WQXE News

The first reading of the 2024-2025 county budget was held during the Hardin County Fiscal Court’s first meeting of the month Tuesday.

Hardin County Judge-Executive Keith Taul is proposing a budget that totals $59,615,729. The county’s expenses in the budget total $22,294,285, which comes in higher than the county’s revenue.

“We unfortunately only have revenue of $17.5 million of recurring sustainable taxes, fees, some interest thrown in there from some money that we have,” Taul said. “So you add all those up and it only amounts to $17.5 million.”

The proposed budget balances the deficit by using $440,000 of the county’s remaining American Rescue Plan Act funds and $4,367,634 of the $8 million pilot agreement with BlueOval SK.

“This is, in case you’re not familiar with that, it’s a one-time payout in lieu of BlueOval SK construction workers’ occupational taxes, and so this was an agreement with them that instead of trying to obtain the construction workers’ occupational taxes this was a payout to take in place of that.”

Taul said cuts have been made to the original budget presented to the county’s Finance Committee, but the budget still needs to account for high inflation over the past three years that has driven up prices for equipment and materials, as well as increases to insurance and personnel costs. The budget does not account for the county’s occupational tax as the county can’t project the revenue it will produce.

Members of the fiscal court were split on their support of the budget. Magistrate Chris Yates said he was not in favor of approving a budget that operates on a deficit two years in a row.

“I voted in favor of the budget last year, but a wise man once said, ‘if you find yourself in a hole, you need to quit digging,’” Yates said. “If we don’t put the shovel down, we’re going to find ourselves in a hole that even if we wanted to, we won’t be able to tax our way out of.”

Magistrate Kenny Saltsman said he took issue with the use of the BlueOval SK funds.

“$8 million that we’re getting from the BOSK was supposed to last us around 15 years, and this first year we’re using over half of it just to balance this budget,” Saltsman said. “We can’t continue down this road. I cannot support this budget on the words of hopeful, or even gambling as I’ve heard others state, when counting on the occupational tax to be our saving grace.”

Magistrates E.G. Thompson and Fred Clem both said the county is hampered by state regulations that take revenue streams away from county governments while permitting their use by cities. Clem said he supports the budget as the county is doing the best with what it can.

“There’s not a person on this court that’s not concerned about this budget. Not one of us,” Clem said. “We all have the same concerns, but I’m confident that we can manage our way through our fiscal issues and get back to parity.”

The first reading of the budget was approved by a 5-4 vote. The budget will go up for approval on its second reading at the fiscal court’s next meeting, which will be held April 23.

Hodgenville Police Chief James Richardson says he was disappointed with the low turnout for a presentation on sextortion the department hosted via Zoom, so after getting community feedback on how to improve the idea and reach more people the police department is hosting an in-person event on sexual assault and related issues on April 15.

“We’re going to give a presentation,” Richardson said. “It’s going to start at 6 p.m. at the Extension Office here in Larue County up on Old Elizabethtown Road, and what we will do is we’ll start out with basically what are the issues that we’re seeing here in our community and then we will talk about how HPD investigates those.”

Richardson said the event ties into April being Child Abuse Awareness Month and Sexual Assault Awareness Month. The event is an opportunity to hear from the HPD as well as the organizations that assist them.

“We are going to start out with just basically ‘this is what we’re seeing’ and then we’re going to introduce our community partners,” Richardson said. “We have some folks from Silverleaf, I’ve invited CommuniCare, Lincoln Trail BHH is coming, so we’ll have folks there to explain to the community this is what their role is in our investigations and what services they offer for the community.”

The ultimate goal of the event is to share information and connect residents with resources.

“If anybody wants to come, we encourage in-person, that way you can actually meet and see everybody,” Richardson said. “You’ll get to see some of the sexual assault investigators from the police department. You’ll get to ask questions. Any questions that we have from the community, they can email me questions. They can go on our Facebook page and message me questions that they want answered, and we’ll try to address those there in the presentation.”

The event will be recorded and made available for viewing for anybody unable to attend in person.

April 7 through 13 is National Library Week, and the staff at the Hardin County Public Library are excited to participate.

Hardin County Public Library Head of Adult Services Rebecca Akers says visitors to the library during each day of National Library Week will have the chance to come home with a prize by answering the daily question.

“Any patron that comes in and answers the little question, they get entered into a daily raffle, and that’s Money to Friday, and so each day we’re going to have a raffle drawing,” Akers said. “We have gift cards for Barnes and Noble, we have library totes, t-shirts, small reading posters, all kinds of fun prizes for patrons.”

Multiple libraries across Kentucky are hosting job fairs as part of National Library Week. While the Hardin County Public Library is unable to host a job fair due to ongoing construction, the library is partnering with the Kentucky Career Center to still connect with job seekers.

“We are providing take-home job fair packets, and so the Kentucky Career Center has helped us by compiling a very exhaustive list of community resources for job seekers, and we’re putting that in a library bag along with lots of little goodies and giveaways from some area businesses as well some library giveaways,” Akers said.

Career advisers will also be at the library Monday, Wednesday, and Friday.

Akers says the library has lots to offer, and the best way to find out is to stop by.

“Even though we’re undergoing construction, our stacks are open,” Akers said. “We have lots of stuff for patrons to look at. We have a library of things, and full programming for children and adults.”

Visit the Hardin County Public Library’s website or Facebook page for more information.