Barren County Fiscal Court discusses various agenda items at March 19 meeting

By MICHAEL CRIMMINS
Glasgow News 1

On Tuesday, March 19, the seven magistrates, along with Judge-Executive Jamie Bewley Byrd and County Attorney Mike Richardson, convened the regularly scheduled monthly meeting of the Barren County Fiscal Court. During the course of the hour-and-45 minute meeting the court members discussed a variety of topics from adopting building and electrical fee schedules and approving of an updated interlocal agreement to hearing softball and baseball league updates and signing a proclamation.

The meeting, which was called to order promptly at 9 a.m. with an invocation by Mark Benton and the Pledge of Allegiance, was kicked off by Byrd and Glasgow City Mayor Henry Royse signing an official proclamation designating March 19 Cerebral Palsy Awareness day.

After pictures were taken and the magistrates returned to their seats, Helena Chase Birdwell, the Barren County Clerk, stepped up to the podium to give her monthly report to the court members.

She began her presentation by stating that the county clerk’s office would remain opened until 6 p.m. on Mondays in an effort to help more individuals who come through the office. In the vein of office hours, Birdwell said, her office would be open from 8 to noon on Saturday, March 23 with Good Friday, which is on March 29, would be a half day.

Turning to numbers, Birdwell said during January the clerk’s office turned over $75,313 to the county; a drop from the usual amount mainly due to complications caused by the statewide switch to KAVIS. However, in February that amount increased to $132,830 and with March being the office’s “busiest month” she said she was confident they would exceed that amount this month.

On the topic of KAVIS, and instigated by Magistrate Derek Pedigo, Birdwell said all-in-all the system was getting better but asked for patience from the public.

“It is getting better,” Birdwell said. “There are still several things that we can’t do like out of state historic transfers…but there are several things that should’ve been fixed that aren’t yet [but] it’s getting better.”

Jim Griffin also came to the podium during the department reports to ask the magistrates to approve a fee for steel piles, which are used in solar farms to hold up the panels. Mentioning the recently approved Geenex solar farm, dubbed the Wood Duck Solar Project, Griffin asked for a 12 cent fee on each of the piles.

“Each one typically has to be driven between 5 and 6 feet deep,” Jim Griffin said. “Most of the time it’s a steel I-beam [that] can be drilled in. Either way we have to look at those and in this particular case there are 28,512 steel piles, just to give you an idea of how many trips we’ll be making, so that’s why we had to come up fees that are reasonable for these things that are going to take a lot of time. I’m sure we’re not going to lay eyeballs on all 28,512 but typically we’ll go by every other day and make sure these are meeting engineer specs.”

Griffin’s suggestion of a 12 cent fee on the 28,512 piles would amount to $3,421.44. In the end, the suggestion was made to make the fee 25 cents per steel pile as previously thought by some of the magistrates. That 25 cents would amount to $7,128 and was unanimously approved.

Griffin also officially announced the building inspector’s office had been approved for expanded jurisdiction which, as he said, was “really good for growth” in Barren County as it would decrease time required to have inspection completed. Expanded jurisdiction allow the local inspection office to perform inspections previously reserved for the state, with the exception of hospitals and educational facilities, and cut down approval time from months to weeks.

Griffin also shared his “little dream” of doing HVAC and plumbing locally as well, but he said it has not gone any further than a “good thought and a mention.”

“If you’re HVAC and you fail the inspection on something little you’re waiting a week,” Griffin said. “It would be very good for the community, it’d be good for people wanting to come in and do stuff [but] it hasn’t been beyond mentioning it.”

In other news, Magistrate Marty Kinslow, who is also on the Administration and Budget Committee, made the motion to approve the emergency management and jail budget for the fiscal year 2024-2025. Both motions were met with unanimous approval.

Magistrate Jeff Botts gave an update on both the old U.S. Bank Building and the Emergency Management building. Approved by the court was a quote to begin flooring on the third floor, one to prepare drywall for painting on the second and third floor and approval of an HVAC service on the EM building.

The interlocal agreement was also passed unanimously.