WQXE News

The City of Elizabethtown, in partnership with Feeding America, Kentucky’s Heartland, will be hosting their second mobile food pantry event this Friday at the Elizabethtown Sports Park.

The giveaway will begin at noon, with food distributed until it runs out.

Elizabethtown Mayor Jeff Gregory said during the November 3 Elizabethtown City Council meeting the city was aiming to provide meals for 1,000 households at each of three planned feeding events.

“We encourage anybody that’s struggling, or especially since we’re having the shutdown, the government shutdown, and people are losing some of their benefits, we’re going to try to compensate for that a little bit and see if we can hand out some food each Friday for the next three weeks,” Gregory said.

Council Member Julia Springsteen said over 5,000 households in Hardin County depend on SNAP benefits.

“The announcement today was that they’ll only get partial funding for SNAP this month, so they’re already struggling,” Springsteen said. “They’re going to struggle a little bit more, in addition to the government workers who are going to pay, so hopefully this will help a few people in addition to the other efforts going on in the community.”

The city says no identification is needed. Residents in need can simply drive through the sports park parking lot beginning at noon on Friday and city employees will load the boxes into their cars. Participants should enter through the West Park Road entrance and exit onto Saint John Road.

Members of Heels Together, a women-led initiative of the Central Kentucky Community Foundation, met for their annual investors banquet Tuesday evening.

The banquet was an opportunity for investors to hear about the impact of their philanthropic activity in the previous year and to hear from the 2025 grant award finalists.

“All the presenters have a vision, and with our support we can grow these ideas into reality,” said Lindsey Alicna. “As we celebrate a night of impactful projects, let us remember that each contribution we make is a seed of growth in this community. We are here to invest in the kind of future we want to see for ourselves, certainly our daughters if you have daughters, and then certainly our next generations.”

The initiative has raised an endowment of more than $600,000, and Becky Ates said the support of the initiative has been felt in many places.

“Since 2015, we’ve funded 31 initiatives to 17 different organizations, totaling just under $300,000 benefiting over 1,300 women and girls,” Ates said.

Grant winners included Feeding America, Kentucky’s Heartland which received $7,500, Helping Hand of Hope which received $10,000, and PURE, Inc., wWhich received $12,000.

Learn more about Heels Together by looking for their page under the Community Initiatives section at www.ckcf4people.org.

The Kentucky Court of Appeals has issued a ruling in a case involving a company looking to develop a solar farm and agrivoltaics operation in Glendale.

According to a decision rendered on October 24, the court vacated and remanded Hardin Circuit Judge Larry Ashlock’s October 2024 order denying CPV Stonecrop Solar LLC’s petition for declaration of rights.

According to the decision, Stonecrop obtained option agreements to lease property from several property owners in Hardin County, under the terms of which the company could lease 640 acres of property to build an 82-megawatt agrivoltaics operation on land zoned for agricultural and rural use. Stonecrop argued in their petition to Hardin County Planning and Development Commission Director Adam King in January of 2024 that the county’s Planning Commission had no jurisdiction on the matter because “the agricultural supremacy act and the Right to Farm Act were applicable” as an agricultural land use was involved.

The company filed a petition for declaratory judgement in Hardin Circuit Court, and in October 2024 Judge Ashlock determined that the court lacked subject matter jurisdiction and ruled that the Stonecrop project must first go through the Planning Commission’s administrative process and legislative review by the Hardin County Fiscal Court. 

The appeals court said in their opinion that it was within the circuit court’s jurisdiction to determine if the agrivoltaics operation constitutes an agricultural use, and therefore the court may hold evidentiary hearings “to discern the relative facts.” The appeals court stressed in their opinion that they are making no determination on agricultural uses, only on the dismissal of the petition for lack of subject matter jurisdiction.

According to a release from the circuit court, the Hardin County Planning and Zoning Commission has 30 days to seek further review by the Kentucky Supreme Court.