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Maysville Community and Technical College is searching for a new chancellor, and while that search continues the college will be led in the interim by a familiar face.

The Kentucky Community and Technical College System announced Monday that Elizabethtown Community and Technical College Chancellor Dr. Juston Pate will serve as MCTC’s interim chancellor during the search process. Pate will continue in his role at ECTC while serving at MCTC.

Pate said he sees his dual role as an opportunity to make both his current college and a college where he previously served as provost for 10 years better.

“I think, you know, it’s a chance to help a college get through a transition period as they are looking for their next president, and then I think it’s an opportunity for both colleges, Elizabethtown and Maysville, to have a chance to learn from each other and share some experiences,” Pate said.

Pate said the strength of leadership in the KCTCS system gives them the opportunity to make the dual role work. He also said he’ll be actively involved on both campuses, while the leadership, faculty, and staff at ECTC will keep things in motion in E-Town.

“We’ve got a lot of really strong plans in place as we transition to 3.0, and the Family Scholar House, and the construction that we’ve got going on, so largely this is going to be about working those plans and we’ll just continue right on the path we’re on,” Pate said.

The MCTC chancellor search is expected to launch this fall.

The Elizabethtown City Council met for their first meeting of the month Monday.

The first reading was held on a text amendment to the city’s zoning ordinance related to the regulation of data centers in the city, which was recommended for approval by the Elizabethtown Planning Commission at their July 28 meeting.

Elizabethtown Mayor Jeff Gregory said everybody on the city council and everybody in the city’s administration is against hyperscale data centers, but the city asked staff in the Planning and Zoning office to draft the amendments in order to restrict construction of hyperscale facilities while not hurting existing businesses which have accessory use facilities.

“What you all are going to vote on in two weeks basically makes it impossible for us to have a hyperscale data center in the city limits of Elizabethtown, which is what we want to accomplish and what we heard everybody else that spoke the other night want to accomplish,” Gregory said.

Gregory said the city isn’t against passing a moratorium, but said stronger ordinance language that increases regulation and creates guardrails offers better protection, an opinion supported by City Attorney Ken Howard.

“The legal community, generally the view is it’s better to have regulations than a moratorium,” Howard said. “If you’re ready for the regulations, if you know what you want in your community, you’re better off to do that than to enact a moratorium.”

Elizabethtown resident José Torres told the council the fear he and people he has spoken with have is that they are not being heard on the issue, and the decisions being made “are only on one side of the spectrum.”

“If you look at what we’re doing in this community, we’re building, we’re building, we’re building, but we’re not building for people that make under $100,000 a year,” Torres said. “We’re not building for people that are going to have problems now feeding kids in the morning when they used to get free lunch because of HB 500. We’re no longer going to have that money.”

The text amendments will go up for adoption on the ordinance’s second reading.

In other meeting news, the council approved a $25,000 contract with CMW Inc. for the master plan of Trooper Lake, and a $60,000 contract with Lochmueller Group Inc. for engineering services on the Trooper Lake project, which will see new park facilities constructed there including mountain biking trails and a pump track. The council also approved a resolution establishing the South End Elizabethtown Economic Development Program.

The Elizabethtown City Council will next meet August 10.

For just the second time in their history, the American Red Cross has declared a national blood supply crisis.

The Red Cross says blood donations have fallen to a four-year summer low, which they say deepens “an emergency shortage that threatens the availability of lifesaving blood for patients across the country.” The last blood supply crisis was declared in 2022.

The Red Cross says blood donations are not keeping pace with hospital demand, which saw an increase during the summer trauma season. Further strains on the blood supply resulted from a decrease in donations due to extreme heat, poor air quality, and widespread foodborne illnesses. The Red Cross has begun limiting distributions of Type O blood to individual hospitals to ensure the most commonly transfused blood type is available for the most critical emergencies.

The Red Cross urges eligible blood donors, especially those with Type O blood, to schedule a donation. As an added incentive, donors between now and August 31 will receive a $20 Amazon gift card. Visit www.redcrossblood.org for more information on donating or to schedule an appointment. Donations may also be made by calling 1-800-RED-CROSS or in the Blood Donor app.