Council - Regular Meeting

All right. I'd like to call to order the. If you can please.

We thank you for our mayor, our city council members, all our department heads who helped move this city forward. Father, we ask you as we go into this budget time of year and these items on this work session that you will give them the wisdom in order to make the best decision for our city. We ask that you keep safe our service members, both here and abroad. In Jesus' name we pray. Amen.

And if we can add real quick, Senator Dennis Peart. I'm ready to sit down. Oh, yeah, please.

Father, we come back to you and ask that you keep the Senator Dennis Prayer, his family, in your care and give them strength, give them comfort to all who loved him and knew him because we were all so very blessed to have him in our lives and to have him fight for this wonderful community. Father, we ask that you bless them during this time as he is committed unto you. In Jesus' name we pray. Amen.

Thank you. Beautiful.

All right. Thank you, Ms. Russo, for that. We want to just keep the former Senator Dennis Parrott's family in our thoughts and prayers. Unfortunate news that we found out early this morning about his passing, and so our thoughts and prayers out to the Parrott family and the Thomas family. during that time. So, all right. We are here today at our work session with some items of discussion. We, as usual over the past few years, we've had the Radcliffe Fort Knox Tourism Convention come in and do our presentation.

Bob has done this how many years now, Bob?

Your hair was almost dark when you started this, wasn't it? But that's an inside joke between Bob and me because we both went gray. Very young, we feel like, right, Bob? So if you want to come up, Bob is the secretary and treasurer, and we have our executive director as well, Ms. Kelly Barron here. And thank you for joining us. Always so glad to have you able to come and join us. Put some good things happening in tourism, some growth. Thank you. Are you all comfortable as far as the air? Because the council was complaining about how cold it was, and I'm hot now and sweating. No, not the council.

Everybody's good. It wasn't the council.

I'm burning up. We've got some of the tourism board back here. We've got even General Barron's here. Man, we've got a whole crew back here.

Surprise. All right, Bob, turn it over to you.

Thank you. Can you hear me?

Turn the mic. It's off. Sorry, Bob. I should turn it on. Just up top. Right on top. Switch. Pull it toward you. There you go. See the switch? Push it up. There you go.

All right. We're on.

There it is.

The amendment is going to be really easy. That is just a line item change from a non committed over to cover the travel costs where we went to Lexington. We had stopped doing travel shows as you know because we evaluate those and for a couple of years we just weren't finding that we were getting anything back for it, so we quit. But this year we went to Lexington, and we've enjoyed that show. We probably will continue it soon. The amendment is that fairly simple. This year's budget, as you see, is pretty aggressive. I do want to point out that we are spending down the remains of the money that We had accumulated after COVID because of the grant money, and we continued getting transit room tax money, even though travel had been discouraged by the state. The governor had told us to stop advertising. So we had done all of that, but we continued getting some funding in. So last year, we spent down some of it. This year, we're going to spend down the rest of it. It's a fairly aggressive budget, as you can see. And I want to add that next year, you're going to be looking at about $320,000 to $330,000, rather than the $523,000. So we have talked about all this. We know what we're going to cut, the high dollar items, and some of the other things that we will cut out. But for now, this is aggressive. If you look at page 3 in this, there are some things that apply. to the city specifically. In the music world, we started several years ago. We gave $5,000 to the bluegrass music. And then when you guys started doing yours, we gave $25,000 to you for the bourbon and blades. last year uh with the extra money we did 25 000 for uh two events and 45 000 to the city we had talked about because we had money doing 25 000 for the three events but the sod farm has canceled this year so at the request of the city we've transferred that to you so you'll have the 50 000 uh sadly next year that's probably going to be 15 000 instead of 50. but you'll have to work through whether that probably going to cap it at about 15 000 for the three events because when the budget comes back down to the normal and i'll remind you before covid when i sat here our budget was 274 000. so that's where we've gone over these years and now we've got to go back because we're spending down what we've had The other little thing in there on page three that I think a couple of members of your council have found exciting is at the bottom, we're giving you $10,000 for your use at Saunders Springs. As you know, Saunders Springs is one of the highest hits we have on all of our venues, all the website and everything else. The top five are, of course, Saunders Springs, Patton Museum, the bourbon, the knife, and Targa Falls. So those are top five. The city owns Saunders Springs, so we're going to give you a little money this year to help with the improvements of the trails and signage and things. This is non-committed, so you can use it as you see fit for the improvement of Saunders Springs. It's a new line item and I can anticipate we'll continue it next year, although the funding level may change a little bit depending on where we are with our budget at that time. So other than that, the advertising plan is pretty much the same as the one last year. We're still doing Atlanta Hartsfield Airport. We're still doing Indianapolis and some of the high ticket item budget items that we've done in the last couple of years. We've had good results from those. We get the diagnostics in and it's pretty exciting what we see. We know that even though the residents of Radcliffe don't realize this, There are a lot of visitors come here. We have a little over 50,000 a year that goes through the Patton Museum. Thousands every year go through the Bourbon Place and through the Knife. So we do have visitors here. And we do advertise outside of our area to encourage them to come here. And I think we're fairly successful with that. So that's our budget. That's our advertising plan. And those are things we'll ask you guys to approve next week when you meet again.

Anybody have any questions or thoughts about Thank you for putting in that new line item for Saunders Springs.

You're welcome.

I think over the years we've had our ups and downs with tourism as far as income and what we want to see in the hotels and stuff and a lot of times I hate to go back to it but it is what it is and I think You know, we always have to reassure people that, you know, or at least let people know, you know, we're not able to have the same taxing as some of our neighbors do, and it drastically affects us. I mean, I'm trying to think what the restaurant tax brings in for the, you know, to be able to bond and do some of the projects that they're able to do with our, you know, partners down in Elizabethtown. And I'm just going off a rough memory here, but I think it's about $4 million, $4.7 million that they take in off the restaurant tax compared to our what you see here, a couple hundred thousand. So it's a drastic difference. So we work with them.

And I think for the residents of Radcliffe, it's kind of important to remind them that we are restricted in what we can use for the transit room tax. It has to be directly related to the advertising for tourism. We can't sponsor. We can't partnership. There are things that we can't do that the KRS for the use of the restaurant tax is totally more liberal because a lot of that is generated locally, so it can be spent locally. For structure. Yeah. It's just different, and we do what we can do, and I think we do it fairly well.

Kelly's been doing this for a long time. Has a lot of experience.

Almost 30 years, if I'm not mistaken. We're pretty comfortable with what we have going.

Uh, any other questions for with the reduction of operating hours that we've had a patent? How do you foresee continue to support it from a tourism travel points?

I think things are fairly well.

You know, everybody has that out on the website. We have it. They have it. It's been advertised the change in the hours. I'd like to see them being open on Saturday, but you know, we don't run the army, so we just adjust. They're still getting a lot of put traffic there. Anybody else?

Bob, I noticed that AUSA. There's a $200 contribution. I'm sure that's fallen considerably. Is there another entity like AUSA that is receiving money from tourism?

When we do things like that, there's some advertising connected to that. So anytime we're doing those kinds of community things, we generate some advertisement through them for those things. And we do have a few others that we do. Okay. Yeah.

Anybody else?

All right, Bob, well, thank you. All right, Mr. Barron, before you leave, so we always enjoy having you here, obviously. You know, it's always great to see you, but it was my understanding from several people that's sitting in the room that you, I think, just came across your 30-year mark at tourism. Is that correct? That's correct. Oh, my goodness. May. So we didn't forget about you. We wanted to make sure we had a meeting. That's right. And so we want to recognize you for your, that's why you're here. That's why all these lovely people showed up and you thought you were going to get just bamboozled up here, didn't you?

He had to go get dressed to get water with a coat on. Where's he going?

Well, do you remember when you started? Tell us a little bit about your road to 30 years.

Many years ago, things were a lot different, especially with technology. I think we shared a website with the city, maybe the chamber at that time. We didn't even have a website. Didn't have a Facebook page. Didn't have social media. It's changed so much over the years.

Well, you know, 30 years, of course, me going back only 20, that was 10. Was there a tourism before you or was tourism? Yes, I'm like the second director. So who was the first? I don't remember who this was. Westroy was the first director. Westroy, okay. Of course, I remember West, but yeah. Yes.

And they shared an office with the Chamber of Commerce. A lot of changes over the years.

So 30 years. Anything stand out to you over the 30 years?

I think our budget when I started was like $90,000, and now we're like $250,000, $300,000, at least our income. So that's changed a lot, so we have more money to work with.

And you've seen up and downs at Fort Knox and the growth and good and bad of... everything between right well we want to recognize you miss baron for your 30. i'm going to leave the plastic off because i don't want to get fingerprints all over but i'm going to put this paper behind it so i can read it let me see if i can read it hold on let me see there you go thank you for your 30 years of service and dedication to the city of rackla fort knox tourism commission your hard work and vision and enthusiasm have helped showcase our community and created long-lasting memories and countless visitors to our community. So we'd like to recognize you.

I'm going to leave the plaque, so I'm going to leave it up. We're all going to come out and join you. Yeah, come on.

Everybody come up.

I want to get a picture. We'll take one, then we'll get everybody up here. All right, you ready? One, two, three. All right. I'm tall. I can be seen. I've never pushed. All right. All right. One, two, three. Perfect. Anybody got one? I'm sorry.

I'll try harder. Don't.

pretty good about you

I have to send them my work phone.

Well, I'm done with you, Bob. I was so glad there was no mean questions to you tonight. I thought there... Thank you. I think... Is there any questions potentially for Bob or Mel? So I think we're good. Thank you guys. See you, Gwen. See you, Debbie. See you, Debbie. Bye-bye. See you guys.

All right.

Well, we will move on to item number two, Mr. Pike. This is an agreement between the city of E-Town. Chief Cross is out here if we have any questions, but this was an agreement between the city of E-Town concerning the gun range.

Chief, do you want to come forward and preface our discussion?

A couple years ago, Chief Jeremy Thompson and I started discussing the possibility of having a range together. The range down at the landfill had a lot of members. It became increasingly difficult to get range dates, you know, the ones you prefer. By law, you know, we have to qualify, have a date fall and a low-light fall every year, but You really want to train more than that, even though you have to qualify twice a year. So Jeremy and I started discussing it. We were talking about a place to have the range. We even looked at locations maybe in Radcliffe where we could have it here. They could pitch in, help us with the cost of it. Never really found a location to work out well. So they have a lot more options. space than we do so we were able to find a location and come up with it and we came to the agreement of us pitching in a hundred thousand dollars towards the construction of the range and you know of course jeremy and i are friends uh police chiefs uh police officers uh we had a gentleman's agreement you know you help us pitch in on this and this is just as much your range as it is ours In fact, your logo will be posted on the range at the gate and on the building. So we just struck up that partnership in having this deal come about. So we're extremely blessed to have a partnership with D-Town like this that we have. This is going to be a great thing to allow us to spend more time training in an area that's very important to us. Yeah, I really wish we would have done this wild time. Yeah, now we had some federal forfeiture money that I tried. I may have mentioned that to y'all couple years ago. My plan was to try and use some federal forfeiture money in doing this, but the laws with the DOJ prevented can't share those things. And they considered that while we would maybe be paying directly to the vendors that were going to supply the building materials, they still considered that sharing. So we couldn't weren't able to do that. So I had to come to you all to ask for the money from the city.

So it's a closed range.

Yes.

And that is just for city of Elizabeth County city of city of Radcliffe.

But now the drug task force members or the drug task force is also pitching in some money so it won't be open to all the contributing agencies at the task force but those that are assigned to the greater hard county mass task force will have an opportunity to train there too as many deputies from the jail they don't have members right now they don't have members there but if they when they get if they get members back in any member that belongs to the task force will be able to go down and utilize it and um also the railroad the railroad police they've contributed too so but it'll be a you know a whole lot less than it was uh but ourselves and epd will you know, primarily probably use it mostly.

Chief, it just means so much more when our communities work together. Absolutely. Rather than having, you know, two different things going, we combine.

Absolutely.

It saves so much money.

It's easier, way easier on the wallet, too, when you do that.

When Chief, both Chiefs reached out, or of course Chief called me, and then Mayor Gregory and I got together and had some discussions, and really those, having those relationships just when you can work with the other communities, like Jerry just said, is it's just really supportive to have that backing and support. So I want to thank Jeff too, down there for his, you know, he's whatever we got to do kind of attitude. So,

And the actual agreement will be characterized as an interlocal agreement, so it'll have to be approved by both city councils and also by the state as well. But Chief is right that it'll be closed to the public, so it won't be like Knob Creek or something like that. And then Ratcliffe will have priority on scheduling. E-Town and Ratcliffe will have priority on scheduling, so no other agencies will be able to bump Ratcliffe out of the way, Ratcliffe and E-Town, so they'll work out all those schedules and As Chief alluded, we never want our officers to discharge a firearm in the scope of duty if they can avoid it. We never want that to happen. But if they ever have to do that, they need to be trained and they need to be ready to protect citizens and to take care of emergency critical situations. It's a good deal for Radcliffe. It's going to work out well. There's a little tweaking of the agreement that we need to make just in terms of term of the agreement because we want to have 10-year automatic renewals, which is also a good deal for Radcliffe as well. We'll be bringing that to you. It'll be at next week's meeting. And E-Town has already begun to look at their, I don't think they voted on it yet, but they've begun to look at it already. So my understanding is that they're expected to pass, so it's really not an issue. So this is a good thing. We need to move forward on it. There's no downside to it at all, zero.

Chief, you'll remember a couple years ago, I'll go back a few more years, when ammo was getting very expensive. And the range was getting hard to even get into. And we were trying to figure out if we could even get somewhere for at least one shoot a year.

So, you know, it's just, like I said, it's difficult sometimes when you have a lot of agencies trying to schedule their folks in to get their training in. And, you know, it's just difficult sometimes. And you have to have certified staff on site during the training. And, you know, so it's. takes a lot of scheduling and you got to leave someone when you're when you're scheduling have someone going you got to leave somebody behind to do the work so that you know that's a big deal to be able to plan that out and those are all sworn officers right yes from the chief all the way down yes absolutely everybody has all sworn officers

So the city council will be able to get us arranged for at least one. I knew it was coming. Sorry. So I love you, sir.

I love you, too.

You might be able to squeeze in. All right.

Any other questions, Chief?

All right. Thank you. Thank you all. Thanks, Chief.

Appreciate it.

All right. Planning and zoning. Mr. Murray Warner. We got several items on the agenda that look like you're responsible for, sir.

I'll try to make this as quick as possible.

There's quite a bit to go over. So the first item is a rezone application for the property at 1674 South Dixie Boulevard, Radcliffe, Kentucky, PVA 161-30-06-036. And they're requesting it to be rezoned from the R6 zone to a planned unit development or PUD zone. The applicant is Koppel Associates and Southland Land Trust and the size of the property is 14.24 acres. It's vacant right now. It does have paving out there and retaining walls that they installed because um it was originally rezoned from r7 to r6 which was it used to be park valley mobile home parks if you all remember this is the one behind across from save you first save a lot or save you food now we're out of the valley yeah that's hidden valley used to be called valley i think it was park valley back when kind of back behind where the um You had Dixie Mobile Home Park just south of it.

For some reason I remember that as Hidden Valley back in the day. It may have been.

It's been on Facebook a couple times.

It's probably changed names a lot.

Can you tell us what POD stands for?

Planned Unit Development. So it's basically a pre-planned development that could Really, you could have a residential use, you could have a commercial use, or you could have an industrial use. And you could have any really combination of such. There's no prohibited land use. And it's supposed to allow for creative development, like mixed uses or properties with multiple buildings on them, for example. So like in this case, they're requesting what would be an industrial PUD.

Is there anything like years ago when we were looking at Louisville, we had this area where you had apartments on top and business on the bottom. You would have a mansion here, but you'd have Section 8 right next to it. Everything was mixed.

It could have been a PUD.

I always point to Norton Commons up in Louisville, if you're familiar with that area. That's what I'm talking about, yeah. That's a classic example of a planned unit development. it's a it's a weird zone like murray said it could be one use or it could be a combination it could be mixed uses normally you wouldn't do that right and along with the rezone they also have to submit a plan to show what the property is going to be used for so there is no pud zone without the plan they go together hand in hand so as murray said this one uh is going to be because apartments didn't work out, right? So it's going to be the PUD industrial zone.

Yeah, they had 244 apartment units. That was approved April 14th of 2023, but they just kind of got lukewarm on the market because everyone was building apartments, especially all you have to do is drive down to Easttown and see all the huge apartment buildings that have been built down there. some of which are full, some of which are not full. So I think they just kind of decided, you know, we want to go in another direction with this.

They had gone in there and taken out all the homes a few years back. Did they put down like concrete pads or something? It looked like they were getting ready to start something and then didn't finish it.

Well, it was the apartment development. So they had that approval and we were out there when they were putting it down. It was... I think it was April of 24, I believe, but about a year after they got approval, but they went out and put all, like if you look at your next packet, it's for the site plan, but they went out and they put the parking areas and the drive lanes in and the retaining walls, and then they just full stopped. So all the infrastructure.

Is this the same group or a different group?

Same group. And the utilities, they put those in too. So they put a ton of money out there and they've just sat on it and just kind of just came up with a different idea.

So by submitting another rezoning request, are they in talks now then of actually moving forward with that property and putting something there or?

That's the next item. Go ahead and tell them about the plan, Murray.

OK.

Thank you.

If you don't mind, I'll just go to the next one just to tie in with this. So it's a preliminary PUD site plan application for Radcliffe Contractor Shops. And of course, same applicant, same location. And it's for 15 contractor shops and eight storage units for a total of 23 buildings. Of course, as I've said, it's an industrial PUD. All the infrastructure is in. It's currently vacant right now. And, well, the Planning Commission, going back to the rezone, the one thing I wanted to say is that the Planning Commission did recommend approval of the rezone on this one. They conditionally approved the preliminary PUD site plan. So it has to be approved by the planning commission, then separately approved by the city council for the Radcliffe contractor shops site plan. And it was contingent upon meeting review comments from planning, engineering, and also for putting notation on the plan, defining the land use of contractor shops. Restricting outdoor storage, restricting hazardous material storage, noting buffering of adjacent properties, and noting drainage and erosion control requirements.

So you may be asking yourself, what are contractor shops? And that was discussed during the hearing. And the representatives or the owner basically said, these are going to be, these are not retail shops. These are shops for small entrepreneur businesses. For example, a landscaping business or maybe a painter or a drywaller or something like that.

Maybe a roofer, but they need a lot of space normally. HVAC or something.

Something like exactly a small independently owned HVAC company would be a good example. Yep. Something like that. Restoration, loss mitigation, that kind of thing. And so this would be an affordable alternative for that type of company, that type of small independent contractor.

You normally wouldn't have a great big company that would come in and rent this. It'd be a small mom and pop type or one man outfit, right? Or one woman outfit.

And so they could rent the space, and then they could store their equipment. They could store supplies. And so you could see the Planning Commission was concerned. They didn't want outdoor storage, right? Don't really want that. Don't want to store ultra-hazardous chemicals. And so we're going to have some language on here to put some restrictions on here and to explain further what it is they can do. The engineers who showed up, they were very amenable to the conversation. And apparently the developer has done this type of thing before in Louisville. But it's an interesting idea. And that type of, that portion of the economy, I think, there is a need for that. Because, you know, commercial rents are very high right now. And so if this is something where, you know, you can get in and out and you have access and maybe you have a small office in this contractor shop with the telephone and computer and do invoicing and that sort of thing. Makes sense.

Makes sense on the overhead to cut down on overhead.

Exactly. So the Planning Commission was very open to it. They were concerned about these issues here in terms of the exact use of, you know, we we don't want dangerous chemicals. I mean, Gasoline is a dangerous chemical, right? Ammonia fertilizers are dangerous, right? But they're not ultra hazardous where if you have a spill, you got to start evacuating the area, right? It's not like ammonium chloride at a chemical plant or vinyl chloride or something like that.

Yeah, exactly.

So you don't want that. But if it's done right and done well, this could be a good idea. The Planning Commission was good with it. So the way this works is the Planning Commission approves the plan They recommend approval of the PUD zone to you guys. So the way our ordinance is structured, you approve the PUD zone if you think it's a good idea. And the Planning Commission was unanimous. They thought it was a good idea. But they've already approved the plan because the Council doesn't have to vote on the plan, do they?

So they vote on the plan, too. Oh, they also do that? Okay. So they independently vote on it.

Oh, I had it wrong.

But Planning Commission does vote on it, too, don't they?

Yes. Yeah. Okay. All right. But it's not necessarily a recommendation, but our ordinance requires double approvals, right? Okay. That's what it is.

And they're taking out the residential properties. There's no residential properties now. in this new plan. Yeah, there's no apartments, no apartments, no residential.

Yeah. And they, they wanted some small storage buildings. But, you know, they didn't want equipment and mowers and, you know, oil drums and stuff sitting outside, you know, so it's all going to be contained. You know, they had representations of garage bay doors and that sort of thing. So commission Thought it looked good. I thought it looked good, too.

To that point, I mean, there is one building closely located to where my branch bank is at that I think has a similar use, if you will. So I can envision what you're talking about. We're talking about 15 units plus those eight units, maybe additional storage space for those 15 units.

yeah they didn't really specifically go into how those storage units were going to be used but i guess maybe it's just like overflow i would think they would be primarily used by the tenants like if they wanted to rent additional space for storage they could do that the one i'm thinking of that's near my branch is all i got

is like you don't have something built you have to go build it yourself right so and that's in the commercial areas and the applicant didn't think apartments would go you know we have a lot of apartments in this county being built and we have a lot vacant right now so I was really hoping they would get started on those because they had a really good set of apartment plans. I just kept waiting. We saw the asphalt, the retaining walls going in, and then nothing happened. We thought, well, what's going on? Then the applicant reached out to me a few months back and said, hey, Murray, I've got an idea. I'm just really hesitant with these apartments. He said, everyone's been building them left and right. He was one of the people that waited. even though he got all his infrastructure and he waited to pull building permits. So considering he changed his mind on what he wanted to do with the property, that was probably a really good idea.

And the applicant was amenable to, as Murray indicated on his staff report, buffering. So some sort of fencing, some screening, because there are some residential properties nearby. But know there were folks at the hearing that were asking about what's it going to look like and property values and that kind of thing but the use for this going from r7 to r6 to this pud it makes sense because it's it's not going to be a moderate or heavy industrial use it's going to be technically warehousing is an industrial use but light industry right where you're pulling into your garage bay door and That's it's and it's not retail. So there won't be any products sold or anything like that. Not that I'm aware of because it'll be industrial. So they really can't do any retail sales. There's my understanding.

I suppose they could do wholesale sales, but we actually found a couple of definitions and we added them to the plan before this meeting. But to your credit, one of well, I think both the definitions talked about no outdoor storage both said both reference no hazards material storage so it's amazing that you had those in advance i'm like wow did you read this these definitions because like it's because i'm good yeah it's incredible so and then they did say one of them talked about fabrication We excluded that out of it because the other definition just seemed more suitable.

So when you talk fabrication, you talk about making things on site?

Yeah, we didn't include that in the definition that we used. So if they come back and say, hey, something needs to be in there, we can adjust it, the language a little bit. I don't think that was really their intent. It did talk about a small office in the definition we used, and they could have the contractor's office in there, which I think they did.

Yeah, they mentioned that, which makes sense. I mean, a place to have a desk and a computer and a telephone. Right. It seems kind of silly that you could store your equipment and supplies there, but you can't have a phone connection or a computer. Most of these businesses are going to have cell phones anyway. All kidding aside, it seems like a good idea. It seems like a good use of the property. Highest and best use, really, in my estimation. It seemed common sense and reasonable. The developer has a track record that's pretty good. you don't want it to remain concrete pads.

You don't want that. It's been vacant a long time.

And that doesn't help property values either. Three years.

It's been vacant well before that when they pulled all the mobile homes out of there.

But for the community and for the public, because this has been brought up publicly, especially during this climate of vacant properties and what's going on with this property, when you have developers and owners and investors of property that have already had an idea, had a plan, then that changes with the climate, with finances, with the number of apartments now all of a sudden are saturated. So I just want the public to know that We are at the mercy of developers and contractors, situational, you know, things that are going on within the community, within banking, within financing. So we can't force, like this prime example, they were going to do apartments and now they have set back and redesigned their property to still bring something to the city. It's taken years. And it's market-driven, yes. So I'm glad to see something coming up, but we don't know if it's going to be three years, if it's going to be four years or five years. And so now we have an answer to that piece of property that has been asked about through the media circuit. So now I'm glad to see that we're doing some of these things.

A lot of times, Murray will tell you, he talks to some of these people years out.

Things change.

Things take a while. The general public may not see something moving, so they ask questions, but it's not our role to announce what we're working on just because someone makes a post on Facebook or wants to go show a vacant piece of property. That's my point. That's time and energy they have to waste, not my time and energy.

And then when you bring us the concrete answers and they are moving forward and they're doing this, then we've got some factual information that we can share with the public.

And the good news is we still have the same developer that's in town. Yes. And we know he needs this because he started that progress

He's invested and he's had to shift. He's had to shift directions.

To his credit, he's not given up on it.

Exactly. Once he was actually out looking for maybe someone to come in and help him develop some of this, as the market turned, he kind of pulled that back. Now we're back at this.

He actually, sometime in the interim, he transferred part ownership to another individual. He's kind of been restructuring through this, but If you think we approved the apartment plan April 23, we're probably reviewing it sometime, well, definitely in 2022 and like 12 months before. So if you think about how much it's changed from an economic standpoint in the economy since like 2022 till now. We're talking four years now since it's passed.

It's a different world now.

It's timing. It's that process that makes you more successful.

It seemed a creative use of the property. And then also economically, you know, contractors are usually using credit to purchase and lease equipment and supplies and machinery and all the things they need. And sometimes they have cash flow cash flow is not necessarily collateral and so they can't borrow a lot of money to build a place but they can rent a place for you know so much a square foot they can do that so yes yes I was thinking win-win okay we're just getting a lot more creative now like the old bricks and mortar idea like you know people are

downsizing, you know, cutting, you know, uh, their margins so that they can be profitable and operate less overhead. Yeah. Like they don't want all that overhead. So if someone else can help them out with it, it's a big help.

So you're saying there are apartments and building, they're building apartments and they're just sitting there?

No, they put in all the pavement and retaining walls and curves. And then it stopped. And then it stopped because the market, everyone was building apartments. And it got oversaturated.

But I had a lot of people calling me finding an apartment and we couldn't find an apartment that is affordable to move in.

That's the key, affordable. That's the key. The new apartments are, like, close to $2,000 a month. Yes. In some cases, $1,600 to $2,000.

After the Rainbow was sold, the trailer park, people have a problem finding not equal price, less than equal to live in, and they have problems. They have been evicted already, and there are no places to move to.

Again, $2,000 a month apartment isn't going to help that situation. No.

Mary, what number are you on here?

C. I'm on C, third one. So C. Okay. The third item is the rezone application for the property at 120 Hearthstone Lane, Elizabethtown, Kentucky, Hearthstone Subdivision Section 1, Lot 119, PDA 182-40-04-119. And it's from a R6 zone to a planned unit development PUD zone requested by Fisher Homes of Louisville, LLC. They're requesting a zone map amendment of 7,315 square feet of vacant property from R6 to PUD. Surrounding properties are also vacant. Hearthstone subdivision section 1 was annexed and rezoned on February 10, 2024. The final PUD site plan of Hearthstone subdivision section 1 was conditionally approved by the Planning Commission December 4, 2025. The record plat of Hearthstone subdivision section one was reported on April 2nd, 2026. The site plan of Hearthstone Apartments was submitted for review on March 12, 2026. At this time, staff determined there was a discrepancy between the PUD and R6 zoning boundaries. The approved zoning boundary did not match the zoning boundary on the approved plans, which were the plats and site plans. The discrepancy was caused when the developer revised the plans to provide more buffering space between the single-family detached lots, being PUD lots and US 31W. after the radcliffe planning commission recommended approval of the zone map amendment from r6 zone to a pud zone so you might remember because you all were involved with the approval process of all this well there was a r6 zone for apartments and then there was a pud zone and the r6 zone if you look at your map if you see the north arrow there That's kind of the R6 down right there. You see that? Everybody knows what development is talking about. Right in the middle.

This is the one right across from Honda.

So that was the R6 apartments. And they shifted all these lots away from 31W through the process when they were trying to get approvals. And in doing so, they ended up squeezing that R6 boundary. But somehow, the surveyor didn't reflect it zone map amendments between the zone map amendment and the approved. I have flats and site plans. So the flats and site plans continued through, and then when we actually put it into our GIS system, I kept looking, and I said something just, it was catching my eyes. I was scanning to look at other things through the workday, and a few times it crossed my field of vision, and I'm like, that just doesn't look right. And you had that little square.

That's the one you need to look at right there. That's the key to this whole thing.

So that little square where I've got the text on it, you can't read it, it's so small, but I've squeezed it onto that square. It says proposed rezone R6 zone to PUD zone. But that pink is R6, the brown is PUD, and that little square that's outside the white line, that's the square we're talking about that somehow they gave us this boundary and That should actually be brown.

It should be PUD.

And it's like a pink color. So they have to come back and fix that. It involves this case and the next two cases because that square involves three lots. And they have building permits that they have open on those three lots. So as of today, they're building nonconforming structures. They put these in to fix it. The properties have actually transferred from Heritage Meadows LLC to Fisher Homes because they're the builder. So they've bought the lots, they're building on them. So they're kind of caught in the middle of it, but it was just an honest error. You know, and they shifted things down. Somehow the surveyor missed it and the boundaries didn't, they didn't align. Just a bit of an offset.

Just giving the lots back their space. The other lots that don't have the space to fit into the PUD.

They moved everything down away from Dixie and didn't think about it at all. Well, the zone boundary doesn't match. Yes.

So these three lots, the current lot he's talking about and the two lots next to it, they're all being rezoned properly. Right. from R6 to the PUD. They should have been done like that originally. As Murray said, it was just an honest mistake. The surveyor messed up on the boundary. So this is literally three zone cases that are just housekeeping. They're just cleaning up a mistake. So we've already approved PUD on the rest of this. It was fine. These need to be approved as well so they line up. Because otherwise you're going to make those lots non-conforming and non-buildable and it's a problem.

So this line here, part PUD, part R6. So that's why they're rezoning from PUD and R6 to PUD. It's a line just bisects that line. So basically, you're looking at lot one. Let me make sure I get this right.

Supposed to be lots 119, 120, and 121, right? 119, 120, 121. And your agenda on D, it really should say located at 108 Hearthstone Lane, lot 120. And then the PVA last three should be 120.

But lots 119, 120, 121 all together.

And you see that on this flat copy here. Those are the three lots we're talking about. Those are the pink that are supposed to be brown.

Right.

So sometimes those little colored maps come in handy.

And to make things even more confusing, lot 119 is address 124. So I'm like, oh, I had to keep looking back at these papers.

So needless to say, when the Planning Commission figured out what this was and we explained it was just housekeeping, housekeeping, cleaning, keeping and cleaning, cleaning things up via housekeeping. Words are hard. They were fine with it. There's no objection. The owners want it. The city wants it. It needs to happen. So we're just making right what should have been done a while back.

Anything else, Murray?

Any questions for Mr. Murray?

Thank you, Murray, very much. Appreciate it.

All right. Mayor Council comments.

All right, we're at the end of our work session.

Miss Bell.

OK.

Pull your mic down to you, Miss Bell.

May and June and July are very busy. graduations memorial weekend pools opening proms before the pools problems primaries 65 south closing kids go to college getting ready fourth of july is coming very soon and also el nino i just got impressed that This summer is going to be hot, hot like hot. And I just happened to be in between, I would say, not the fire, but in between three police cars. I drove by and there was a problem on a trailer park. So be careful. And just today going home after the meeting we had, there was one in the corner of Preston. It closed the gas station, another accident. So I just want to thank the first responders being there and taking care of business. and also tell you to be careful please be careful because these three months and the fourth of july and then el nino you have to be very careful that's all and have a wonderful day thank you mr mayor thank you mayor um i want to commend

A couple of our city workers, a couple of our employees for the city. First of all, Ashley Russo. whom I called earlier in the week when a resident contacted me about something going on in the city that needed doing. They were talking about gravel in the road and they needed a machine that clears that, that does that. And I called her and she said she got right on it, found out the information that the resident needed and I got back to them and they were very happy. And secondarily, a resident on Danewood Court called me about some kids who were making a lot of noise and riding their mopeds without licenses and so forth. Called Chief Cross. Chief Cross has sent people out there practically every day for the last couple of weeks. Folks, we are here to help. We want to help if you have a problem or a situation in your community, on your street. Let us know. We will get behind it. We will try to get it done. Everybody who works for this city is for the residents. We know that you pay our salaries. We work for you. Just let us know if you need something. And again, thanks to Chief Cross for jumping right on that.

So this is the last wildlife education presented by Broadbent Wildlife Sanctuary at Saunders Springs Nature Preserve. It's this Saturday, June 13th from 1 to 3. And I believe. Barbara, will you be there with that group? Our naturalist, Barbara Baker, she'll be there with that group. And at this time, I don't think we have any others scheduled. But if there are, check the Parks and Rec's Facebook page. That's where you'll find all the activities. Tuesdays, every Tuesday at 530 through October 20th is volunteer night. So if you have volunteers that you would like to come out and help, do some cleaning and just sprucing up the preserve. By all means, Ms. Baker will be there at that time as well. And she's very busy because she walks on Wednesdays. So if you want to also just take a stroll through Sonder Springs, every Wednesday at 9 a.m. is walk around Sonder Springs. And I'm sure she'll educate you as well during your walk. So you can do that with Ms. Baker And Mayor, are you going to announce the fireworks, Thunder over Radcliffe?

Yes.

I'll let you do that. Thank you.

I would like to caveat about Ms. Baker. I think I hang out with her more than a few people as we've walked the new path for where the fairy garden is. And sometimes we get distracted because we're kind of the same brain and we'll see stuff and go off. Look at that. Oh, look at that. Just the natural nature of it all and keeping it that way. I know we get off track with the heaven forbid we lost. We're just off or we're dealing with the display of the animals, which they do tolerate us until the heat comes about.

So I hope more people attend that.

Last thing, sir. The celebration of life for Ms. Elva, also known as Ms. Candy Gaskin Sellers, today attended her funeral and also issued your proclamation. And the family was extremely grateful. Some people weren't familiar with what that was. And also Dr. Cosby was there as the officiant over the celebration of life she's 90 years young and she's been around done some things and of course her son is the postal deliverer uh lonnie gaskin so he may come to some of you all's houses but it turned out really well it did rain a little bit but it turned out really well but they were very appreciative to know that the 8th of june is the day set aside in recognition of miss sellers so thank you for letting me do that thank you

It is summer. It's hot. Motorcyclists are out there. Watch for them. You can drown with a tablespoon of water. So if you have pools and stuff like that without lifeguards, watch each other. It doesn't take very long for accidents like that to happen. Outside of that, enjoy the summer. I know I will. All right.

Thank you. All right. Uh, as this, uh, as councilwoman Merle alluded to, uh, July 3rd is our annual firework show or thunder over Radcliffe. It's going to be held at North Hardin high school. Um, we are looking forward to celebrating the 250th birthday of United States. And we are also celebrating the 70th birthday for the city of Radcliffe. And so we had a really good turnout, a really good, um, A lot of people liked being at North Hardin, and so thankful to Hardin County Schools and Principal Macy for allowing us to use that once again. We're working with our police department, all of our emergency teams, Ashley, all of us, Parks and Rec, basically all hands on deck because it is a large undertaking for us to take that on because it is a large footprint. But I think last year went very well, and so if we have the same – respect and people are kind to each other and i think people enjoy being out by their cars and watching the firework show and just enjoying each other and if we can have that same respect this year and honestly a lot of people left it very clean it wasn't you know a lot of trash laid around so if we can get the same respect from the general public and that people watch their kids i know that's always one fear kids are running around but if we can do that i think we're gonna have a great firework show we've actually Added a little bit bigger budget this year. Actually, you know, firework shows go up a little bit more in price. Costs go up. And so we are competing, I believe, with a city next to us named Fine Grove, I believe. They do theirs on the first Friday of the month. And it happens this year. The first Friday of the month is July 3rd. And so Pam asked me if I would move mine. And my answer was, I've done it since 2011. When did you start yours? And so we're going to, we're going to blow them out of the water, get that on Facebook live. You tell her, I said that, but no, all jokes aside, we, we think both communities, we do very well that night. And so we, you know, obviously we have ours and they'll have theirs. Ours will be bigger, better. And, more impressive than theirs, but we look forward to having ours in Radcliffe. So, again, join us. You live in Vine Grove. Mike, you can come over to Radcliffe and watch our firework show.

Mayor.

He's the attorney for both. He's the attorney for both Vine Grove and Radcliffe.

Mayor.

Or time. Mayor JJ. We're starting to, I believe we're starting to. I think we started six or seven. We'll have that out exactly.

Because we have food trucks. We have food trucks. But we're not having vendors. And the reason I'm asking is because people have been asking, and maybe I'm reaching out to some of you, they're wanting to set up booths, but we are not doing booth setups. No, we don't have the vendors.

We just do the food and the DJ. The food and the music and then the fireworks. Yeah, overdo it. uh last year i believe we opened it i can't remember if we opened at six or seven but uh fireworks go off at 10 yeah so we'll have that information out i believe it's probably i think we're going to start let parking maybe go a little bit earlier this year so people get set up but we'll let that out but just save the date for july 3rd um north heart high school okay and pops with cops will be there there's four guys last year was doing snow cones or something they were just killing them last year wasn't it So, Mr. Rousseau, is there anything else? Next meeting scheduled for the 18th? Or Tuesday, 16th, excuse me. And we should have our first reading of our city budget. Thank you all for today's meeting. It was very productive. I think we made it through our budget very well and got a lot of good things done for our community. And so then we'll schedule that after the next meeting. We'll have a second reading that following week. Excuse me, that next week, hopefully sometime. Just check y'all's calendars. We're shooting for the, what date did we say, the 18th? If we can make that work, that'll just be a quick second reading of the budget as long as the first reading goes well. All right. I don't need a motion to adjourn. So with that, if there's nothing else, we're adjourned. Thank you.