Board of Commissioners - Special Meeting

They're just talking between themselves. Burl special call meeting February the 17th 2026. At this time I'll ask the city clerk to please call the role. Commissioner Jeff Sanford here. Commissioner Sharon D. Smith here. Mayor Tom Watson here. Commissioner Curtis Baglinger here. Mayor Pro Bob Glenn here.

Thank you. Well, tonight's meeting had to be moved to a different time and source, a special called meeting. You'll notice our agenda does not have any comments section tonight for either the public or any elected official and that's by state statute which prohibits discussion of broad specifics at these meetings. So, if you please stand or remove your hats and uh pray with me, please. Heavenly Father, we come to you today asking for your guidance, your wisdom, and support as we begin this meeting. Help us to engage in meaningful discussion. Allow us to grow closer as a group and nurture the bonds of our community. Fill us with your grace, Lord God, as we make decisions that might affect the citizens of Orangeboro. And continue to remind us that all that we do here today, all that we accomplish is for the pursuit of truth, for a greater glory of you, and for the service of humanity. We ask these things in your name. All together, please say, "Amen."

Amen. I pledge allegiance to the flag.

Please join me. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America to the stands nation indivisible and justice for all. As we all say, amen. First item on the agenda is retirement recognitions effective February the 28th, 2026. This time I'll call on Chief and he will read the recognitions.

And first Heath Divine firefighter chief.

Okay. Thank you, mayor. Uh, honored tonight to recognize the retirement of firefighter Heath Divine. Heath began his career with the city of Onsboro August 21st, 2006 as a firefighter. He came to OFD after serving six years in the security forces of the United States Air Force. Most recently, he served as a firefighter at station two, which is on the east end of Onsboro, where he regularly filled in as the driver of Engine 2 and the Quint 2, which is the ladder truck of that station whenever called upon. His satisfaction during his nearly 20 years of service to the citizens of Onsboro, came from the opportunities to help others in times of need. He will work his final shift with OFD later this month and then seek opportunities and set out on his next chapter in retirement. My understanding is that Heath couldn't be here tonight because of scheduling conflict. Uh but uh once again just recognizing the uh nearly 20 years of service as he uh seeks to depart into retirement. I do have another one. I don't if you're gonna prompt me or I just go. Uh we also have a sec

uh we have a second retirement recognition. Rob Alvie, one of our fire lieutenants. Uh Rob Alvi began his career with City of Onsboro the same day that Heath did, August 21st, 2006 as a firefighter. He was promoted to the position of lieutenant in February of 2016 and has held that rank ever since. Rob's most recent assignment has been as company officer at station 5 on first crew. He's expressed that it has been an honor and privilege to serve the city of Owensboro first as a firefighter and then as an officer alongside many other dedicated professionals. Rob will be remembered for his laid-back demeanor as well as talents as diverse as woodworking and drone piloting. He will work his final shift with OFD February 27th before also setting out on his next chapter in retirement. Once again, uh Rob and his family had a scheduling conflict and weren't able to make it to the meeting tonight. Uh but if we could give Rob a hand as well.

Okay. Thank you for the opportunity. And if you would now give us Owensboro Fire Department annual report.

Yeah. Uh thank you for the uh opportunity to be able to uh come before you to provide this report not only to our elected officials and our uh esteemed uh professionals that are in the room and our citizens but those who will be watching this uh live at home and even later on by video. Uh so this is the Owensboro Fire Department annual report. So this is technically a look back at the year 2025. Uh so we're going to run through a few things. We're going to touch briefly on the the shape of the organization, get into emergency response, uh touch on some stats to kind of put some numbers to training, our firerevention, public education efforts, talk about some of our highlights, and then trend to look forward at some of our goals that we're already working on in 2026 for the year. So, our organization, you'll recognize fire station one while it's still standing there in that picture. The organization is really built on an idea, a mission that we actually uh put in effect out on the street. So that mission, you can read all the verbiage if you want to, but what what it comes down to is the words that stand out in that sentence to protect life and property. That's what we're all about. And in that order, uh, we stand by to protect citizens of Wsboro, protecting lives and protecting property, uh, for those who live here, those who visit here, uh, those who learn here, those who worship here. So, our organizational chart, I want to make sure that I shared this with you again this year to note the differences from last year's organizational chart, which you'll notice uh or if you're familiar with our organization chart, you'll see that the driver engineers uh over on the emergency service side have five on each crew instead of three. that was based on additional promoted positions, not additional bodies, but firefighter positions that were uh essentially transitioned into driver engineer promotional positions this time. Still

maintaining 100 uniform positions along with our uh administrative aid Carla there at the station. So if anybody has any questions later, we can get deeper into the organizational chart after I finish the presentation. So, uh, money is obviously a big part of, uh, what we need to run the organization. Want to highlight just where how much it costs to run the fire department for a year and then how that kind of breaks down. So, you see the big number on the bottom is a little over $17 million. Seems like a lot until you look around at other emergency services and especially at other fire departments uh, in contemporary times. Then it starts to look like it's not quite as much money. And you can see the bulk of that up under personnel. Well, you can see that's a little over $14 million. That's actually pretty normal whenever you get into salaries and benefits, what it costs because the fire department's made out of people, right? You have over 100 people uh including uh our administrative aid and it's going to cost a lot to run that organization. The rest of the money is divvied out into our training, our maintenance, our supplies as you can see on there, our capital equipment, and then we have other costs whenever it comes to uh safety costs and insurance and and other uh incidental costs for the organization. And once again, this isn't a calendar year budget. This is the fiscal year budget, and we're roughly twothirds of the way through the current fiscal year at this time. So to touch on emergency response, we're going to break that down a little bit. Our emergency activity statistics, you'll see the fires on the left, rescue and EMS on the right. So our numbers, if you track these from year to year and you look back at our uh previous annual reports, sometimes it can look like the numbers kind of shift a little bit. Sometimes it's not because things change that much out on the street. uh especially this past year, we went uh the the national reporting system actually changed. So how things are categorized are slightly changed. So if

we had 300 fires last year and 200 this year, it doesn't mean that the actual number of structure fires are that different. It's the way that they get categorized. So I'd caution reading too much into some of those numbers. Uh except to say that you'll recognize, as has been the case for well over a decade, rescue and EMS is the is the overwhelming majority of our runs. uh over 4,500 uh this year and that's out of seven of 7,667 total runs which is uh about 900 more runs than we had last year. And that doesn't mean that the that the community has just gotten that much more prone uh to having emergencies. It has more to do with tweaks in dispatch whenever it comes especially to uh to EMS type runs and how those are vetted to try to get into that sweet spot where we're getting notified on the runs that we do need to go on. A few years ago, you remember we got up close to 10,000 runs and we came to say, "Okay, this is a problem. We're going to work uh work with dispatch on that and AMR dispatch to try to hone that down a little bit." So, we were approaching 10,000 runs. We came down to about 5,800 and we're working our way back up. That sweet spot for our organization is about 7,500. So this is this is about where we need to be around 7,500 or just a little bit more and then we'll be monitoring it from here and adjusting accordingly. This is a 90th percentile chart and I'm not going to go into super detail. Uh, a lot of you uh, you should all remember when I gave a presentation back in November on our risk assessment where we did a little bit of a deeper dive into the numbers. What I will say is that you've typically been presented with averages. Uh, for us, the averages don't tell you nearly as much as 90 percentiles. What you're going to see more from us in the future is having our numbers broken down into 90 percentiles because those more fairly represent what the experience of the person out there is that needs our help. the the averages can make you feel good. They're always

better than 90 percentiles. And uh and our averages, like I said, they just look more favorable than our 90 percentiles. Uh but what you see on here once again more reflects that that experience for the person who's actually waiting for us to get there and and it actually aligns us with the accreditation model uh which you're aware that we've been working towards our accreditation. And so this puts us more in line with that. And once again, at the end of the presentation, I would be uh be happy to go back and cover any of these numbers and get any deep as deep as you want me to. Uh so let's touch on fire response. Uh you see some uh some graphic representation of some of the incidents that we've had over the past year. We had the uh the Nikos fire back in January, which is the type of fire. Fortunately, there were no uh casualties on the on the civilian side. Several of our firefighters actually were injured whenever a a ceiling collapsed in there. And that's that's obviously not something that we ever want to see. Uh as far as property damage, this is uh that building, it didn't just have Nico, also has Owensboro Health uh lab service in there. And so that's over a million dollar loss for that type of building. Uh on the right, uh I believe it was November 30th, you'll see another commercial building, 533 Triplet Street. If you remember there at the end of November going into December, we had a couple of uh high-profile fires, including this one that uh was roughly uh probably about a half million dollar uh worth of damage in that one. Once again, no no civilians, no one occupying the building, and we're grateful for that. Uh sad to say that there was one uh fire fatality in a structure fire in a residence in 2025, and that was on August 28th. If anybody recalls the news story of the fire in the uh it's a fortlex in on Evergreen Drive, 72y old Paul Cam. So clearly we're sorry to uh to his family. We don't ever like to see

fire fatalities in our community. Um but we did have that one in August. Technical rescue response. That's kind of a low frequency but high-profile type of response. Uh what you can see pictured here on the left, February 16th in eastern Kentucky had flooding and we had uh trained water rescuers who were able to be deployed near Big Sandy River to be able to help. We had six of our members to go out and spend some time helping to uh make sure that folks could get get to safety as they needed to during that flooding event. uh on the you see some of the team members in the middle and on the far right uh that image is from the May 17th tornado response to the area of London, Kentucky where we were able to sp send 10 of our members uh to do urban search and rescue response there. Uh very proud of what our folks can do whenever they're deployed in the field. very proud of the support that the commission, the elected officials give us to be able to be able to budget effectively to be able to train our folks and make sure that they're ready to deploy out there so that they're ready to respond and be able to protect us here at home as well. So, uh let's get into training just briefly. Uh touch on some of the numbers when it comes to training. There's a state requirement. There's actually incentive pay if people are looking. We do have our application period open and you'll see there's like an incentive pay that the state gives for hazardous pay. One of the requirements is 100 hours of training for each member. That's not an average, myself included, we all have to have at least 100 hours of continuing ed in certain categories uh to be able to get that. So proud to say that year after year we're hitting that metric and we never look at that as enough. That's a minimum. Uh not where we want to be. We want to make sure that we're pushing the limit getting even more hours than that. 16 of our members completed a hazardous materials technician certification class that was taught in house. 10 members completed a rope

rescue technician certification class. Eight started a joint paramedic training program that I'm glad to say is about twothirds of the way through in the summer is going to spill some new paramedics out. Five entry level firefighters graduated from our recruit academy back in November. Some of you attended that graduation. Uh, and then if you're in the fire service, I know like most of you aren't as familiar with it, but I ifsac course courses offered in-house, it's actually a pretty big deal when your department has a robust enough training program to be able to offer these in-house where you're able to do an officer 2 class, instructor 2, driver operator, and aerial operator. Those are all week-l long classes that put a lot of burden on our training staff and but really put our personnel through the through the paces and help to get those next level certifications so they're ready to operate our equipment and able to provide leadership in the field and even to get to the point where they're even better at being able to teach others how to how to learn basic skills out of the stations. Total training hours, as you see, over 23,500. We're proud of that. We have about 100 people. you figure that's if you do the math that's a lot of a lot of training for those folks. Um so once again very very robust uh training program for department of our size. Couldn't be more proud of that. Uh just some of the examples of the training on the left you see some of the night training that uh Corey put together with the recruits whenever they had they kind of simulated different incidents as they were getting punched out there towards the training. They're kind of simulating a night at the firehouse. some of the rope rescue training in the uh in our recently built fire training tower that that as you know is a big part of our uh overall plan for operation firehouse and redoing our training center. And on the right you see some more basic fire skills uh hose movement and uh and and flowing water to be able to put fire out. Those are things you have to practice to be

coordinated to do those things right when it counts. Uh next we'll move on to fire prevention and public education which is essentially what falls under the uh the fire marshall's responsibility within the department but uh but personnel throughout their fire fire department have a role in in how we deliver this program. So putting some numbers to that uh there were 405 hours internally in the department that were geared towards prevention and public education. 708 of our occupancies within the community uh were inspected. So that wouldn't be one or two family dwellings. It would be businesses and apartment buildings and uh like those types of occupancies. Uh 36 structure fire investigations. There were more structure fires, but these are the ones where it rose to the level where determination couldn't be made by the company officer on scene. And so they asked for the the fire marshal typically to come in uh to do a a more full investigation and oftentimes work with OPD to determine whether there might be a reason to suspect uh that someone was up to no good uh or if someone is actually hurt or or killed and that would uh obviously be one where the fire marshall be involved in investigation. uh 53 fire prevention and public education events. So those are like the those are the things that you do with a smile on your face where you bring the kids in, try to share the message and uh try to impact the culture through those young folks. And sometimes it's not so young folks. It could be how people cook in the dorm rooms. It could be seniors and how they live in the in uh facilities where they live with others or or even by themselves. Uh overall, we show 2,151 public education contacts. uh that's our best count based on the events that we've had. Sometimes those are based on estimates and that doesn't include at all the kind of uh penetration that we get in the marketplace from social media and from the news media. Uh if it did, I mean you could be talking about tens of thousands uh and maybe even more than that uh because we've we've really stepped that

up over the years too. some of these images that you see here uh with some nostalgia. You can look at the one on the left and see battalion chief retired now Steve Leonard who left last year and took his 42 years of experience with him. Uh you can see him talking to a group. Uh you can see in the middle you see uh Brian Roberts, our new fire marshall is actually pictured with with Steve Leonard in the picture with those kids. And then on the right you see a a program that we're really happy about that we do in October every year where we bring all the kids out and uh and let them have a little bit of fun but really embed that safety message in with them. That's our second grade program that has been highly successful and that uh we've been doing for decades now. Next, let's touch on some uh some highlights overall for the organization in 2025. The picture there is actually one of our guys stopping by. I think it was his niece had a a lemonade stand. I think we're all looking forward to the days when we can when it's hot enough we can stop at a lemonade stand again. Uh so that was a highlight for me. Uh so some of our highlights in 2025 and I apologize if the print's too small for you to read but I can read it for you. Uh we had some some really good events and and a lot of you did attend those events throughout the year and we were really glad to see you there. Uh some of those included an openhouse that we had early in the year at station one uh during our recruitment period. It was really successful and a lot of fun. We had a community feedback forum in August out at our new training center. That was a that was a good time. Not as many people showed up. I'd like to change that in the future, but it but it was good. Uh we had a recruit graduation in November. Uh appreciate the mayor and others who came to that. Uh the Walter Freeman family reception was a special event where we included the family of the namesake of our training center out uh last fall and uh had a really really good time with them. We were able to honor uh their father, grandfather, like whoever Walter Freeman was to them. Uh

to us he's a revered uh a revered chief from the past who uh obviously we carry his name with honor in the future with those training grounds. and then our annual awards ceremony there towards the end of the year which uh which I thought I think it gets better every year and uh and it's just a a chance to kind of give the due where where it belongs to those who really step forward and represent the best of our organization and sometimes those who are just great partners to our organization were able to kind of give them a little bit of credit this past year too. So, our response to Kentucky communities, I've already mentioned this, but the flooding in February uh in Eastern Kentucky and then the May tornado, uh we want to make sure that we're there for our for our neighbors, even if it's they're not our immediate neighbors. And we know that whenever the the time comes that we need help that we're going to have friends that we can reach out to as well. Uh the ribbon cutting for the updated Walter Freeman Training Center was on May 1st. Once again, fantastic event. We added six promoted driver engineer positions as a result of the of the fiscal year 26 budget. Big thanks to the city manager, the the uh the administration of the city and the elected officials for approving that. Uh we do have those those firefighters promoted in those positions at this point. They're already doing great things. We conducted an in-house recruit academy uh hosted a delegation from the Czech Republic which which was really pretty cool. If you follow us on social media, you may have seen some of that. Uh the city city of Wsworth has two sister cities and one of those in Olamotes in the uh Czech Republic and we were able to have a delegation from there come over and spend some time with us uh back around fall break and that was really nice. And uh lastly, not leastly, we participated in a site visit uh with our uh the firm that does the accreditation for our fire department, the CPS-C accreditation peer review team. And uh it was a really uh it was quite a week. We we had spent years preparing documents. They came in and poured

through everything. Uh met with some of the folks in this room, whether it was finance, HR, uh city manager, and and others maybe. Uh and really just did a deep deep dive into our department. kind of looked at the guts of it. How are things going? How are you guys keeping up with industry standards and on and uh and it resulted in a recommendation for us to go to a hearing to formally get accredited which is set to take place next month. So definitely exciting for us. Okay, so that's kind of a look back at 2025. I am coming close to the end here, but we're going to look at uh our goals for 2026 at this time. Once again, we're already into this year, so we're already working on these things. But it kind of gives you a sense of uh of the things that we have to look forward to. Uh the ribbon cutting for a new fire station 3, very exciting. Anybody who goes down uh Cravens and sees that new fire station coming up, I I can't imagine that you wouldn't be impressed. And I invite everybody out here in a couple months whenever we have that ribbon cutting, you're going to be very impressed. The uh groundbreaking for uh station one is going to come, bless you, is going to come uh mid year. That's going to be really cool. We have some uh really cool plans. It's going to be really exciting whenever you start seeing that station uh the new rebuild on that station come up after the demo on station one at 512 West 9th Street. We're going to be uh looking to expand our advanced life support capability. Right now, we run medics out of three of our five stations. We have uh medics in a training program right now. By this summer, we expect to have enough medics to run all three crews with medics out of all five of our stations, which means that you you have a a medic on a fire truck within four minutes of you pretty much anywhere in town. Uh we're going to start another recruit academy. We're actually doing our recruitment drive for that right now. We're expecting that to start in August. Uh hopefully to get us back up to full staff. And then uh we have the training division has some exciting plans for specialized training in in a lot of different areas that uh

high-profile areas such as water rescue uh firefighter mayday operations and then uh pushing forward a shift investigator program to make sure more of our folks are uh trained in investigative techniques for continuity and succession later on. Uh lastly, once again not least, is the enhancement of our inspection procedures to improve code enforcement compliance. Uh, excuse me. The city manager has been in some discussions with the fire marshall, myself about some changes that we can uh set in place to move our programs forward to get better compliance and to make our occupancies in town safer. And I think some of those ideas may have been put in front of you uh for consideration already, but you'll be hearing more about that in the near future, I'm sure. Uh, so I do want to thank you once again for the time. Uh, I appreciate it. That's that's essentially my organiz my uh my presentation, but I do have a couple things that I since I do have the mic real quick. We are taking applications. We will be taking them through March 14th. Uh we could use your help to get the word out. We're pushing really hard whether it's on social media. Had multiple people tell me they saw me on the news yesterday. Had a lot of cameras in my face. So I was on at least three different channels. U and it's it's because we care a lot. We're like anytime the media is able to to help us get that message out, we want to do that. By the end of this month, we're going to be sitting on nine vacancies. If you have 100 uniform positions, nine vacancies is a lot. We don't want to carry those any longer than we have to. So, we want a super strong recruit class to come out of this applicant pool. And we're already off to a good start from the numbers that I'm hearing from HR. And we want that to continue. So, please.org. Go to join our team and apply today. Follow us on Facebook. go to our website. The the city's website is onsboro.org. Ours is onborofire.org. And we really are looking for the best. So, if you've ever considered this, if

you've ever considered getting into this, then uh we'd appreciate if you'd give us a look. We also have an open house coming up on March 7th at our training center. That's at 1323 Davis Street. And we'd love to have a big crowd. If you're interested, if you just want to want to see what kind of tools we carry on a firet truck, you want to ask some questions of the firefighters, bring the kids out for some popcorn, but especially if you're interested in a career with us, then please come out and visit us March 7th at the Walter Freeman Training Center. Uh so this uh lastly before you ask questions, if you have any, uh this report will be available on our website soon. So, if you felt like I blitzed through anything, you'll have another chance to go through it and be able to spend some time with it. And as always, reach out to us at the fire station. I'll answer your questions now and I'd be more than happy to answer the questions of anybody in the public who wants to either email us there at the department or or stop by and ask. Uh that said, do you guys on the day have any any inquiries?

Any questions from the dis? I do. I have one, mayor. I don't have a question. I just want to say thank you because in addition to all these other things you're doing and and keeping us safe and everybody safe, you're also making us smile a lot. Some of your OFD stations are have been quite uh creative in keeping us smiling and talking about just uh enjoying Valentine's Day, for example. So, I just want to let you know that that that's nice to know. It helps us know these are real people that are helping us. So, just want to say thank you for that.

Yeah, I I appreciate you saying so. You're welcome. And I and I want to not just credit the guys for being game for the Tik Tok stuff, the the fun things they've been doing lately. Uh but also Maddie and Shaye, their their help has been priceless. I've got a question, Mayor. Okay, Commissioner Glenn. Uh so, one question I've got is uh the Mayday operations you highlighted, what does that involve? Oh, well, we call it writ operations, but I I call may I put mayday on there so it's more recognizable to you. Uh mayday is whenever the firefighter gets in trouble and has to call for help. Okay. Like if they're trapped inside a building.

Yeah. Like whenever we get to get to a place, if you're going up inside there, it's either to make sure nobody's in there so you can get them out if they are, or it's to go up in there and put the fire out so that it doesn't become a danger to the buildings around it or uh or to for the fire to have growth that gets even more dangerous for our folks. Well, anytime you're doing something like that, clearly you're putting uh our folks in harm's way and you could easily get into those uh down firefighter situations, whether they're uh they're lost, they're out of air, uh or ceiling falls on them or whatever, and they have to call a Mayday. Well, then that changes the whole whole operation. Uh and that like to go in and rescue firefighters is a very different thing. And our folks do train for that. And there's a special class coming up. Uh I think that's in April. And so it's it's this calendar year, but it's already budgeted for and and we'll be putting uh several folks through a multi-day class that is specific to special skills to be able to go in there penetrate that uh that fire building in that type of especially hazardous situation to pull our firefighters out.

Okay. Okay. And the other question I have in Evansville, they had a terrible fire which resulted in the loss of life of three children. Yeah. And there's pretty strong indications. There were no fire smoke alarms, working smoke alarms in that structure. They were renting the family was renting the structure. So, I know we do a lot. What What's one thing that we're doing over here that will make absolutely certain people know you need smoke alarms, whether they're renting property out or it's your own home?

Yeah. Uh, and we do try to push that message pretty hard. I think the the most important thing that we do is start when they're young and make sure that we're emphasizing how critical it is that that's that's just part of your house and they understand it's not you don't get extra points for having a smoke detector. It's essential and uh with new construction like the you'll see the smoke detectors wired in together. The work's kind of done for you, right? As long as people are maintaining those homes. Uh, not all homes are new construction. Uh so uh it's an ongoing it's an ongoing challenge and nothing bothers me more as the fire chief or bothers the fire marshall more as the fire marshal than to go up and and learn that someone's died in a fire that didn't have a working smoke detector in it. And we've we've seen so many variations of this. The smoke detector without the battery on it sitting on top of the refrigerator. the smoke detector that somebody has is has obviously beaten substantially, like laying off in a corner or whatever, uh if they're in an apartment and they don't want it to go off when they smoke or or whatever their situation is, it makes me sick to my stomach. Uh I I'm familiar with the the story that you're talking about and that's uh I mean obviously as a as a father of uh of boys it bothers me a lot but just as a person and as a person in the fire department it uh it's really hard to take because it's so preventable. Uh, but I say like trying to get that messaging out there and making sure that people understand that if I understand that some people even if it's 10, 20 or $30 for a decent detector that does smoke and hopefully even carbon monoxide that like sometimes that's a financial burden for somebody because they're just trying to make ends meet and everything's more expensive than it's ever been.

And you guys sometimes give them out free. We give them out for free. Yeah. I wanted you to get that message out. Yeah.

Well, yeah, that's where I was going with all this. So, uh, nobody in this community should should have to sleep in a in a in a room in their house or or in an apartment or whatever without a working smoke detector. Now, if you own an apartment or you're a rental home or whatever, then you have a responsibility and just ethically, you should be providing that and making sure that that's maintained in that home. That doesn't mean that the person that lives there is going to cooperate with you. They could damage the thing or whatever. But uh but even in the short term, if somebody's having a problem with their landlord or they're not keeping it up, then come see us with our smoke detector program is for single family homes, but we'll we'll give you one even if you're in an apartment and and somebody else is sherking their responsibility to make sure that you have one. The Red Cross has been a fantastic partner in that. We budget for a certain number of smoke detectors and then the Red Cross is always ready to jump in and make sure that we have plenty uh whenever we run our campaign. So, I appreciate you teeing that up.

Thank you. Strong. Thank you, mayor. Anybody else? Okay. Thank you for your support and thanks for the time. Thank you, Chief. Responsibility of all elected officials, public safety, and we take that very serious. Next item on the agenda is the city project list. City manager Nate Pac, please. Well, thank you, mayor. And that list was distributed for your review. I know you have a copy in front of you as well. So, no no specific project I'll highlight this month, but things are going well and happy to address any questions should you have any questions from the DA.

Yes. Okay. The precinct. One quick one. Uh, but Abby probably be the one that needs to answer the question. Do we have anything going on in Monarch? You don't even need to get up at the answer. No. Do we have going on in there yet? U do you want to talk about it? Okay. Thank you for the question. Yeah, we finally have things rolling. Um we have a matter of fact I paid um eight rental rehabs today. So they are Yeah. rocking and rolling um over Nate correct me a million dollars in

investment over there. Yeah. So, we're we're getting there, but uh apps are just starting to roll in with existing homework exterior rehab. Of course, we've got some a little bit more hurdle that we have to jump through with HUD, but um we're we're getting there. Great. Yep. Thank you so much. And thank you, mayor. Okay. Anybody else? City manager. Okay. city manager.

We're on five business, please. Okay. Uh I'd like to for you group to consider the approval of minutes dated February the 3rd, 2026. I'll make the motion to approve those minutes. Could I have a second, please? Second. Thank you. Any further discussion? Hearing none. All in favor indicate by saying I. I.

All oppose. Motion carries. Thank you. Item 5B is consider board appointments. Orangeboro Davis County Board of Ethics reappoint Rush Wilkkey as a joint city county appointment to a three-year term effected March the 1st, 2026. Midtown East Neighborhood Alliance appoint John Madison to a two-year term effected February the 17th, 2026. I'll make a motion to approve. Could I have a second please? Second. Thank you. Any further discussion, additions or deletions? Hearing none. All in favor indicate by saying I. I.

All oppose. Motion carries. Thank you. Okay. Uh item six, second reading of a ordinance and there will be a roll call vote this season. Ordinance 1-2026, an ordinance annexing to the city of Owensboro certain unincorporated territory in the county of Davis adjoining the present boundary line of the city being property located at 3500 to 4,300 block of West Parish Avenue, State Highway 81, containing a total of 121.605 acres more or less at the request of the city of Owensboro, Kentucky. read for approval on second reading the 17th day of February 2026.

Um I'll make a motion to approve. Could I have a second please? Second. Thank you. City manager. Would you like to?

Yes, mayor. Happy to give a brief summary. We discussed in more detail at our last meeting, but this is second reading of an ordinance annexing into the city approximately 121 acres on West Parish Avenue just west or outside of the bypass. as the clerk read it is city-owned and we u purchased this property to serve as an industrial park as we're very close to building out the air park with only 20 or 25 acres there remaining for development. Uh and so this is the Massie property which again we're developing into industrial park and this site is uh or this annexation is just one step in the process for development. Thank you. Any further discussion? And none. Roll call, please. Commissioner Sford,

yes. Commissioner Nesmith, yes. Mayor Watson, yes. Commissioner Maginger, yes. Mayor Pro Tim Glenn, yes. Thank you. Item 16, please. Ordinance 2-2026. An ordinance annexing to the city of Owensboro certain unincorporated territory in the county of Davis adjoining the present boundary line of the city being property located at 2300 to 2500 block of Pleasant Valley Road containing a total of 34.798 acres more or less at the request of the city of Owensboro, Kentucky. Read for approval on second reading the 17th day of February 2026. Thank you. City manager, please.

Yes. Like the last item, this is the annexation of a city-owned property. We acquired this, which we referred to as the panel property back in the fall. And like the last item, this is just one step in it development of the site. So happy to recommend approval. Thank you. Any other discussion? Hearing none, roll call, please. Miss Davis, mayor, can we get a motion, please? And a second. Motion to approve. Second. Thank you. Okay. Do we have a roll call vote now? Yes, sir. Commissioner N Smith, yes. Mayor Watson, yes. Commissioner Mager, yes. Mayor Pro Tim Glenn, yes. Commissioner Sanford,

yes. Thank you. Item 6C, please. Ordinance 3-2026, an ordinance annexing to the city of Owensboro certain unincorporated territory in the county of Davis adjoining the present boundary line of the city being property located at 3230 Warehouse Road containing a total of 1.014 acres more or less at the request of Addison Miles LLC read for approval on second reading the 17th day of February 2026. Thank you. I'll make a motion to approve. Could I have a second please? Second. Thank you, city manager.

This is second reading of another annexation ordinance. This is just over one acre that we're annexing on Warehouse Road. The owner intends to develop small industrial units for rent and inquired about annexation. And so later in this meeting, we will consider a standard annexation incentive for this property. Thank you. Any other discussion? Hearing none. Roll call, please. Mayor Watson. Yes. Commissioner Maginger, yes. Mayor Pro Tim Glenn, yes. Commissioner Sanford, yes. Commissioner Nesmith, yes.

Thank you. Item seven, first reading of an ordinance. Miss Davis. Ordinance 4-2026, an ordinance amending chapter 2, article 5 of the Owensboroough Municipal Code, relating to the Owensboroough Human Relations Commission, introduced and publicly read on first reading the 17th day of February, 2026. Uh, city manager.

Uh, yes, sir, mayor. This is first reading of various changes to the ordinance creating the Owensboroough Human Relations Commission, or HRC, as we'll refer to it. The HRC was created in 1972 in accordance with the author authorizing state statutes and our local ordinance has not been updated since 2001. The proposed changes are really not substantial. They're largely clarification and cleanup of the current ordinance. Those changes include the following. Changing references of appointed members from commission members to board members to match language used with other similar or existing organizations. Reducing the maximum number of board members from 15 down to 12. The HRC board is larger than really every other board or almost every other board for similar organizations that we create and to which we appoint the board members. So I think OMU, RWR, those kind of organizations typically have five to 10, sometimes a little bit more. So we're kind of getting this down in line with other organizations. Uh we're staggering those new terms of the reduced number of board members. We require that board members must be a resident of the community for one year prior to their appointment and remain a community resident for the duration of that term. We clarify that the HRC is authorized to refer complaints to appropriate agencies, which I believe is their long-standing practice and what they typically do is their current mode of operation. Uh, and then finally, we clarify that the HRC may, but is not required to conduct investigations into complaints received. That's what the ordinance says now. So, we're not changing this responsibility. We're just clarifying with additional language to make that more clear to the average reader. Uh these changes were made in consultation with uh some of the leadership including the chair, vice chair of the organization and the executive director as well. I know some of them are here as well should you have questions for them. So uh mayor that in

summary is what you're having first reading of this evening. Thank you. Any further discussion from the dis? Thank you sir. I municipal order

municipal order 4-2026 a municipal order authorizing and directing the mayor to execute an application for law enforcement protection program grant funding through the Kentucky Office of Homeland Security in the amount of $46,44485 proceeds of which will be utilized by the city of Owensboro Police Department to purchase rounds of ammunition for range and duty rifles. rifles and pistols. No match required from the city. Read for approval on one reading the 17th day of February, 2026. Thank you. I'll make a motion to approve. Could I have a second, please? Second. Thank you, city manager. I have nothing to add. Mayor,

thank you. Further discussion from the dis hearing. None. All in favor indicate by saying I. I.

All oppose. This motion is approved. Item 8B, please. Municipal Order 5-2026, a municipal order authorizing and directing the mayor to execute a memorandum of agreement with Addison Miles LLC providing for the consensual annexation of unincorporated property located in Davis County at 3230 Warehouse Drive containing a total of 1.703 acres more or less and further providing that the city shall reimburse Addison Miles LLC 100% of the total adorum excluding including school tax, general fund net profits, and general fund occupational tax revenues derived from the property over a designated 5-year period. Read for approval on one reading, the 17th day of February, 2026.

Okay, I'll make a motion to approve. Could I have a second, please? Second. Thank you, city manager. This municipal order approves our standard five-year incremental tax rebate, which we provide as an annexation incentive. We do this fairly regularly. This is our standard incentive and this is related to the warehouse road annexation that you approved earlier in this meeting. Thank you. Any discussion from the dis hearing? None. All in favor indicate by saying I. I. Oppose. Motion carries. Thank you. See the manager items. Uh first Mayor Angela Winger will present the January financial report. Thank you, Miss Winger.

Yes. Thank you, Mayor. Um the PowerPoint presentation will be on the general fund activity. I'll be reporting on the month of and the seven months ended January of 2026. You may refer to page three of the financial packet for more detail. So for our first slide um for the first month for the month of January actual revenues of 5,692,752 were less than budgeted revenues of $6,122,430 resulting in a variance of $429,679. This is primarily due to lower occupational withholding and insurance license fees. The next slide represents activity for the seven months ended January. Our total actual revenues of 49 million766,971 were more than budgeted revenues of $48,41,839 for a positive variance of 1,725,132. This variance is primarily due to timing of property tax receipts, higher net profits, and higher insurance license premium fees. This is offset a little bit primarily by lower municipal road aid, the timing of our tiff reimbursement from the state, and the riverport dividend. The next slide is for the month of January. Expenditures actuals were 9,151,437. They were higher than budgeted expenditures of $7,117,700 for a variance of 2,33,737. This variance is primarily due to timing of a land purchase. And if you'll remember last month, we had timing the

opposite way just because the budget was the year or the month before. So for the next slide, we have seven months of expenditures of 48,18,948. This was less than the budgeted expenditures of 52,992,448 for a variance of $4,883,500. This variance is primarily due to saving or timing rather in transfers to transit and timing in supplies and maintenance. And we also have savings in personnel services. For the last slide is uh included to demonstrate the cycl cyclical nature of the city's revenues and expenditures month by month. Expenditures are depicted by the red bar, revenues by the green. You can see revenues are higher in the months of October and November due to collection of property taxes. If anyone has any questions, I'd be happy to answer.

Thank you. Any questions from the DS? Well, I just have a quick one for Angel. Uh, so the money I'm sorry, mayor, go ahead.

No, I just Okay. Okay. um the money from the state for the uh uh the the downtown tiff and the 54 tiff. Have we received that? I know I've asked before or so is that included in our collections or are we still waiting? Uh we just got the letters uh the um the preliminary letter for gateway and we got the uh second letter from uh the state for the downtown. And when I say l second letter, it's because we appealed to them with additional more support and we were able to get like 17,000 more from them on the downtown and we just got those letters last week and so um they are offering a a payment option now rather than a check. So we're hoping to get those payments where it would be direct deposit

soon. Yes. Excellent. Okay. Well, thanks for keeping on top of that and of course, as always, thanks to you and your great staff, all the wonderful you work you do. We're proud of you and we couldn't do what we do without you. Appreciate that. Thank you, mayor. Okay. Like to make a motion to file for audit. Can I have a second? Second. Thank you. Any further discussion, additions, or deletions? Hearing none. All in favor by saying I. I. All oppose. Carries. Thank you. The city manager.

Uh yes, mayor. Up next are personal appointments. We have uh for new hire probationary status full-time non-Ivil service appointment of Victor Beard, bus driver with the transit department effective March 2nd. probationary full-time non-Ivil service promotional appointments of Bryce Garrett, a driver engineer with the fire department effective February 22nd and Michael Shepard, bus driver with the transit department effective February 22nd. And then for regular full-time non-Ivil service status or regular status so they've completed their probationary period Mariano and Mackenzie labor maintenance helper with the grounds department effective February 17 and Joshua Bennett and John Preston sergeants with the police department effective February 23rd.

Thank you. Motion to approve. Have a second please. Second. Thank you. Any further discussion? Hearing none. All in favor indicate by saying I. I. All oppose. Motion carries. Thank you. Item 10. I'll make a motion to adjourn. Could I have a second, please? Second. All in favor indicate by saying I. I. See you later. And thank you.