The Radcliff City Council discussed zoning and police personnel during a work session Monday.
Radcliff Planning Official Murray Wanner discussed an annexation and several zoning change requests that were recently approved by the city’s Planning Commission. The annexation request is for about 12.5 acres located at the northeast corner of the intersection of Ernest R. Kouma Boulevard and Patriot Parkway, and developers are asking for that property to be rezoned from R-1 Residential to Commercial Zone to match neighboring properties.
Zoning changes for properties located 1276 and 1278 Hill Street to R-6 High-Density Multi-Family Residential, and for a property at 3491 South Wilson Road to R-4 were discussed. City Attorney Michael Pike said developers are responding to demand.
“Everyone’s telling us we need more housing,” Pike said.” The employers are telling us we need more housing, the realtors and brokers are telling us we need more housing. We don’t have enough inventory. Interest rates are higher than they’ve been for years.”
Radcliff Police Chief Jeff Cross discussed a proposal to remove the department’s evidence custodian position and replace it with two contract officers hired as detectives that would be in charge of the department’s evidence room. Cross said hiring detectives for the positions would keep the evidence room in check while also making additional personnel available for investigations.
“Those detectives work long hours,” Cross said. “It takes a lot to do what they do, and the first 72 hours of that are the most important. We had one (case) where the suspect had to go to the hospital and we had to sit on that person for a couple of days, and so we were having officers having to come in and call people in to cover the streets because they were having to help do that, so the more manpower we’ve got in that detective section the better it would be for them to investigate those crimes that take up a lot of time.”
Cross said money is in the budget for the positions for the current fiscal year, but he is requesting an additional $50,500 for the next city budget. Mayor J.J. Duvall said the city would look into its options.
The Radcliff City Council will next meet January 16.
