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Fishing and hunting permits and licenses for 2024-2025 now available

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The Kentucky Department of Fish and Wildlife Resources says residents can now get registered to take advantage of the state’s finest outdoor offerings for 2024-2025.

Licenses and permits to fish, hunt, and trap in the state are on sale now. The 2024-2025 license period runs from March 1, 2024, to February 28, 2025.

Licenses cover basic hunting and fishing for most species, with additional state permits available for species such as trout, migratory birds, wild turkeys, and bears. New this year is the Senior Lifetime Sportsman’s License, which is available to residents 65 and older and streamlines the licensing process.

The sale of licenses, along with the excise tax collected from the sale of recreational firearms and ammunition, archery gear, and fishing equipment, is the primary funding source for Kentucky Fish and Wildlife.

Visit fw.ky.gov to learn more and to order.

Hardin County Fiscal Court holds first reading of recovery residence ordinance

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The Hardin County Fiscal Court met for their first meeting of the month Tuesday.

The court held the first reading of an ordinance that adopts a certification process for recovery residences in unincorporated Hardin County. Judge-Executive Keith Taul said the ordinance is modeled after the one recently adopted by the City of Elizabethtown, and came about after conversations with E-Town Mayor Jeff Gregory to help prepare for possible outcomes of E-Town’s new ordinance.

“If there’s some of the recovery residences that don’t want to become certified or they aren’t doing the right things, if they get shut down in Elizabethtown, there might be some tendency for them to move someplace else.” Taul said. “Hardin County can be one of those places along with some of the other cities in the county. So we wanted to get ahead of this thing and make sure that that doesn’t happen.”

The council also approved an inter-local agreement with the city to use E-Town Recovery Residence Enforcement Officer David Neary for county facilities, as at this time only one county facility is known of.

The first reading was also held on an ordinance approving about $2 million in unplanned budget expenses. An inter-local agreement with the Lincoln Trail Area Development District for a county Safe Streets and Roads for All grant application was approved, as was an $187,500 disbursement of county American Rescue Plan Act funds for Hardin County Water District No. 2 to conduct a study of wastewater improvements in the Glendale/South Hardin County area.

In other meeting news, Fort Knox Garrison Commander Colonel Chris Ricci presented on the Digital Air-Ground Integration Range which was added at Fort Knox’s Yano Range. Ricci said the $56 million improvement project should be completed in May, and Fort Knox wants residents to be aware of the expanded activity they can expect to hear.

“While we do anticipate more aviation use, the range will have similar types of training as before, so we’re talking virtually all types of tracked and wheeled vehicles, utility and attack helicopters, fixed wing aircraft, artillery and mortars, and dismounted training,” Ricci said. “Put simply, DAGIR is the largest and most complex live fire range that the Army utilizes at a home station.”

Emergency Management Deputy Director Richard DeWitt said a recent consultation with OSHA revealed only about $100 in expenses needed to fix potential violations. DeWitt credited the county’s preparedness to strong leadership.

“You don’t prepare for an OSHA visit the week or the day of,” DeWitt said. “It’s what you do every day, and it’s the support that all of you (magistrates) and the judge have put into our safety program that made this consultation come out the way it did.”

The Hardin County Fiscal Court will next meet February 27.

Clerk’s office debuts PropertyCheck program to help guard against fraud

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The Hardin County Clerk’s Office has announced the implementation of Cott Systems’ PropertyCheck, a new software that helps combat property and mortgage fraud through an alert system.

“It costs you nothing to sign up, and if you go to our website you can sign up for PropertyCheck, and you’ll get a notice any time a document is filed in your name,” said Hardin County Clerk Brian D. Smith. 

He says implementing the PropertyCheck system was an important goal for his office.

“From the time I was elected, before I was even sworn in, I had a lot of people hitting me up on what they call property fraud, property theft, people filing false documents in their names and whatnot, and a lot of fear,” Smith said. “This actually is a real crime, and it’s a growing crime in other states. We’ve not seen it a lot here, but we want to get in front of it rather than behind it.”

Residents activate a PropertyCheck account, and the software runs in the background on all of the other clerk’s office record management software to identify when a user’s name is used. Residents can opt in to be alerted via email or text when their name shows up.

Smith said registering to protect yourself and your family is an easy process.

“We encourage you to use any variation of your name,” Smith said. “You go on and you create an account. If you’ve ever created a social media account, an Amazon account, this account is easier to create than those, and you can put your name, your spouse’s name, your children’s name all in your account.”

Find more information and a link to register on the Hardin County Clerk’s Office’s website.

Bill Hardin County Animal Shelter says will support puppy mills advances out of committee

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A bill that area officials say would undo local efforts to combat puppy mills advanced out of the Kentucky Senate’s Agriculture Committee Tuesday.

State Bill 157 would permit retail pet stores to sell dogs or cats that were obtained from animal shelters and qualified breeders, which was defined in the bill as “a large-scale breeding kennel that has no direct violations indicated by United States Department of Agriculture inspection reports in the last two years or a hobby breeder.”

Elizabethtown City Council Member Julia Springsteen was among those that spoke against the bill. She and members of the Louisville Metro Council expressed concerns with the bill invalidating ordinances passed on the local level and hindering local efforts.

“E-town’s ordinance allows retail stores to partner with our county shelter and nonprofits to facilitate the adoption of animals, and also allows the county shelter and nonprofits to hold adoption events in certain places,” Springsteen said. “The only way to end puppy mills is to cut off the demand, and that is what we’ve attempted to do in Elizabethtown.”

18th District Senator Robin Webb voted in favor of advancing the bill. She said the rhetoric against the bill is a product of what she called propaganda from animal rights groups, and said bans hurt breeders of work and police dogs doing their business the right way.

“These bans do nothing but to drive it underground, to shield bad breeders, and to create foreign black markets, internet sales, and other things like that,” Webb said.

10th District Senator Matt Deneen voted against advancing the bill, stating that the bill needs some revisions.

“I do believe that there is a need for statewide governance in this area, but at this time I don’t believe the bill adds the framework that is necessary for the enforcement of the bill, and I look forward to working with the chairman on maybe establishing some of those frameworks to ensure that this does away with those puppy mills and kitten mills,” Deneen said.

The bill will now go before the full Kentucky Senate.