It is customary on the day before the full Barren County Fiscal Court for its individual committees to meet. At 10 a.m. the Parks and Recreation committee met under the chairmanship of magistrate Derek Pedigo to listen Chris Jennings, the parks and recreation director. Michael Crimmins/Glasgow News 1.
By MICHAEL CRIMMINS
Glasgow News 1
As is customary on the day before a meeting of the full Barren County Fiscal Court, the court’s park and recreation committee members met to discuss the 2024 fall ball league plans, weigh in on scoreboard purchases and discuss briefly Jackie Browning security.
Under the chairmanship of Barren County Magistrate Derek Pedigo the meeting was called to order at 10 a.m. Among the committee’s sparse agenda was a review of the plans for the upcoming fall ball league. According to Chris Jennings, the parks and recreation director, approximately 550-600 individuals interested in playing in the league, which equates to 45 to 55 teams.
Jennings said with Jackie Browning Park currently undergoing construction and renovations possible alternative sites are being looked at like Eastern Elementary, Red Cross Elementary and, as Barren County Judge-Executive Jamie Bewley Byrd said, Beaver Creek Park.
“I called the mayor [of Glasgow] over the weekend…and he said we could work something out to use Beaver [Creek] for August and September because soccer didn’t start last year until September for practices,” Byrd said. “I’m sure we can work something out; that’s what the mayor said.”
Byrd said she is “put[ting] pressure” on the contractor’s to get Jackie Browning Park playable so that it is mostly finished by September. Jennings said practice for fall ball would begin sometime in August with games starting in the first weeks of September.
“Dream world: we’ll be playing in October on the three new fields,” Byrd said.
In the realm of Jackie Browning Park renovations the new scoreboard bids were also discussed during the committee meeting. Jennings presented two bids to the committee members present for three new scoreboards. One was from Varsity Scoreboards for $10,185 and one from Electro-Mech for $11,365. Currently, Jennings said, the park has Electro-Mech scoreboards and so asked for that bid to be accepted.
“I’d like to stick with what we have if everyone is comfortable with that,” Jennings said.
As Byrd pointed out this wasn’t specifically a vote but more of an opinion as this would come out of the already approved $2 million bond for park renovations.
Towards the end of the 30-minute meeting Jennings also briefly told the magistrates of the most recent break in at the park that resulted in both of their cash registers getting destroyed. On July 3 Jennings said the park office and concession stand was broken into by two men with a third waiting by the substation in the park in a vehicle.
Six Glasgow Police Department units responded to the call when, seeing the police officers, the two suspects jumped in the waiting car and drove up the embankment near the park sign. According to Jennings there was a brief “vehicle pursuit” on Ky. 1297 before GPD had to stop due to the weather.
All-in-all Jennings said the three suspects did more damage than they got out of the break in as there was no cash on the premise and the suspects dropped one register, threw the other on 1297 out the window at a pursuing cruiser and dropped both cash boxes.
“It’s under investigation,” Jennings said. “We don’t have much more than that right now. We have some pretty good leads though.”
Glasgow News 1 has yet to obtain an incident report from the Glasgow Police Department to confirm Jennings’ retelling.
Jennings said he would like to wait on getting new registers until they purchase their new Point of Sale System opting instead to ring up concessions “old school” without the registers assistance — though, with the ongoing renovations there is virtually no concession sales, Jennings said.
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