WQXE NEWS

The deadline for Kentucky voters to register for the May 21 primary election is less than a week away.

“April 22 at 4 p.m.,” said Hardin County Clerk Brian D. Smith. “That is the deadline to register to vote to participate in the May primary, so we want to make sure, especially the folks who have newly moved here to Hardin County, and we see that a lot in our growing community, come on in and register to vote.”

The April 22 deadline is for new registrations, as previously-existing registrations had to be set to their current party affiliation by December 31.

Smith says if you are eligible to register, come on down.

“You can stop by the clerk’s office, you can do it at govote.ky.gov, or you can call our office at 270-765-6762,” Smith said.

Smith says with 2024 being a presidential election year a larger turnout is expected, so the county is preparing by adding extra machines to larger voting locations and expanding options.

“Last year we had 12 locations,” Smith said. “We’ve expanded to 15 to kind of fill in some of the gaps in our community where we felt like we needed to add additional locations to make it easier for folks to vote. The three new ones are Cecilia Valley, Heartland Elementary, and then Glendale Christian Church.”

Visit www.govote.ky.gov for more election information.

The Elizabethtown Police Department is inviting area families to an awareness event Wednesday.

“In acknowledgement of April being Sexual Assault and Child Abuse Awareness Month, we are hosting a Chalk the Walk event at the police department this coming Wednesday between 3 p.m. and 6 p.m. in an effort to raise awareness and put a stop to these heinous crimes,” said EPD Public Information Officer Chris Denham. “Citizens will be provided with sidewalk chalk as well as a space to draw murals or slogans that show their support for victims. Juanitos Tacos will be on site and dinner will be provided free of charge to all participants. In the event of inclement weather, we will move the event into the lobby of the police department and the art will be drawn on large poster boards.”

The EPD says that statistics show that nearly 2 in 5 women and 1 in 5 men will experience contact with sexual violence in their lifetime, and Kentucky is ranked sixth in the country for child victims of maltreatment at a rate of 14.7 per 1,000 children, nearly double the national rate.

More information on the event can be found on the Elizabethtown Police Department Facebook page.

Baptist Health Hardin CEO Rob Ramey says the recent 2,000-square-foot expansion of the Ring Road Diagnostic Imaging center is part of a $4 million effort to provide area patients with better options.

“We’ve now got four imaging centers where we have 3D mammography available for everybody,” Ramey said. “We’ve upgraded and we’re continuing to upgrade our MRIs and our CTs around the entire market. We’re adding additional x-ray capabilities. We’ve added at the hospital ion robotic imaging, bronchoscopy imaging.”

Baptist Health Hardin hosted an open house at the center on Friday. The open house was an opportunity to highlight some of the additional features the expansion made possible including a women’s center to provide more privacy, a new MRI machine that decreases time and increases patient comfort, and an additional CT scanner that will allow the center to process more than 5,000 additional CT scans a year.

“We know that we need that capacity for our community, for the growth we’re seeing, and with this new machine the images are better, the processing is faster, so it really hopefully will help streamline the processes for our patients and give them an even better experience as well,” Ramey said.

Ramey says the expansion will enhance a diagnostics team that is already a well-regarded one.

“We also understand that you all have a choice, that our community has a choice in where they go for care, and just the other day we were over here and we were celebrating with our staff because they were recognized as being in the top 8 percent nationally of all the diagnostic centers around the entire country,” Ramey said.

The Baptist Health Hardin Diagnostic Imaging center is open Mondays through Fridays.