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Elizabethtown Police respond to threatening subject at Baptist Health Hardin

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The Elizabethtown Police Department responded to the area of Baptist Health Hardin shortly after 4 p.m. Monday due to a male subject reportedly threatening to harm himself or others.

According to the EPD, hospital staff implemented lockdown procedures out of an abundance of caution. Officers quickly located the subject in question and determined him to be unarmed.

The EPD says at no point did the man present a threat to staff or patients. The man was determined to be of diminished capacity and was evaluated and stabilized.

Baseball legend Cal Ripken Jr. to serve as Heartland Homecoming Parade grand marshall

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A sports legend with a local connection will serve as grand marshall for the upcoming Heartland Homecoming Parade.

“We welcome everybody on August 26 to the Heartland Homecoming Parade, where we will have perennial Major League Baseball Hall of Famer and All-Star Cal Ripken Jr. representing the Ripken Experience, which is a partnership we have formed at the Elizabethtown Sports Park,” Elizabethtown Mayor Jeff Gregory said. “We ask everybody to come out and welcome him to our great community.”

Cal Ripken Jr. is a World Series champion, member of the 3,000 hit club, and owns the Major LEague Baseball record for most consecutive games played. The former Baltimore Oriole shortstop’s organization Ripken Baseball opened the Ripken Experience Elizabethtown at the city’s Sports Park this summer, hosting youth baseball and softball tournaments, camps, and experiences at the complex.

Elizabethtown Events Program Manager Beth Pyes said the city wanted to recognize Ripken for the Ripken Experience’s success.

“I don’t think anybody in our community can deny the impact the Sports Park has had on our community as a whole, so we thought it would be a great honor to have him be the grand marshall,” Pyles said.

Pyles also says Ripken fits in well with this year’s parade theme: World of Sports.

“We’re thinking about the impact sports has not only on our community but in everyone’s life, whether they have a favorite college team, professional team, or they go cheer on their children or their grandchildren at their soccer game or football game or baseball game,” Pyles said. “Sports is a pretty important component of pretty much everybody’s life whether they participate or are just a fan.”

The 2023 Heartland Homecoming Parade will make its way from downtown Elizabethtown to St. John Road beginning at 10 a.m. on August 26.

Historic Downtown Elizabethtown Business Association looks to foster support and promotion

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Several Elizabethtown businesses are forming an association to promote growth and support in the downtown area.

According to a release, the mission of the Historic Downtown Elizabethtown Business Association “is to foster success of businesses in the downtown area through local programming and marketing in effort to promote tourism and support the merchants in operation of their business.”

Association PResident Dana Garrett says downtown businesses are looking to pick up where the former Heritage Council left off when it dissolved during the COVID pandemic, but organizers want to extend efforts further.

“We realized with the growth that we’re seeing that if we really wanted to kind of bring it to the next level that we would need to have more of a formal organization,” Pyles said, “so over the last several months we’ve met to kind of see what that looks like, and then officially got the framework together to launch that this past month, and we’re ready to get other businesses on board and move forward to exciting things that I think will come from it.”

Garrett says she and other business owners frequently get asked by visitors about what is going on downtown, which is a motivating factor for the association’s initial actions.

“At first one of our main goals is to get the website that the Heritage Council started updated, create a map whether it whether you can access it online or have printable copies, so that way anyone who is downtown will know what all we offer, and then also continue on some events we’ve already started to help make them bigger and better and give people another reason to come downtown,” Garrett said.

The association will be open to all businesses located within the boundaries of the Hub. Any interested business owners are encouraged to attend the association’s official kickoff meeting Tuesday, August 15 at 7 p.m. at Waters Edge Winery.

Hardin County Fiscal Court hears Animal Control, Emergency Management reports

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The Hardin County Fiscal Court heard reports on Animal Control and Emergency Management during their regular meeting Tuesday.

Animal Care and Control Director Mike McNutt said the animal shelter took in 84 dogs and 91 cats during the month of July. 76 dogs were adopted out, 12 were returned to owners, 8 were secured, and 15 were euthanized.

McNutt said while the euthanasia rate is up, it is not due to time and space in the shelter, and stressed that the adoption rate has also increased. He also said the biggest drop off has been in the number of dogs getting returned to their owners.

“Not as many people are coming and getting their animals back from the shelters, and that’s a nationwide problem going on now,” McNutt said. “For the second quarter it was up to a 26 percent increase over the past two years. We’re hoping that stables off eventually because the shelters can’t handle much more.”

The live release rate for cats in the shelter is 95 percent, and 268 spay/neuter surgeries were performed on dogs and cats in July.

Hardin County Emergency Management Director Joey Scott discussed some of the incidents his department responded to in recent months. King also praised members of his staff who have developed strategies for responding to incidents on the Nolin River.

“This year we’ve had quite a few incidents coming down there,” Scott said. “I think we’re just trying to be more efficient in our response to that, so with Nick (Douthitt) and Richard (DeWitt)’s work on a mapping process for us down there I think it’s going to really speed up our response time to lost people on the river location-wise.”

Ahead of their next regular meeting, the fiscal court will host its first town hall forum at the former West Point School on August 27 at 5:30 p.m. Magistrate Fred Clem said he wanted to correct a previous report that topics at the forum had to be submitted ahead of time.

“We’ll have a little bit of an agenda, and then it’s just going to be opened up to where the folks can have a dialogue back and forth with county officials, so the formality of it is going to be disposed of,” Clem said. “Just come with questions, comments, and suggestions.”

The Hardin County Fiscal Court will next meet for a regular meeting on August 29.