NOTE: Part 2 of this report continues with Sherry Jones’ interview at this link.
BY MELINDA J. OVERSTREET / GLASGOW NEWS 1
As 2022 came to a close, more than half a century’s combined memories and knowledge of their local government left the Barren County Government Center in the form of two particular employees who had worked in administrative roles for the county since before that building opened.
In addition, multiple other positions in county government were left vacant by retirements and/or resignations coinciding with the change in judge-executive administrations.
Sherry Jones started as an administrative assistant for then-Judge-Executive Woody Gardner nearly 31 years ago and later became fiscal court clerk. She worked for five judge-executives and with eight fiscal courts.
As Jones’ third judge-executive, Freddie Travis, started his term in office at the Barren County Courthouse, he brought Nancy Houchens in with him. When Travis left, they were at the then-new government center that stands at 117 N. Public Square – a project that started when his predecessor was in office.
Deputy Judge-Executive Nancy Houchens pauses after being provided the opportunity to speak at the Dec. 20, 2022, Barren County Fiscal Court meeting. MELINDA J. OVERSTREET / GLASGOW NEWS 1
Each had worked in other capacities for the respective judge-executive who hired her.
Besides these two and the judge-executive. Micheal Hale, who was there eight years, Tracy Shirley, emergency management director; Maxey Murray, parks and recreation director; Dennis Proffitt, building and facilities manager; and Jamie Cummings, solid waste coordinator and a deputy emergency management director, who shifted into a new career earlier in December as an emergency medical technician, are not returning to those respective positions.
Incoming Judge-Executive Jamie Bewley Byrd said she has a good team lined up to take on those roles, but they’re all well aware they won’t have the resident trainers the last few administrations have had.
In addition, the fiscal court has five new magistrates of the seven, with the two others just finishing their first four-year terms. A new county attorney, Mike Richardson, and a new jailer, Aaron Shirley, were also elected.
Glasgow News 1 interviewed Jones and Houchens and the judge-executives for whom they worked who are still living, with Travis having died in April year. In the process of telling their own work stories, they shared quite a bit of the county government’s in general as well.
Nancy Houchens
“I started here in 1999 when Freddie Travis became the county judge-executive,” Houchens said. “I of course worked at Ideal Hardware for 33 years, and it closed down. [About 18 months later], Freddie called me and he said, ‘I’m going to run for county judge-executive. If I am fortunate enough to win, I want you to come work for me.’ I said, ‘No way, I know nothing about county government and no, I’m happy at home.’ Well, as you can see, Freddie Travis won and he won me over to come and work with him.”
Travis had owned the hardware store, so Houchens was among those who knew him well enough to know he didn’t easily take no for an answer, she added.
“Anyway, I came in to work in 1999, not knowing anything about government duties or anything. I did not know any of the people I was going to come to work with, so it was all brand new to me,” she said. “I started out doing mostly checking on the bills, making sure we’d get all the bills in. I was doing purchase orders, because everything that we buy, we’re supposed to have a purchase order on it. Well, that doesn’t always work, so when the bills do come in, you’ve got to check and make sure they’ve got a purchase order, so I did that, answered the phone, opened the mail, filed, typed, just did a few things like that.”
Deputy Judge-Executive Nancy Houchens chats with Deputy Jailer Beth Boston at Houchens’ desk Nov. 28, 2022. Houchens took care of human resources matters as part of her duties as a county employee before her retirement at the end of the year. MELINDA J. OVERSTREET / GLASGOW NEWS 1
Karen Bracken was the county treasurer at the time, and she was overloaded with too many things to do and not enough time to do it in, Houchens said.
“She asked me if I had any experience with payroll, and I told her, ‘Well, yes, I did payroll at the previous job.’ She said, ‘I want you to take over the payroll and start doing it.’”
Houchens said she’s thoroughly enjoyed that.
“I’m a person who – I want something to do all the time. I’ve got to be working. I can’t just sit around and do nothing,” she said. “That may not seem a lot, but it is quite a bit of work to do, keeping things filed and put away.”
With elected officials and nonelected personnel from all departments combined, the county employs about 125 people, she said, and that number has not fluctuated greatly from that amount though her years there.
“It’ll run anywhere from 100, 110, 125, something like that all the time,” she said, adding that elected officials are paid monthly, and everyone else is paid biweekly.
“I enjoy my work. I really do. I’ve always taken pride in my work. I’ve been accused of doing things the old-school way, which, I’m sure I do some of it that way, but it’s mostly because that’s what I’ve been told to do, you know, the way to do it up here, was the way I am doing it. I have changed a few things myself to try to make it a little bit easier, as far as the computer goes. At my age, computers is not one of my things I really, really like a lot, but I do try to keep up and change a few things and have it on the computer. Basically, a lot of it is done – for instance this — out of a book,” she said, pointing to on her desk.
Nearby was a rolling cart with hanging file folders in it.
“We do all of our bills – we do those in this, I call it my little roly poly. And then at the end of the week before we have our court meeting, I get all these bills, prepare all of them, get them ready. I have to put a vendor number on them and all of that stuff,” Houchens said.
In the fiscal court meeting, when they say they’re paying claims, those are the bills they’re paying. They do so with one motion for all of them, but each is spelled out as a line item for them.
“Once the bills are all paid, I have to go back and write it on the original purchase order, and then take that off of my purchase order report, and then every quarter, I send that in to Frankfort. That’s just one of the things that has to be done, and actually, that’s how the auditors check things – a lot of it – is through the purchase order report.”
She became the deputy judge-executive while Travis was still in office, and during that time and the 12 years that followed while Davie Greer was judge-executive, Houchens attended a lot of meetings and ribbon cuttings on the county’s behalf.
“Now since Judge Hale has came in, he likes to do all that himself, so I have been more in the office. I haven’t been out as much as I [was] with the other two county judges, but I enjoyed that part of it. I got to meet a lot of the public and got to know a lot of different people. It’s different now, but that’s OK. I’ve got plenty of work to do here in the office, so that keeps me busy,” she said.
She’s continued to be the payroll clerk though at least two changes in county treasurers.
Without hesitation, Houchens said it would be the people, her co-workers, that she would miss the most.
“We’ve all just become family,” she said.
Nancy Houchens, far left, and Sherry Jones, right, partake in the 2022 Election Day Luncheon at First Presbyterian Church. They are joined here by Madeline Hale, Kathy Murray and Maxie Murray, who are family members of Judge-Executive Micheal Hale’s. MELINDA J. OVERSTREET / GLASGOW NEWS 1
What she won’t miss is listening to complaints – “and we do get quite a few of them.”
Some are legitimate, but others — not so much, she said.
“There are some people who want to complain all the time about anything and everything,” Houchens said.
Many times, complaints stem from a lack of understanding of how certain government functions operate. For example, residents frequently will call there to complain about state- or city- maintained roadways. She said people tend to get frustrated as she tries to explain that they’ll need to call someone else.
Her advice for anyone that takes on her role(s) is to listen to their co-workers. She said she would have been lost if the finance officer/fiscal court clerk and county treasurer hadn’t been there to help her along when she got started.
“You may not agree with some things that they tell you that you need to be doing, but they know the rules, they know the ropes, so they won’t lead you wrong,” Houchens said.
In this case, they will have County Treasurer Jenny Hoffman, who’s been in that position at least three years, but the third person in that core staff will be new as well.
The Kentucky Association of Counties is a good resource, and she also suggested that calling other area county offices with questions if it’s outside Hoffman’s experience, Houchens said.
She recognized it will be tougher for the new administration coming in to not have people with as much institutional knowledge as the last few have to guide them in the right direction, and she felt kind of bad about retiring at this particular time, she said, but she had been planning it since the start of the year, and her husband, District 7 Magistrate Billy Houchens, who did not seek re-election after 16 years, had been wanting her to do so even longer than that.
She said Billy Houchens’ health is not the best, and she wants to be able to be there if he needs her.
While on the subject, Glasgow News 1 asked whether she had encouraged him to run for magistrate as she’d been working for the county about seven years at that time.
“I did not.” she responded, laughing. “I encouraged him NOT to do this.”
She said it was something he’d wanted to do for some time, and he knew a lot of people from working at the Houchens grocery along Happy Valley Road.
“He’s enjoyed it. He really has, but he’s just felt like it’s time for him to get out, because he’s just not able to do the job that he really would like to do,” she said.
Nancy Houchens, center, in black sweater, supervises and helps set up seasonal decorations on the courthouse lawn along with building and facilities manager Dennis Proffitt, at her right, and several inmates from the Barren County Detention Center. MELINDA J. OVERSTREET / GLASGOW NEWS 1
“I’ve worked under three county judges, and I’ve enjoyed it, every one of them,” Nancy Houchens said. “I’m just going to miss everyone. We don’t have a lot of visitors that come in up here, but we do have some, and everybody’s always been so very cordial and nice, so I’m going to miss it all.”
She recalled some potentially humorous moments that stemmed from punctuality not being Greer’s strong suit.
Greer said: “Nancy always did a great job. She was serious with her work. I laughed and said Nancy was a whole lot more serious than Sherry. Sherry had a good time, but they both were very good with people that came in the office, both of them were. We got along the best and they took care of me.”
Travis liked for them to all do things together, Houchens said.
“It always ended up, though, that we always went shopping …,” she said. “He bought so many things for this office in here. … He enjoyed shopping as much as we did, so we took advantage of that.”
Hale likes to go out and eat, she said, so they’ve done that a lot on their lunch hours, or they often call and have food delivered.
In his separate interview, Hale said: “When I think about Nancy Houchens, she’s worked in this community her whole life. She does things with a pencil and a piece of paper – some folks would call that old school, which, that’s probably what it is, but it still works – but she can get more done in a day. No matter what it is, she’s willing to tackle it, and she’s just an all around good person …. I look at her as somebody that gives me guidance as a parent here, so I’ve enjoyed working with her.”
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