The Elizabethtown City Council met for a special meeting Monday.
The council approved a bid from Summit Civil LLC of Elizabethtown for the Veterans Way/Towne Drive roundabout project. The bid was accepted at $981,700. City Administrator Ed Poppe noted additional language was included in the bid to account for safety measures as Veterans Way has a higher speed limit than other city streets where roundabouts have been added.
“For our first city-funded roundabout, this is one of the better places that we do need to put it in, and I think there’s a lot more support for this one than there has been for others,” said City Council Member Julia Springsteen. “Hopefully that keeps up, because it will be safer and more efficient.”
The council also approved a resolution entering the city into a statewide emergency management mutual aid and assistance agreement.
“If you take for example when they had the tornadoes in Mayfield and Dawson Springs and some of the natural disasters that we had a few years ago in the Commonwealth, and multiple cities send all kinds of resources, whether it be manpower or equipment or supplies to those locations, this is no different than what we did then,” said Elizabethtown Mayor Jeff Gregory. “This just kind of formalizes it a little bit.”
Elizabethtown Director of Finance Jeff Hawkins gave the council an update as his department prepares for what he called an “ambitious” budget. Hawkins said the city’s finances are strong, noting that at about $35.5 million in March the General Fund is down about $2 million from the same point the year before due to recent purchases the city made for ongoing projects. Hawkins said city revenues are coming in close to budgeted estimates.
“The occupational tax, that’s the 1.95 percent on the working wages in the city, and the property tax, both of those you can see are very strong,” Hawkins said. “We continue to maintain a strong, healthy employee base. With the restaurant tax and hotel tax, it’s the same story we’ve had in the last couple years as both of those are down. I think the budget was a little aggressive on that.”
The Elizabethtown City Council will next meet April 20.
