Area government officials are inviting the public to several meetings this week.
The City of Elizabethtown is hosting a meeting at 10 a.m. Monday at the Elizabethtown Police Department to discuss the ordinance recently approved by the city council for regulations for recovery residences.
“It’s going to include city administration as well as anybody else that would like to come down there and sit and listen in, and we’re going to invite all of the recovery residence owners in the city of Elizabethtown,” said Elizabethtown Mayor Jeff Gregory. “That goes for owners, operators, and even people that own the ground that these recovery centers are located on.”
The ordinance is modeled on state legislation and gives the city some oversight on the facilities, of which there are already more than 150 in the city.
“We’ve had some issues with them, and we want to make sure that they’re doing what they’re supposed to do,” Gregory said. “A lot of them are. We feel that some of them aren’t, but we’re going to have an inspector that’s going to be going in and he’s going to be making sure that they’re following what they call NARR certification, which is the National Alliance for Recovery Residences.”
The meeting is primarily to explain the ordinance to facility owners and operators, but the city also wants to answer questions from the public.
“We know that it’s been an issue with a lot of people,” Gregory said. “A lot of people don’t understand what’s going on and what the regulations are, and what federal law is that kind of handcuffs us on some of the things that we can do, and we’re going to lay all of that out and let everybody understand it and ask any questions that they have just so we can do a better job here in Elizabethtown of handling those folks that are the most vulnerable.”
Meanwhile, Hardin County government has two public meetings happening Tuesday.
“The Town Hall Forum will be here (the Hardin County Fiscal Courtroom) on January 30 at 5:30 p.m.,” said Fourth District Magistrate Fred Clem.” We encourage the public to attend. We will have a little bit of a traffic problem, maybe, that day because that’s the day we’re going to have the open house for the (Hardin County Comprehensive Plan) too. That’s going to be moved down to the second floor, so they’ll be going from 4:30 to 6:30, and we’ll be starting at 5:30. We that encourage that folks to come to the Comp. Plan early come up here and join us at 5:30, and we look forward to having everyone attend that can possibly attend.”
Visit hcky.org for more information.
