City Council - Regular Meeting

I'd like to call this August 18th, 2026 City Council meeting to order and we'll call on Ward Ford to do the invocation.

Please join me in prayer. Dear Heavenly Father, thank you for this evening. Please give this board your wisdom and guidance as we go through our business tonight. The next couple of nights, we've got a lot of things. that are important to our city that we need to make decisions on, and just give us the guidance and wisdom to make those decisions based on your knowledge and not our own. We ask you to protect all of our citizens, protect the people on council. Just guide us and protect us. In your name we pray. Amen.

Amen. If you can stand for the pledge, please do. I call on the clerk to call the roll, please.

Council Member Smith.

Present.

Council Member Stallins. Council Member Marsh.

Here.

Council Member Crabtree.

Here.

Council Member Hughes. Here. Council Member Martin. Council Member Sumner. Here. Council Member Meek.

Here.

Council Member Bogard. Present. Council Member Velez. Here. Council Member Bell. Here. Council Member Droud. Here. We have a quorum.

Item 5, awards and recognitions. We have none this evening. Item six, we will go to public comment. If anyone's in the public would like to come and stand and speak at the podium, please state your name. Thank you. We are now open for public comment. No public comment. Okay. We'll move right on in from public comment into mayor's comment. I hope everyone got to see the new high school. If you haven't, please go out and see it. It is something to see. We had a ribbon cutting there last week. We had a great time out there at that and walking through it. And, uh, everybody be aware of the school buses tomorrow morning.

We're going to be a full time. Everything will be running wide open tomorrow morning.

Clayton, I feel sorry for you there, but, but, uh, Please be reminded of the students out at the bus stops and be careful of the buses. We want everyone to be very cautious of the children going to the school, first day of school for Public Christian County Public School. I'd like to say thank you to Dirt's Avenue Baptist Church, 130 years anniversary that we celebrated yesterday. Sunday, I mean, excuse me, there. And... Don't want to forget about the 4th Annual Hummingbird Festival on the 22nd of August. And I don't want to... We've got Summer Salute on the 11th and 12th. Come out on Friday night. The 1977 Experience Hollywood Swing. Saturday night, Harper Grace and Chris Jansen will be playing. So please come out and do that. Um... Nature Fest, we're going to have a lot going on in Nature Fest in September, so let's remember that on the calendar, and we'll have more reports on that as it gets closer. And now we'll go into Item 8, reports from officers and committee and guest speakers, Melissa Clayton, monthly financial.

All right, good evening. Let me get to bring you the monthly financial report for July. We didn't have any inter-fund transfers for the month of July, so remaining in the inter-fund is $25,000. Our payroll tax revenue, payroll tax revenue for July came in strong. We collected $2,248,659, and that's an increase over last year of 17.2%. Our insurance premium tax was a little bit down over last year. We collected $1,535.89, which is down 11.5%. And our business licenses were also a little bit down from last year at $120,708 for the month of July. We don't report on property taxes until October, so I don't have any property taxes to report. So for the month of July, we started the year with $722,907 in encumbrances. We collected $5,219,681, and we spent $6,306,082. So that is more expenses than revenue by $364,214. And we did have encumbrances at the end of the month of $394,715. So overall down for the year right now, $758,929. Our fund balance comparison, revenues over expenses, I will tell you guys, we had a three-pay month in July, and any time you have three pays, you have a whole extra payroll. So that's part of the decrease in July that we're looking at. Municipal road aid, we started the year with $88 in encumbrances. We collected $35,278 in municipal road aid. We spent $30,679. So we have $4,687 positive in MRA and we have zero encumbrances at the end of July. Our capital fund, we started the year with $52,503 in encumbrances. We collected $6,450. Actual expenses, $54,922. So revenue over expenses of $4,031 and we still had $50,400 in encumbrances. Our departmental expenses, everybody's going to be pretty much over budget for the year because of that third payroll, but I'll go ahead and go through them. Admin was at 8.8. Taxes at 21.4. Information technology, 19.9. Legislative at 25.9. Police department, 11.5. ECC at 9.2. Fire department, 11.9. EMS at 10.8. And fire prevention was at 9.4. Public Works Admin was at 8.6%, City Maintenance at 10.4%, Fort Campbell Contracts at 10.8%, Service Center at 10.6%, Parks and Rec was at 13.2%, the Sportsplex was at 7.9%, and the Aquatic Center is at 2.3% of what was budgeted for the year. Overall, in the General Fund, we spent 11.7% of our budget at the end of July, and Municipal Road had spent 2.3%, and the Capital Fund had spent 1.8%. So our cash fund balance, we started the year with $930 as our cash fund balance. We collected the $5,002,19,681. We spent $6,306,802 cash fund balance at July 31st, 202,309. Minus our encumbrances gives you your available cash at $17,857,594. Subtracting out our two reserve funds, our unassigned cash fund balance at the end of July, $16,410,297, and that's 37.1% of our adjusted operating budget. And there's the comparison between last year and this year. And there's our graph for the year. I started it with January. I'm going to go through December for the next six months, and then we'll pick back up and do July through June. But anyway, you can see we are on the downhill slope of our fund balance. Until we hit September, we'll be our lowest balance, and then we'll start going back up again in October. Our KLC investment fund balance, we started the year with $1,249,218. We collected $2,074 in interest in the month of July, so our cash fund balance for our investment is $1,251,292. And if we would have sold all of our things on July 31st, we would have collected $1,406,953. There is $155,661 unrealized gain in our investment. I'd be happy to answer any questions you guys might have about July's finances.

Questions for Ms. Clayton?

All right.

Thank you, ma'am. All righty. Item nine, approval of minutes.

Second.

Motion second. All those in favor say aye. Aye. Opposing? Okay. All righty. Item 10, Executive Order 40-2026, Hawkinsville Solid Waste Enterprise Board.

Effective immediately, Robert Martin shall be appointed to the Hopkinsville Solid Waste Enterprise Board. This term shall expire June 30, 2030. We do need a motion and a second.

Motion. Motion by Don. Second by Mike Bliss. Any discussion? Any none? All those in favor say aye. Aye. Any opposed? All righty. Now, item 12. Or 11, excuse me. Let me get the numbers right here. But under executive order, I need to go into closed session. I need a motion to close session. Under KRS 61.8101G. Those of you who do not have it, we need to talk about some property. I have a motion and a second. All those in favor say aye. Aye. Any opposed, likewise. Okay. We are going into closed session now. The closed session, no action was taken in closed session, and now we are going to item 11 under other. Any business under other? Anyone like to speak up? Okay, no business under item 11. Item 12, councilman comments. Any comments? All right, sink. You got a question. Lay it on it.

procedures when an open records request is submitted to the Hopkinsville Police Department?

I'm sorry, can you state that again?

I would like to know the policies and procedures when an open request record is submitted to the Hopkinsville Police Department.

That would be pursuant to Kentucky Revised Statutes, the Open Records Act, and the legislation where that law has to be followed on what's produced or what's not to be produced. And if anything is to be redacted or not produced, there's also attorney general opinions to give us guidance. So we don't have guidelines other than we follow the law.

Thank you.

Okay. Any other comments, questions from counsel?

All right. We're seeing none. I'm going to Since Chuck left, I'll make a motion to adjourn.

We've got a motion to adjourn. Second? All in favor say aye. Aye. All right, we are adjourned. Thank you, ladies and gentlemen.