address. And so we could allow the presiding officer, and that's almost always the mayor, only if he's not here do you all elect someone else, to preside in my six years. I don't think that has occurred. The mayor has always been here. But the other issue here at the discretion of the presiding officer, I think it is valuable to you, each of you, to know when someone is at a hearing or making a public comment You know, do they live in the city limits of Elizabethtown? Do they live outside of the city limits of Elizabethtown? Do they live outside of the state? And so what I'm suggesting here is that before public comment sections, the presiding officer could have a brief colloquy that would say, you know, we're live streaming, okay, and we would ask that you state your name and address, but if you're uncomfortable in that, then you can write your name or write your address on a piece of paper and provide it to the staff. And that way, We don't have to worry about, well, it's live stream and we can't redact it. It won't be stated. And then it won't be in the minutes later, at least not the address, so that we can control it in that way. So those are the two recommendations. The other deletions in paragraph six here is just a more updated way to say the same thing. Public comments shall be allowed on a viewpoint-neutral basis. That's the terminology, frankly, that the courts are now using. It was different years ago, so I've just updated that. But those two would be recommendations that I would have. So I'm glad to talk about this ad nauseum because I find it terribly interesting, but I don't expect necessarily everybody to share that interest. Any questions that I could add?

So do you feel like, and I know this has to do with stating the address, when we're starting the meeting, does there need to be a comment made, we are live, this is being live streamed, so that people, I mean, we all know it is, and obviously the people watching know it is, but we could have guests sometimes that it just leaves their mind. Is that something we need to...

We could do it in the beginning. I think maybe it's more important to say it before the public comment section to remind people that we are live streaming. That way, if they have a concern about their address, that they know then how to address it. So we could do it twice, probably once at the beginning. I think we need to say it before public comment section.

I know we at church, when I was doing the media for the church, that was one of the things we did is we actually, on our PowerPoint slides or whatever, we would have it where it would flash up every now and then that you are being videotaped or streamed well we live streamed too so that you are being live streamed that photos could be taken so we just kind of had that disclaimer out there that if someone didn't like it they can fill out a paper for us and we would make sure but it was kind of hard to do in a public setting when we're streaming live to redact that or to not so we just made a disclaimer that It's being done. It's kind of like a Kroger when you go down that cosmetic aisle. It's saying right there, you're being recorded. So, you know, and they sell that information, I'm going to tell you that.

That's partly a deterrent, though, right?

Yeah, it's partly a deterrent, but it's there. So maybe having something that we can have scroll across the screen a little bit. Or something just to say that this is being live streamed or something of that nature?

I do think making the observation right before the public comments makes a lot more sense because it's just fresh in people's minds if they're going to speak and just be aware.

Since we're going to keep our register, Ken, could we put something on the registration too to let people know it's being live streamed? Because, I mean, they're all coming in and checking it out.

Yeah, I think we need to change that registration and just to put requested but not required, even though the term request implies that it's not required. But, yeah, we could post that as well at the, you know, where everybody enters to remind them that we're being live streamed. And I get what you're saying, Councilman. Church legally is a little different as a private as opposed to, you know, a public meeting at a local government unit. Everybody is expected to know that, you know, minutes in a recording are being made.

This here states that this is Elizabethtown City Council policy, public comments at a city council meeting. When we adopt this, is this for all of our commissions, and does it need to state that?

It will. It'll apply to Planning Commission and the different boards that they have as well, in my opinion.

Except when they're conducting administrative hearings, which are MAP amendment hearings. They have different legal standards, okay? When they're doing text amendments... See, I get to get deep in the weeds now. Thank you.

Sorry. Sorry, you all.

This is the best part. When they're doing text amendments, that's a legislative hearing, and they have different procedural due process requirements. But in a MAP amendment... The law is that is a trial-type hearing. You have to be sworn, okay? You have to identify yourself if you're speaking, and questions have to be allowed, okay? We don't have to do that unless at a city council level. We rarely do that. We haven't done it, I don't believe, in my six years here. The Planning Commission rarely does legislative hearings like we do. they are doing administrative hearings that have different standards. So what the planning commission, what the chairperson, they read all of that before a map amendment hearing is being conducted about how it's being conducted. That is all still accurate.

The complaint, well, the request came from speaking at a planning commission. That's why I was asking.

And the oddity there is that was a text amendment, which makes it a legislative hearing, not an administrative hearing.

The only thing that I would add to that is I do think everybody should have to say their name and they should have to say whether or not they are a citizen that lives in the city limits or if they are not a citizen that lives in the city limits. And there are going to be times when people come up and they have a complaint or they have something they want to talk to the council about. That is going to be address specific. You know, this is where I live and this is the stormwater issue that I have. And for us to even know what they're talking about, we're going to have to know where they live. So if that arises, then I think what I would do as the presiding officer is tell them. we need to know what your address is, and then that's when they can do what Judge Howard offered, and that's write down their address, and then we can distribute that to you all, and that way we know exactly where they're talking about, but it doesn't go live stream and on the record, so they can be doxxed. See, I used it too.

But do you know what it means?

I do not. But I know it's negative. We're together. So any other questions? With that, we will take public comments. Any public comments? You? No, Mr. Torres, but I wanna make sure that you're aware that you are being live streamed.

Hey, I just want to 1st of all, I didn't get a chance to say this last time, but for the officers that were promoted congratulations to them from last meeting, of course, our officers that do incredible work for this community happy for them proud for them. I also want to thank you for. I know I asked for this to be looked at and you did it and I appreciate it for when you come up here to not have to give your name.

No, you still have to give your name. You just don't have to give your address if you don't want to. But I need you to say.

My name is Jose Torres, by the way. Okay, everybody, thank you very much. And you are a city resident. Yes, I am a city resident. But I would say in listening, I'll give you just, sir, if for the language, and I think Mr. Fulkerson had a great point in terms of does this policy, how this policy works. Pertains to all meetings, I think there's room for verbiage within this policy to be able to say. It pertains to these meetings, unless you're doing your legislative, whatever you just said, and be specific. And I also think the more specificity that you have within the language, because I think when you just say, well, and no disrespect to you, sir, but you said, well, that's how I would take it. Well, I don't necessarily think you want to do that. I think you want to be specific in every aspect of what you want to happen. So if you want. someone to go specific to the desk, which I think should be one of the primary options. I think everyone should sign in for public comment, and I believe, according to law, you can do that because public comment is based on your policy specifically. You allow us to talk. There's no real KRS that directs that. What happens at the front door is different, but what happens on this mic is different. Is is yours so I would just say, I think there's room for more specificity for you all to to dictate what happens and to make sure that it's it's clear to everyone when they read it what the expectations are when they come up here. Sir, I, I'm grateful that you put out a. A note to the community with your. But I would say my concern is, I think 20 days is too late. I know that you, if we were in trial, sir, I think you did an amazing job. You had all the I's dotted and the T's crossed. You brought in the stormwater team, had them explain it. You got some firemen looking good in their uniforms. I mean, it's amazing. But I think what the question is, is it comes down to, Um, at least for me, right? I don't want to speak for anyone else, but for me, what it comes down to is, um, you can be on site. And you can make a statement without causing hysteria or, um, and as a, someone that elects you and pays taxes, I'd like to see that. Right. I don't need you to tell me all the facts, but it's nice to know that the person that I. Give leadership to demonstrates that leadership by going down there. It's a big deal. You know, not everyone has the knowledge that Mr. Mr. Gray has and be able to compare it to bathtubs. And right when you hear that there is fuel in your water system. It's pretty it's pretty big. Right. And 20 days of you not saying anything for whatever reason that was. I just feel like. you can give an initial statement without having to say, and say, look, we're turning it over to the people, the people that do this, but I want you to know to have trust and confidence in this, that, and this, because I think there's a lot of people, if you looked on your Facebook, I mean, there was immediate answers. There was immediate comments. people were justifiably scared. So I think that, I would just ask that maybe you consider that next time. Maybe we can get you a big blue jacket that says mayor on the back of it, you look all fancy, get you the seal. Maybe get you a red hat that says mayor on it, whatever. I just I just think that like response for us as citizens is critical because I don't I didn't elect anyone from Wawa or from anyone else. Right. I'm looking to you directly for that leadership and for you to come out and say, this is the problem. This is what we have. This is what we're doing. I'm not going to comment on this because I can't. You can mean obviously you have masterful people. You know, doing press releases for you and wording and verbiage and I'm sure you're doing it as well. So I would just ask that you come out a little earlier than twenty days. My second point and I'll leave it at this is I'm still concerned about those people that are on the street. You know, we talk about this gentleman here talked about how it's a hundred degrees out. We still don't have a shelter. We still don't have a place for them, a cooling shelter. And I can tell you right now on even in military training today would be considered a black flag day. I don't I don't know what's going on behind the scenes at this point. I think it's it's been a long time and I don't want to. really go into it, but it's something that's been happening for a long time. I think if we can build traffic circles and we can build everything else, we can perhaps put some attention, not all the attention, just some of the attention, maybe balance it out a little bit for those that are really struggling. And if you read the article in the News Enterprise talking about housing, it's alarming how much housing we need, but it's also alarming that there's gonna be more and more people out in the street statewide or commonwealth-wide, whatever you choose to say. But I just think that I'm hopeful. Mr. Fulkerson, you good? Nevermind.

Thank you, Mr. Torres. Appreciate it.

Yeah, appreciate it.

Anybody else? Seeing none, we will move to city council information items. The next city council meeting will be August 17th, 2026. And lawn party at Freeman Lake Park this Wednesday, August 12th. Amy, am I correct to say this is the last one? The last chance you got to go out. We do have one in September? No, I think this is the last lawn party event. So hopefully the weather's great and we can see everybody out there. It's always a good time. And we've unfortunately had a couple dates that were rained out. So we look forward to getting out there and having a sunshiny day. And that is all that I have. Y'all have anything you want to add?

Lion's Chicken Barbecue this coming Saturday at 11 o'clock at Memorial Methodist Church. Um, all you can eat. Well, it's not all you can eat, but it's a, it's a half a chicken. And, um, I do have some tickets if you like. Yeah, we can't do buffet.

Anybody else? We will not go closed session today. So with that, I need a motion and a second to adjourn, please.

Motion. Second.

All in favor. Opposed? Seeing none, motion carries.

Thank you all.