Welcome everyone to Elizabethtown City Council regular meeting for August 18th, 2025.

And if you would bow your head with me for a prayer.

Heavenly Father, we come before you today with great excitement.

And when I say great excitement, all of the blessings that you've bestowed on not just this honorable body and city government, but this city in general and our community.

You see dirt turning everywhere.

You see opportunities arising for lots of our people.

And it's just a great place to live and be and raise your family and live and work.

And one of the main reasons for that, and you know this is because we have great people that work for our city.

And they're represented here today in this in this room, and we're very proud of the promotions that we're about to do.

We're very proud of the votes that we're about to make to continue to bless this city.

And we're just so grateful for the opportunities that we have, and they're all provided by you.

And please watch over our folks, keep them safe, watch over our citizens, and continue to bless this great city.

And we'll we'll do the best that we can to represent you and do it in your honor.

And it's in your son's name we pray.

Amen.

And to the Republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.

Okay, we're gonna start off with approval of minutes for August 4th, 2025.

Got a motion and a second.

All in favor?

Aye.

Aye.

Opposed.

Seeing none, motion carries.

At this time, I would like to introduce the 2025 police chief of the year in the state of Kentucky voted on by the Kentucky Association Chief.

He should have known that I was gonna get that in there.

And he's got some important work to do.

And Marty, you got a comment on that?

Yep, Chief, just because you are now chief of the year, you get an extra 10 minutes without any hassle from Don Hill.

Yes.

Well, Micah actually approved the Corvette after that.

Um what's great is we have an opportunity.

I guess it was last week we talked in just the other side of this room about the bittersweet uh ceremony that we celebrated with Chris Denham and him retiring.

Well, tonight there's nothing bitter about why we're here.

We're here to celebrate the promotion of two great leaders.

The the title supervisor gets thrown quite a bit, and that's acting.

Uh you see a lot of supervisors in this room right now, but we don't take that as the primary responsibility of what we do and what that is is leaders.

Leaders because we have uh a number of our personnel from EPD here today, and whether they were rank or whether they're just within the rank and file sworn civilian, we challenge all of our people to be leaders.

But today's formal recognition of the first step into leadership for Dietrich.

Um I don't know why you said DJ for Coop.

We only have one coup.

We have two Coopers over there.

We only have one coup.

And for Sean, his next step uh into leadership for the police department.

And I can tell you that the time that I have been here, both of these individuals have excelled in everything that we've asked them to do.

And I'm excited just to be a small part of them being able to be here tonight to welcome their families.

And if you look around and you see the number of personnel you have from the department, I think that's a true reflection of the character of these two men and what they mean to this department because you can have a lot of ceremonies and some people can come and some can't, but at a time when we're starting to transition to do these recognitions at City Council.

Most of the people you see now don't charge us over time, please for anybody there.

Uh, but they're here after their normal work hours.

And that's because they're gonna see not only two leaders, two supervisors, but two friends uh accept this this promotion that they've earned through hard work and dedication.

So without any further ado, I know the mayor's gonna get them sworn in uh in their new position.

So Sean, if you Dan will go ahead and get you all over first.

And I want you all to know the only reason or the only way that Coop was able to get promoted is he had to beat me in arm wrestling.

And it was that close okay if you would raise your right hand and when I get done reading if you agree you say I do I do solemnly swear that I'll support the Constitution of the United States and the Constitution of this commonwealth and be faithful and true to the Commonwealth of Kentucky so long as I continue a citizen thereof and that I will faithfully execute to the best of my ability the office I foresaid according to law and I do further solemnly swear that since the adoption of the present constitution I being a citizen of this state have not fought a duel with deadly weapons within this state nor out of it nor have I sent or accepted a challenge to fight a duel with deadly weapons nor have I acted as second in carrying a challenge nor aided or assisted any person thus offending so help me God okay call them up whoever was going to put the pins on here he robbed you didn't hear I think our council members know uh we used to do these private more privately than this open recognition that we have tonight and I thought the mayor had a great idea to start celebrating this with not only our council members but community members to come to this because it shouldn't be something that's just exclusive to the PD because of what it takes to get to the point for these two and for all the the supervisors and that we have from the PD so let's do this I bet you all jump over here and let's stand in front of the council and get a picture come on Theresa in the middle they can slide over a little bit or y'all can come up here if you want to come up front come on up here Marty just fine can you get everybody in here Johnny get everybody in here just we'll say family y'all want family pictures real quick get them back over in front of the flags if you like I'm tired now yeah yeah and you all don't have to hang around if you don't want to we got a lot of business that you probably don't want to have to hear about so you won't hurt our feelings if you walk out than him that's a low bar to meet you all don't have to stay if you don't want to that'd be pretty boring hey I'm proud of you perfect hey Sean do you mind Jessica's got a paper she needs you to sign y'all are good thank you all for letting me go I think it's good to do it here.

My bad I stole it.

We just have to find out.

I don't know about the guy.

It was, it was with me.

Right them all off, isn't it?

I bet that's working in the decision.

Alright, Judge Howard, are you ready?