By MELINDA J. OVERSTREET
for Glasgow News 1
The Glasgow Common Council’s action items on Monday included second readings of two ordinances and a resolution, all of which were approved but not all votes were unanimous.
The nine-member legislative body of the city also heard about the South Central Kentucky Cultural Center from its director, and it approved the first reading of an ordinance creating rules regarding “excessive” false alarms to which the police and/or fire departments respond, the latter of which was reported separately.
Before the action items, the council got a report from Debbie Pace, director of the South Central Kentucky Cultural Center, home of the Museum of the Barrens, just off the Glasgow Public Square in the former Kentucky Pants Factory building. The facility is owned by the city.
Pace informed the group that the center contains close to 30,000 square feet of local-history exhibits created with donations from community members of “the Barrens,” which includes Barren, Allen, Hart and … counties, or others with connections here. It also is home to a genealogy archives. Besides preservation, the center’s mission also includes outreach and education, and to that end, Pace and the volunteer staff welcome school groups and host special events, like a history symposium that just took place this past weekend called Celebrate the Barrens that roughly 80 people attended, and veterans events and more.
“We have become quite a tourist attraction and a destination for several people …,” she said, later adding, “Typically, we have visitors from all of the United States in a year’s time and then several countries as well.”
Other features include a newspaper collection and an extensive photo archives, some of which are digitized. She said a lot of the photos still need digitizing. The facility also contains a large meeting room that is used by partners such as the Barren County Historical Society and can also be rented for events.
She spoke about the value of the volunteers, some of whom have been with the center nearly 30 years, like Kay Harbison, who curates the exhibits.
Pace said the center is “a tremendous asset” to the community, but sometimes it seems it’s better known to people from outside it than those within it, so she appreciated the opportunity to highlight it at the council meeting, which is also broadcast on a local-access cable channel and on YouTube via the Glasgow Electric Plant Board.
Moving into old business, the council took up second readings on an ordinance relating to the compensation of the mayor and council members and authorizing cost-of-living adjustments to that compensation and an ordinance amending the budget for the fiscal year that ended June 30 to reflect the receipt and transfer of $690,751.74 in grant funds for the Glasgow Municipal Airport.
For the first reading of the ordinance on June 23, City Attorney Rich Alexander said state law specifies that any changes to compensation for those elected officials have to occur by the first Monday in May of the year they are elected. It cannot be changed after they are elected or during their term in office, Alexander said. So, any changes they would make now would not take effect until the year after the next election for that office.
State law also provides, though, for a cost of living adjustment, which is not the same as a change in the compensation, per se. Such adjustments can occur each year provided they are within the limits established annually by the Kentucky Department for Local Government. Alexander said in June that the proposed ordinance amending the current local law would reflect the current state law regarding compensation for elected officials, but it also makes clear that the cost-of-living adjustments are permitted on an annual basis if they are within the parameters set forth by the DLG and are within budgetary limitations.
According to the existing ordinance, the annual compensation of the mayor was $50,000, and it was $7,000 for council members. The current salary, with cost-of-living adjustments, last applied around 2016, for council members is $8,614.56, and for the mayor, it is $67,644.20, Alexander reported last month.
Mayor Henry Royse said at that time that the DLG also specifies each year the maximum amount of compensation that elected city officials can receive, and that figure is “a lot more” than what they receive in this city.
Councilman Freddie Norris had cast the sole vote against the ordinance’s first reading, but Councilman Randy Wilkinson and others had asked several questions to get clarification on whether it would mean they were raising their own salaries. Wilkinson, for example, specified he was OK with providing raises for future council members but not for himself.
This ordinance does not actually provide raises to current or future council members – to their base compensation amounts, which would have to be specifically approved by the council, or via cost-of-living adjustments, which would have to be included in a budget proposed by the mayor, which ultimately would have to be approved by the council. The ordinance only provides the ability to do so and sets forth the processes for doing so if desired.
At Monday’s meeting, Wilkinson again asked for clarification about whether he would be increasing the amount he himself gets, because he didn’t want to do that, even with COLAs, and Councilwoman Elizabeth Shoemaker expressed concern over doing the same.
Royse told them that this essentially just makes the wording of the local ordinance consistent with state law and makes clear what the process is, should they decide they want to do it.
After some additional questions and further reiteration of the previous discussion, the vote was six council members in favor and three – Norris, Wilkinson and Shoemaker – against. So the second reading of the ordinance was approved.
Second reading of the budget amendment reflecting the grant for the airport was approved unanimously. Royse explained that there are multiple grants being received by the airport, with this particular one being for the construction of additional hangars, adding that he was very excited about this because they’ve been needing more space for a long time.
“I think at one time, we had 35 on the waiting list for hangers out there. This is not going to cover all of those on the waiting list, but we’re just trying to get started,” he said.
The other two grants are for reconstruction of the fuel system, which is currently underground, one of only two in the state, and for replacing old lighting along the runway.
Aside from the alarm ordinance, the other item of new business was a resolution approving a change to a 2016 agreement between the Kentucky Transportation Cabinet and the city with regard to the Trojan Trail multiuse path from Bunche Avenue to the U.S. 31-E Bypass. Since the original agreement was signed, the scope of work and budget for the project, which had received federal transportation grant funds administered through the state, had changed.
City Administrator April Russell, who is also the city’s grant writer and administrator, explained that a storm that created flooding and other damage to the trail created roughly $150,000 in additional costs, and since the overall project wasn’t completely finished when that occurred, the city was able to get the additional funds added to the original grant amount, which will be authorized in reimbursement payments in phases as the federal requirements are met.
The mayor had also provided notice to the council members that he had signed an executive order establishing the position title and job description for a social worker/victim advocate for the police department, and he provided a list of pending appointments to be considered by the council at its next meeting, which is scheduled for 6 p.m. July 28 in Council Chambers on Floor 2 of the Luska J. Twyman Municipal Building, 126 E. Public Square.
The pending appointments would actually all be reappointments: Terry Fisher and Scott W. Owens to the airport board and W. Keith Rowlett to the Glasgow Electric Plant Board.
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TO LEARN MORE
Follow this link to the South Central Kentucky Cultural Center website.
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