Fiscal Court - Regular Meeting

How about yours? Solid.

Okay. All right. Looks like it's 5:30 and time to start. Um, good afternoon, good evening. Cell phones, if just uh check those real quick to see if those are are turned off or turned down might be a good thing. Think I turned mine off. All right. So, let's go ahead and get started. This is October 28th, 2025 Harden County Fiscal Court Regular Voting Meeting. Let's begin and call this meeting to order. The roll call, please. Excuse me. Squire Clim here. Squire Hicks

here. Squire Muse here. Squire Pennington here. Squire Saltzman here. Square Thompson here. Square Whitehead here. Square Yates here. Just Tall here. Next we'll have our invocation by Magistrate Fred Clim and pledge of allegiance led by Magistrate EG Thompson.

Please pray with me. Our most gracious and loving heavenly father, we thank you for this day that you've given us, Father. Father, we come praised in your holy name and thanking you for your son, Jesus. Father, we just uh thank you for this community that you have blessed us with and the privilege of living with folks that uh are so u uh positive in their community and supporting their community. And father, the fact that was exemplified last night when the community came together and supported one another in in discussions about benefits for each other in this community. And we just thank you for that. Father, we thank you for our first responders and we thank you for our military across the the globe that are standing in guard 247 for each and every one of us. We pray for their families as they're absent from their homes. Father, go with us through this meeting today and lead us and direct us in the way that you would want us to go. These things we ask in your ch son Jesus name. Amen.

Amen. Join me in the pledge to the flag. 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.

All right. Well, thanks again uh for joining us today. It's great to see everyone here and those that are watching on television. Um, again, uh, thanks, uh, to the mayor of West Point once again with us today. Thanks for joining. I think I saw we have Representative Steve Bratcher right over there. So, thanks for joining today. And, uh, hopefully I'm not missing anybody else. Uh, Pat Elmore. I'm sorry. Pat Elmore. Pat Elmore. I I should recognize him, shouldn't I? Do you want to stand up, Pat?

Okay. All right. All right. Very good. Um, yeah, we just uh I I was just reminded today again u some friends of ours uh government uh employees and and are being impacted by the shutdown. Um that shutdown is still going on. I haven't watched the news today. Is that correct? So uh impacting uh lots of people and uh so just uh remembering them and hopefully we can get past this this time and and get back to some uh normaly uh pretty soon here. All right. Uh one just one other comment some of you were here last night and u believe uh magister clim mentioned it in his prayer just a a a good town hall meeting last night. was very uh impressed by uh how it went and just another example of the types of people that live here in Harden County. Just uh very uh selfless and but yet ready to get up and and say, "Hey, this is something that we need." And so it was it was a good evening and I just appreciate the tone and the way that it was handled by everyone that was here and some of you are even back tonight. So, I appreciate that. All right, let's move on then to approve the Harden County Fiscal Court uh October 14th, 2025 minutes. Is uh just need a motion to approve?

So, moved. Second. Second. Okay. Moved and seconded. Any discussion? Okay. Roll call, please. Squire Clim, yes. Squire Hicks, yes. Squire Muse, yes. Squire Pennington, yes. Squire Saltzman, yes. Yes. Square Thompson, yes. Square Whitehead, yes. Squire Yates, yes. Judge Tall, yes. Motion passes. All right. Next, we'll move on to some presentations. And yes, the first one up is our coroner, Pat Elmore. Good afternoon, judge, members of the court, members of the audience. Good afternoon,

Mr. Sin. I appreciate the free introduction there. We're going to present tonight the August and September cases for the coroner's office. As you'll see, we had 90 cases total for the the month of August. Uh four of those were accidents, had two motor vehicle collisions, and we see the overdoses and meth those overdoses was methamphetamine. Uh we worked three suicides, 82 naturals, and one autopsy case. For September, we had a kind of held true to that fact. 89 cases with four accidents. We seen two injuries from falls. That was that was two of our cases. An overdose methamphetamine oxycodone hydrocodone and actually an overdose on cocaine. Um 82 cases natural two suicides and one autopsy the two autopsy case I was talking about those were both three-month-old infants. So that adds a lot of to our investigative time and that's why you see they're still pending. The next page you're going to see kind of a breakdown of a four-year comparison. Um, autopsy cases took a surge this year. So far, we're at 18. We only had one last year. Um, at this time, we have 331 cremations signed and a case, a number that we continued is EMS transport to one, excuse [clears throat] me, and corner transport was 144. Next slide be our drug overdoses. We're down a fair amount this year compared to what we were last year. This, of course, this is only a seven-month total. We're at 25 cases for the year so far. Um, at this time, if it pleases the court, I'd like to get Justin Blair, our quick response coordinator, to come up. He's going to give you a rundown what's been going on with him. One quick note, the corner's office has been doing an extensive amount of training on mass fatality. We've done some classes on that. We actually taught some classes. So, as we progress into that and we're also into the police citizen police academy season. So, as we progress, we'll be giving a report on that. But, if it's okay, I'd like to call Justin forward to give report on the QRT.

Are there any questions before I turn it over to Justin? Thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you. Good evening. Good evening.

Okay, so update for the last month with QRT. It's kind of hard to see from here, but um over the course of uh September, um we had uh a total of 67 resident residential units that we went to uh for the block byblock initiative that we have whenever there's a hot spot in Harden County, we go there, uh let them know, but also give them Narcan and teach them how to use it. Um so we went to 67 uh residential units. uh 27 of those we actually got to engage with the with the homeowner. Um we distributed 18 uh nollox zones and uh 51 resource guides so that they would know what resources are available available to them. Uh social media we have uh currently 1500 um followers, 564,000 views, 8,400 interactions and 17,000 page visits. And then we had some events over the last month as well. So the community events that we we did, we did [clears throat] uh there was save a life day and um we did that at Goodwill and we engaged with 37 people there, gave out two kits of of Narcan and gave away 25 uh resource guides. Then we had the Ragcliffe resource fair. We did we engaged with 15 community members um and gave out 10 uh resource guides. And then the one that I'm most excited about is I partnered with helping evolve recovery and we hosted a community nlloxxone training at the Goodwill opportunity center and uh it was two it was two sessions. One the first one was for the community as a whole and then the second one was for um the recovery houses in in this area and we had 165 people attend. Uh, we gave out 208 lock zone kits. Um, 225 resource guides and 10 of the backpacks that I showed you all last time we were here. Um, and then

obviously we had the 2025 opioid symposium and Shaina presented there on the OFR. Uh, and then I just completed the grant writing course um for a certification this week. That was brutal. Uh so um but then so our September totals we connected with 250 uh community members. We gave out 228 uh kits of Nlloxxone uh 311 resource guides and then 10 backpacks distributed. And then I I can't not uh give props to um EMS and Mr. Cook uh because he created a way for me to track the leave behind program and our ESO system. So now I can see the data with all of that as well. So thankful for that. Any questions?

There's some pictures. That's me in my skirt. Yeah. Nice, too. Glad that made it to the cut. [laughter] All right. Questions? No. Okay. Okay. Thank you. All right. Thank you. All right. Next up, um, Sheriff's Office. Doesn't look like John Ward, but not quite John Ward, but I want to thank you for having me here tonight, and I want to say good evening to all of you guys. Good evening.

Thank you. Uh, law enforcement for August and September. The arrests were 181. The citations were 335. The warrants were 206. 1,041 civil 3,082 complaint calls accidents 129 and criminal cases were 162. School school safety checks 921, violation warnings 168, and attempts to serve was 2,234. Moving right along to office operations for August and September, we had 128 records checks, CCDWs were 133, and vehicle inspections was 1,78. Court transportation transports to court for adults were 75 transports to court juveniles three and we had 67 transports in state. That completes John the sheriff's report. Does anyone have any questions about it? I have a few things to add but okay. I just want to say for the financials at the end of September we were uh over $900,000 in the red and that is um accurate at this time of year due to the fact that we're getting ready to go into tax collection and we'll be getting tax commissions to complete that um the financial so that we won't be in the red. Uh, and I just wanted to remind you that 87% of our budget is actually manpower. [clears throat] And then when you add in vehicle

maintenance, vehicle fuel of over $150,000 to date, and vehicle insurance, which we have not received, but will be receiving it soon, I'm sure, Lisa. And that's uh about $150,000 if memory serves me right. And I'm going to tell about tax bills. We've had a lot of questions in the last few days wanting to know when tax bills were going to be mailed. Tax bills will be mailed sometime this week, maybe tomorrow or the next day. And um the discount will be November the 1st through November the 30th. And um if you haven't received your bill by at least probably the second week in November, you might want to give us a call and see if maybe you need another one mailed to your address. So, just let us know and I am going to make sure that's all I have on my notes and I think that's it. If you want to have any questions, tax bills or financials or anything.

All right. Thank you guys and have a great weekend. All right. Thank you. Thank you. [clears throat]

All right. Next up is our clerk, Brian Smith. So, um, in case anyone hasn't noticed, we're getting close to 2026, u which is an election year for local elections and federal elections. So, we're getting a lot of questions about that. So, that's going to be really my the sum of my report. Some very important dates that, uh, are uh, coming up that people may want to pay close attention to. Uh, Wednesday, November 5th is the very first day to sign or file candidate paperwork. Um, uh, regardless what office you're filing for, all of the candidate filing forms are on the Secretary of State's website, regardless of whether you file those at the clerk's office or at the, uh, Secretary of State's office. Um, it's a really easy to work through step-by-step menu. Um, if for some reason you don't have a printer, you can't print them off at home, the clerk's office is happy to charge you 50 cents a page to print those off and $2 a signature to notoriize. Um, and depending on which office you run for, the filing fees vary. Um, December 31st is the next big day that people should pay attention to. Um, it's a good time to go ahead and check your voter registration status. If you've moved in the last year, you want to update your address. But most importantly, whatever party affiliation you choose by midnight on December 31st, that's what primary you will vote for, vote in in the following year. If you are other or independent, then you would only um vote on any potential independent races that may uh appear in May. Uh the next big deadline is January 9th at 4:00 p.m. local time. That is the last day to file candidate papers for any candidates who run in a primary. Um there are cities Elizabeth Town, West Point, Sonora, and Upton who opt out of the primary. And then um the school boards and soil water conservation supervisors are also not um not primary based. And those dead that deadline is June 2nd.

Uh going on January 15th at 2 o'clock, we have a public drawing for the ballot position. That's always a lot of fun. I get to rattle the little bottle with all the numbers in it and play a quick game of bingo and everybody gets to to cheer or or cringe depending on where they are on the ballot. Um April 4th, first day to request an absentee ballot. So, we'll be getting those out pretty quickly. That day is going to come around um pretty quickly. Uh April 20th is the last day to register to vote. Um so, if you have folks who you know who are moving into the community, we have a lot of folks moving in for for work and for other reasons, make sure that they're registering to vote is the one of the first things they do when they get here. Um typical dates for um our or I'm sorry, the last day for an absentee ballot is May 5th. Um, I will tell you that in the presidential race, we saw a lot of uh slow mail delivery. Um, I think the postal service locally here does the best job that they can, but they are they are really understaffed. So, don't wait till the last minute to request or return those ballots to us. Um, May 6th, [clears throat] 7th, 8th, 11th, 12th, and 13th. This is in-person excuse absentee vote. So, anybody who would normally qualify for a paper mail absentee ballot can come in and vote in person. Some people last year affectionately called that senior voting. It's not senior voting. Um but if you are uh you are eligible based on age, illness, and disability. Those are legitimate reasons to come in and and take advantage of little to no lines. Next slide. Uh May 14th, 15th, and 16th is in-person no excuse voting. So any eligible voter will be able to vote um either here at the clerk's office or at Calvin Community Center. We want to thank the city of Radcliffe is always a great partner there and their staff is amazing. Um in the presidential race um in the general election, 47% of the people who voted in person voted during

the three days of early voting. So that is um wellliked here in Harden County and it seems to be equally distributed among Republicans, Democrats, and independents. And then May 19th is primary election day, 6 am to 6 pm. Um, I would love to tell you we're going to have a huge turnout and I hope that we do. Harden County traditionally does not. Um, but there are going to be a lot of local races on on the ballot uh as well as a an open US Senate seat and uh US House and uh um state legislative races on the ballot. Um, but we should have those returns to the public turned around pretty quickly. And that's all I have. related to the primary. The last slide is my contact information. I'll go over real quickly financially. Um we are on uh actually under budget for the year. So we're going to end the year in really really good fiscal shape. I'm very proud of my staff for for um being frugal with every dollar in which we are entrusted. Um we're also tracking um year to date what our collections and it's been up until we hit about September. In September, there was a just barely marginally dis uh discernable dip. My guess is that is people who uh were looking at a potential federal shutdown. News was u being discussed of that. People pro probably just postponing purchases that they had planned to make. Um and I hope that uh um this shutdown is a short one and that folks can make their their financial decisions in the way they want to. So that's the end of my report. Thank you all. All right. Thank you. Any questions? Right. Thanks for the good information. Appreciate it. All right. Next, uh there are some written reports that uh are available to anybody that wants to look at those from planning and EMS and 911.

Uh next up on the agenda are citizens concerns or comments. Uh does anyone want to u come up to the podium and speak this late afternoon? Okay, seeing none, we'll move on then. Okay, our next section is ordinances, resolutions, agreements. Um we had some last uh minute uh changes. So, uh, the first item up will be our resolution to approve resolution 2025207 related to approval of West Harden Fire and Rescue uh, lease agreement. And this is to house EMS ambulance and the uh, staff, the providers uh, as needed at uh, at this volunteer fire department um, station. Um, so that is what we're going to look at. Um, did we get some copies of the LA last one? Uh, unfortunately there was inadvertently there was several changes that were made and I don't believe that we got the last version out there. So, if you could could you bring that up here? And I just want to read so the magistrates all know just to make sure that we're all looking at um at the same thing. Okay. So this uh was actually revert revision three and so the only change in this revision just to make sure we are all looking at the same

thing here was section five before it uh talked about kitchen facilities as being common uh facilities for everybody that's at the station, the fire department and EMS. MS uh we added some other common areas just to make sure that that was clear. So now section five reads common facilities and it says the kitchen, bathroom, shower and laundry facilities shall remain a common area to both West Harden Fire and Rescue and Harden County EMS and neither party shall exclude use by the other and shall make every effort to maintain their suitability for common usage. Each party to this lease has the right to exclude the public and other third parties from these areas except by specific permission granted. So that is the uh section five as it reads right now. Okay. [clears throat] All right. With that uh is there a motion to approve this lease agreement?

So moved. Second.

Get that moved and seconded. Um, is there any discussion? I'll just say that uh this lease agreement, it's it's it's been a bit of a work in progress with uh our friends, but I I think that it's um uh all that goes with it and all the work that went into making this station um suitable for a 24-hour ambulance as needed u was impressive. And I I know we have some of our um um West Harden folks here, East View and and White Mills area of the county, the western part of the county. So, I just wanted to uh before we vote, just acknowledge u how much work you all put into this and um and and thank you for doing that. Okay, at that um we'll go ahead and have roll call, please.

Square Clim, yes. Square Hicks, yes. Square Muse, yes. Square Pennington, yes. Squareman, yes. Square Thompson, yes. Square Whitehead, yes. Square Yates, yes. Judge Tall,

yes. Motion passes. Okay. I want to do something a little bit different uh this evening because this is a pretty big deal. And since we have um Chief Gore here in our presence, um I thought that maybe we could just go ahead and sign sign this uh lease agreement while while you're here if that's okay with you. Okay. So, I'm going to bring it up here to the podium and then we'll get a picture. What is that? All right. So, congratulations. Appreciate all your work. And now if we could if uh everybody would just join us up here in front we'll take a picture. We could even invite those of you want to come up take a picture with us. Anybody else come up here?

Judge, judge. Judge.

[clears throat] Are we close enough? If we could get about three of those people in

come to the prize. All right. Next on our list is to approve resolution 208 and that's related to approval of Lincoln Trail AD agreement for engineering and GIS services. Is there a motion to approve? So move.

Second. It's been moved and seconded. Any discussion hearing? None. Let's have roll call, please. Square Clim, yes. Square Hicks, yes. Square Muse, yes. Square Pennington, yes. Square Saltzman, yes. Square Thompson, yes. Square Whitehead, yes. Square Yates, yes. Judge Tall, yes. Motion passes.

All right. Next is our consent agenda. And so, let's uh review these items. Uh the first all first four items are all financial uh we're looking at financial uh report uh the claim October claims September payroll and registers and resolution 206 related to approval of some financial transfers. The next item is an IT uh item and this is uh resolution 204. It's related to the approval of I work service agreement renewal for public works code enforcement and fleet management software. Next item is item F and that is um a resolution 205 and it's related to approval of personnel policies and procedures. This is a clarification regarding uh terminations and resignations. Item G is resolution 209 related to approval of link control ad board member reappointments for Rebecca, Jeff Keyi, and Kyle Silerette. All right. The next uh let's see the next four items uh resolutions 210, 212, 213, and 216 are all personnel changes from the road department. A couple of them for 911 and one from EMS. Next item is resolution 214. This is related to approval of FEMA uh Commonwealth of Kentucky, Division of Emergency Management Public [clears throat] Assistance Grant Master Contract. And this is in regard to our public assistance. Uh we have to sign this to get the money from uh the

federal money that gets sent to the state that eventually trickles down to to [snorts] our county. And uh this this had to be uh this has to be signed for us to to be able to get that money. And then the last um item here resolution 215 related to approval of information security policy version 2.4. So this is an upgrade an updated u primarily added AI security and uh restrictions uh on the use of AI. Last two items are minutes from the uh resource and community support committee and then also the finance committee. So that's what's in the consent agenda. Uh does anyone uh disagree or want to remove any of these items?

I don't want to remove anything. I just have a quick question. Okay. Is the red truck been repaired? The red truck has it's my understanding that it was inoperable for a while. It was and it has been repaired. Yes, it has. The other uh one has not will be it was too expensive to repair. Okay. I'm just trying to figure out why we're still paying mileage for an employee when the red truck is available. Okay. To get the mail. Yeah. I mean, it's fairly recently, but we can talk about that afterwards if you'd like. Okay. Thanks.

All right. Very good. Um any other concerns, disagreements? All right. If not, then I need a motion to approve the consent agenda items. Some move. Second. Second. Moved and seconded. Uh, roll call, please. Square Clim, yes. Square Hicks, yes. Square Muse, yes. Square Pennington, yes. Square Saltzman, yes. Square Thompson, yes. Square Whitehead, yes. Square Yates, yes. Chall, yes. Motion passes. Right. Next is uh times for some comments. Uh county attorney, you have any comments? I don't. Thank you. All right. Uh how about Brian? You have any?

I'll yield my time. Thank you. Okay. All right. We'll move on to the magistrates. Um we'll start with magistrate Chris Yates. I just want to remind everybody that our next emergency service committee meeting will be Thursday, November 20th at 3:30 p.m. All right. Thank you. Magistrate Salsman, yield. Uh, Magistrate Whitehead.

Yes, thank you. Um, today is National First Responder Day. I want to give a big shout out and thank you to all of our first responders out there. And also, I would like to express my heartfelt concern and um just let all those folks that are affected by the government shutdown, I'd like for them to know that you're in my prayers. And my prayer is that we can end this tomorrow. Um I'm I'm concerned about it. I have family that's affected by it. I have friends that are affected by it. And and even so, we're it affects us all in some way. And um just to let you know that my prayers are out there for [clears throat] you. And then a reminder that our next resources and community support committee meeting is Monday, November 17th at 3:30. Thank you. All right. Thank you, Magister Clim. Uh, yes, Judge. Next finance committee meeting will be Tuesday, November 18th at 3:30 across the hall. And also want to remind folks, please don't drink and drive and don't text and drive. Thank you.

All right. Thank you, uh, Magistrate Pennington. Well, Paty took my words, but National First Responders Day, but I just want to say thank you to all of our first responders and everything that y'all do. Um, I want to reiterate that our continued um commitment to making sure that you all are well equipped and well staff for everything that you all are doing. So, thank you. All right. Thank you, uh, Magistrate Thompson. Magistrate Hicks.

Well, it's been mentioned before, but I just want to say how proud I was of our community last night. I had a lot of friends here, a lot of people I grew up with and and know personally and I just commend uh the whole community for just being uh just being good people. Just want to be thank thank everybody for that. All right. Thank you. Uh Magistrate Muse, just remind everyone the next public works committee meetings Wednesday, November the 19th, 3:30 across the hall.

All right. Thank you. Uh, next fiscal court meeting is I have to pay attention here. It's on Monday, Monday, November 10th, moved from the 11th because that's a holiday and that's Veterans Day. So, um, we won't be here that day. So, we moved the meeting to November 10th, which is a Monday, at the same time at 3:30 3:30 p.m. Okay. And um yeah, I think that's it. So uh do we have a motion to adjurnn? So moved. Second. Moved and seconded. Any objections? Hearing none. Meeting is adjourned.