Welcome everyone to Elizabethtown City Council special meeting for March 23rd, 2026.

I'll officially call this meeting to order and ask Councilmember Marty Fulkerson if he'd lead us in the invitation, please.

Let us pray.

Father, how blessed we are to call this community home.

And Father, as we look outside and we see the trees starting to bud and the flowers blooming and the grass becoming green.

God, we're reminded of a season of renewal that you give us each and every moment of our lives a chance to live life again and come closer to you.

And so Father, we're thankful for this season, season of Easter, a season of hope that gives us all that opportunity to spend eternity with you.

And Father, we pray for this community as we continue to go around the Pennington family.

God, we pray that in the coming days that you'll wrap your loving arms around them and continue uh that they could continue to feel your presence in their life.

And thank you for this community, the way they support uh each and every other uh person when tragedy hits, and it's why we're so proud to call this community home.

Father, we're thankful for our first responders and for the lives that they uh put online each and every day to serve this community, and so Father, we pray protection around them for a men and women that are standing guard and in conflict all throughout the world.

Freedom is not free, and we have been reminded of that recently.

So God protect them and their families at home.

Father, thank you for the men and women of the city that works so hard to make this a great community.

Bless them and their families, and Father, all that we do may it bring pleasing to your sight.

In Jesus' name we pray, amen.

And if you would please join me in the pledge.

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

Madam Clerk, if you would please call roll.

Yes, sir.

Councilmember Bishop.

Present.

Here.

Isaac's here.

Jones?

Here.

Springsteen.

Here.

Tyler.

Here.

You have a quorum, Mayor.

Thank you, ma'am.

We'll start with approval of minutes from March 16th, 2026.

If I can get a motion in a second.

So moved.

Second.

All in favor.

Aye.

Opposed.

Seeing none motion carries.

Judge Howard, which will lead us to the second reading by motion of ordinance number five, twenty twenty-six annexation of property located at Litchfield Road.

If I can get a motion in a second to read, please.

Motion.

Second.

All in favor.

Aye.

Opposed?

Judge Howard.

This is a second reading.

Um by summary.

This ordinance annexes property at Litchville Road as requested by the Delta Living Trust and Sharsaya LLC.

The property will be zoned regional commercial or C three upon annexation based on the planning commission recommendation.

The owners gave written consent to this annexation.

And the city gave the required 45-day notice to Hardin County.

The full text of the ordinance can be found by contacting the city clerk's office as a second reading.

Any discussion, questions, comments.

Seeing none, I need a motion and a second to adopt, please.

I'll make a motion.

Madam Clerk, if you'd call the vote.

Yes.

Councilmember Springsteen.

Yes.

Councilmember Tyler.

Yes.

Councilmember Bishop.

Yes.

Councilmember Fulkerson?

Yes.

Councilmember Isaacs.

Yes.

Six one, Mayor.

I'm sorry, six zero.

Thank you.

We'll go with the next order of business being ordinance number six, twenty twenty-six.

I'm in zoning map for property located at 106 East Memorial Drive from C1 to C2.

If I can get a motion and a second to read, please.

So moved.

Second.

All in favor.

Aye.

Opposed?

Judge Howard.

This is also a second reading by summary.

This ordinance amends the official zoning classification for the property located at 106 East Memorial Drive from neighborhood office to neighborhood commercial to allow for uses such as a dog grooming facility.

The change was approved by the city council as it was found to be in agreement with the city's comprehensive plan.

Again, the full text of the ordinance can be found by contacting the city clerk's office.

And as a second reading, it is now available for your consideration.

Any discussion.

Seeing none, I need a motion and a second to adopt, please.

So move.

Yes, sir.

Councilmember Springsteen.

Yes.

Councilmember Tyler.

Yes.

Councilmember Bishop.

Yes.

Councilmember Fulkerson?

Yes.

Councilmember Isaacs?

Yes.

Councilmember Jones?

Yes.

60, sir.

Thank you all.

That will bring us to ordinance number seven, 2026, amend zoning map for property located at 237 West Poplar Street from R2 to C5.

If I can get a motion and a second to read, please.

Second.

All in favor.

Aye.

Opposed.

Judge Howard.

This is also a second reading by summary.

This ordinance amends the official zoning classification for the property located at 237 West Poplar Street from urban residential general to downtown mixed use or C5 to allow for such uses as an event space.

The change was approved by the city council as it was found to be in agreement with the city's comprehensive plan.

Again, the full text of the ordinance can be found by contacting the city clerk's office, and it is available now for your consideration.

Discussion, questions, comments.

I do think this will be a good addition to downtown.

It's on the outer edge of it of what we consider to be downtown.

And so I think it'll be nice to draw people in and out.

I concur.

Need a motion and a second to adopt, please.

Motion.

Second.

Got a first and a second.

Madam Clerk, if you please call the vote.

Yes, sir.

Councilmember Tyler.

Yes.

Councilmember Bishop.

Yes.

Councilmember Fulkerson.

Yes.

Councilmember Isaacs?

Yes.

Councilmember Jones?

Yes.

Councilmember Springsteen.

Yes.

6-0, Mayor.

Thank you, ma'am.

And that gets us through all the business and our ordinances for today, which brings us to a presentation from Matthew Hobbs, who is the engineerslas director of our natural gas department.

Mr.

Hobbs.

Thank you, Mayor.

Good afternoon, Council.

So basically, State of the Union for Gas Department.

We've got 12-time, 12 full-time employees currently.

Interesting fact on that.

If you don't factor in the construction crew, the average age in the gas department's 35.

If you figure it in on the construction crew, average age drops down to 21.

So that tells you we've had a lot of turnover and we're a very young group.

I think we're progressing, and I think we're learning and growing up, which is a good thing.

But we're keeping them all pretty busy.

So basically the gas department consists of three major groups.

You got the storage, the distribution, and the transmission.

And those are all three inspectable by federal and or state regulations.

We average getting inspected on each one of those once every three years to once every year, depending on how good or bad we're doing on that.

So what are they looking at when they look at that?

You might ask.

They're looking that you have operator qualification, and that that's basically a test, written test and physical tests that you have to take to be able to say that you're qualified to go do any task that physically touches gas facilities.

They're looking at your drug and alcohol testing.

We had to do a major rewrite on that two years ago with the help of KLC because prior to that, the uh policy that we had had for 20 plus years was about three pages.

We went from three pages of drug and alcohol testing to about 86 pages now, just so that you're in line with regulations.

And it was interesting to me because those regulations have been on the books since shoot back when Don was running it, and that they haven't changed a long, long time.

They haven't changed those regulations anymore, but they've decided to start enforcing them.

So, you know, we were sitting there getting inspected, and we had our sheet of paper that was our policy, and they look at it and they go, Well, that's cute, it doesn't address this, this, or this.

And thankfully, that was on KLC's radar at the time, and they were already working on it.

So it was a quick solution.

We went from handful of pages to 80 some pages, and and we're still legit.

And that that's what we're seeing on the regulatory side, and it's not just drug and alcohol and corrosion and leak survey.

They're wanting to see more on your manuals, they're wanting to see more on your procedures on written stuff, on record keeping, and we're starting to feel the squeeze a little bit with 12 full-time people that are trying to keep up with that.

And we've done a really good job and will continue trying to do a really good job, but the regulatory burden is getting more and more with having distribution, transmission, and storage.

And I guess years ago, we only had distribution.

Then the state came in and said, no, no, this isn't distribution, that's transmission.

So that happened in probably the early 2000s, and then I guess in about 2018, they decided storage was now a regulatory jurisdiction.

So we had to pick that up too.

And it it basically makes everything more expensive that you're having to keep up and document.

I mean, you're still doing it safely, or at least we feel like we are, but you have to be able to prove all that.

So that's a snapshot of what those three groups do.

Work-wise, another interesting one that I ran into are the number of locates that we're getting.

In 22, we did about 5,400 locates.

23, that number jumped up to 6,600.

24, we were at 8,000.

For 25, we dropped back a little bit, we're about 7,600 locates.

And that's interesting because we've got one guy that does that full time.

So if you say that guy's working 260 days a year, and he's working a full eight hours for the day, not taking 15-minute breaks, not doing much for lunch, just straight eight hours.

That's a locate every 15 minutes.

That's a lot to keep up with.

And one locate could be as simple as well.

That one he could conceivably do in a matter of minutes, but he still has to drive there, get there, find it, hook up to it, and locate it.

Compare that to somebody calls in a design and they're redoing 3,000 feet of road.

That's still just one locate.

So he's not going to get that done in 15 minutes.

So we're we're looking at that and tracking that number wise as far as how busy he is on the operation side.

Inspection numbers are holding fairly steady.

The construction side, number of new services is holding pretty steady.

We're actually losing services because we're retiring more services than we're putting in, which will eventually get you ideally, you'd have the same number of services that you have meters.

We currently don't have that, but we're working towards that and have been for a while.

Footage-wise, construction crews still looking pretty productive, putting out about the same numbers that they have been for the last handful of years.

We average anywhere from about 12,000 foot of line that we're putting out a year to about 9,000, just depending on what the year looks like and what kind of demand you have.

The pre-pay that you all green lit us on a year and a half ago, that's looking really good.

We have benefited from that in the winter because that's an extra thousand a day that's delivered to our city gate, and it has the added benefit that you're saving about a hundred thousand dollars a year on that.

So prepay is an area that we would probably want to look at in the future to maybe up that number.

Right now, I think we're at about maybe 10% of our flow.

You could take that up to 40 or 50% pretty easy and still be in a in a safe area of operation.

What you wouldn't want to do is overcommit and have too much in there, and you can't actually flow it because then you have to look to offload that someplace.

So if you got in the 50% range, you're probably still pretty good.

Another interesting part that I bumped into looking at our flow.

So on average, if you run our numbers of what we're putting through the system for the last three years, we're flowing at about a 93% load factor, which is phenomenal.

But the bad thing that that tells me is that you only got about 7% that you can grow before we need to be getting more supply in there.

So the 93 is kind of misleading because there's obviously days where we're running at 110%.

We're running more than what we should be able to, but there's also days where you're, you know, day like today where you start off cool and then you warm up and then you drop back cool again.

You're not going to run at 100% load factor that whole day.

So the 93 is just kind of a health indicator of how much capacity you have left before you're hurting for capacity.

And on average, like I said, we're running about 93% a year.

So we can take 2.2 BCF through, and we're averaging 1.9 for the past three years.

On the uh well stuff that we talked about quite a bit starting in early 2020s.

We've completed all three of those phases.

We don't see that we're gonna have to do a lot of action on that because we've completed all of them, at least for the initial baseline on it.

We shouldn't have to do any more well work until about 2029.

And when we do that well work, it should be a lot more economically friendly for us because we were spending about 250,000 per well when we did that originally.

That number should come back down to about 50,000 per well.

But by federal regs, you're supposed to be back into each one of those every seven years.

So that would hit in 29.

On the uh D high that we talked about doing this past fall, we backed off of that because we weren't real tickled with the proposals that we got.

They we had one that was entirely too cheap, one that was about middle of the road, and one that was super expensive.

And when we looked at them, none of them were really consistent from one to the other.

So we kind of pumped the brakes.

We're still gonna try to get that project done by the end of this budget year.

But I've told administration that we don't want to rush that project.

We want to make sure we get it right.

So it's still a need, and we still need to do that, but we're working on it, and we want to make sure we get it right the first time.

Dehigh means dehydrator, if you were wondering if y'all didn't remember us talking about that because it's been a little bit right.

So, on that, basically, we're this time of year, we're starting to store gas.

So we're pushing gas down into the storage field, which is about 990 feet below grade.

So you do that through the summer, then in the winter, that's where you can get your 110 or your 120% of what you should be able to flow because you're pulling the balance back out of the ground.

The side effect of pulling it back out of the ground, you can have water and moisture, other things in that, so you have to run it through that dehydration system before you put it back out to the end users so you don't turn their gas meter into water meter.

I'm not the only one that might be clueless every now and then.

I'm I'm clueless almost every day.

It just happens.

I appreciate it.

Another uh exciting project that we're working with.

We did a uh employee exchange program with customer service and the utility office, and and it was interesting because we did it to help out with some employee issues, and it it turned into positive because we got my people talking with Jeff's people really good, and Jeff's people were really good at Springbrook, and my guys were really good with metering, and they sat down and started talking, and they started coming up with efficiencies that we could get out of stuff that we didn't even know we could, cost savings on some electronic devices that were able to go back to manual devices, which are about a quarter of the cost.

And we found out stuff that we could do in Springbrook that we didn't know we really could do.

So that's another goal that we've got set up for moving forward is closer collaborations between those three groups and looking for the efficiencies that we can find out of getting those three groups working better together.

And it's not that they worked bad before, it's just we didn't have a reason to be in close proximity working on that stuff, and that just kind of was a side effect that we were like, wow, this is this is pretty good stuff.

Look at what we can save here and what we can do here.

But that in a nutshell is what I had to report to you, unless you all got questions or comments or concerns.

Are there is there a schedule for state or federal inspections, or is it just yes?

So we actually have the state public service commission coming in in August, and they have told us that they will be inspecting our distribution and transmission units.

So they'll be sitting with us for about two weeks in August.

So basically, what they do for that, they usually come in on Monday and on Monday.

We probably won't see them.

They're usually poking around the system at whatever they want to poke around.

Then by Tuesday, they schedule to be in the office with you, and they'll sit in office with you Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, then Friday, they usually want to go out in the field and see you do something.

That's where they're checking the OQ.

So if you had an OQ task that you could perform, they would take you out in the field, they'd set you up, have you perform it, and they're setting their grading whether or not you did it off your policy and procedure manual, and you were aware that you had a policy and procedure manual.

So it's basically a field inspection, and then I guess two to three months after that, you'd get a write-up of any possible violations that you had, and then you get a chance to answer on why you think that is a violation or is not a violation.

That was some other good news that I should have shared with you.

A week and a half ago, we got notice from our last inspection on the storage field that we had zero infractions.

So that inspection happened last April, and we just got notification of that last week or week before.

So federal government took about a year to get us an answer on that.

And we started off with three violations, but we were able to explain those three away into no violations, no further action needed.

So you were holding your breath for 11 months.

Because part of me really wanted to ask them, hey, what's going on with this?

You know, you gave me 30 days to respond, and it's been three months, four months, five months.

Yeah, but you go with that kick the skunk adage, and you don't want to do that.

Any other questions?

Thank you, sir.

Appreciate you.

Thank you.

Appreciate it.

We're gonna go off script for just a second.

I walked up the ramp a minute ago and had a very pleasant surprise.

A great friend of mine, as many of you all will know, a local legend and the undisputed perpetual perpetual mayor of Glendale and also the voice of the Central Harden High School Bruins, Brother Mike Bell wanted to address this honorable body.

So, Brother Bill, I'll give you that opportunity.

I'm glad you're here, sir.

Well, thank you for the invitation.

Council, thank you all for letting me.

Uh three weeks ago today, the public was notified that uh one of our local young men was injured in Operation Fury.

On Saturday of that week, he succumbed to those injuries.

And uh then they returned home to Glendale, and it seemed like it took forever to make the arrangements and the situation come.

But last Friday, and all the time leading up to last Friday, majority of Harden County has stood and hurt.

Uh there has been in my mind and in my vision across the county, people are hurting because they don't want they don't know what to do.

And uh the hurt goes deep because we're also thankful it's not our child.

And we empathize with Tim and Carrie and McKenzie as it's her brother.

And on her 30th birthday, they're planning the funeral for their 26-year-old son.

And we hurt because of them.

And then on Friday, we were able to stand the streets and from Fort Knox to Glendale back to Elizabethtown.

People stood silence.

There was such an awe that is impossible to express and duplicate.

It was natural.

And then on Saturday, the Central Harden and the Harden County Board of Education opened up the facilities, and they were able to have a beautiful memorial service that I was able to be in attendance of.

You know, we're all glad that we live in America.

And this young man, when he was in kindergarten, said he was going to serve and defend America.

And he did.

There's no words.

And then there's an apology due.

There was the individual on the platform that gave the recognition of the dignitaries.

And he ignored one special dignitary that is known as Mayor Jeff Gregory, the mayor of Elizabeth Town.

And so, on behalf of that program committee, I apologize to you, sir.

It was beautiful.

You all were beautiful.

And I just thank you for allowing me to share my heart.

I've never in 80 years of my life, I've never experienced three weeks like we've just gone through.

And the Pennington family are a beautiful tribute to God.

And this young man did exactly what he wanted to do.

Thank you.

Thank you, Brother Bell.

And as always, we're extremely proud of the job that Chief Thompson and our police department does and did the this weekend and our fire department.

And uh you said it best, everybody just had a special hurt about them, uh, knowing how that family felt and feels, and uh, we're just glad we could play a small part and back to the uh apology that you just made.

Nobody was there for recognition, at least I wasn't, so that didn't bother me a bit.

And I thought you did a great job memorializing that young man and getting up there and speaking for the community and the family.

So once again, as always, thanks for all you do for us.

Anybody anybody else have public comments?

Okay, city council information items.

So the city council meeting for April 6, 2026 will be canceled.

The next meeting will be held on April 13th, 2026.

And then finally, I would like to ask our director of public works, Don Hill, who gets to speak after Matthew Hobbs.

Was he correct on all that stuff he was saying about the gas?

He was somewhat uh we avoided the transmission uh regulations by calling it high pressure distribution.

So you just you just said you were smarter than him.

It's just simple, keep it simple.

Brother Bill, that was those were beautiful words, and thank you for revealing your heart.

Uh, it's hard to follow that.

Uh so I'm gonna close out, be very brief, as Ken Hyard says in summary.

Um talk about uh today's apparel is for announcements.

Matthew did presentation apparel, so um, it is a pleasure to be here today before you good afternoon to you all.

I'm gonna talk about uh our spring cleanup program, which will begin on March the 30th, next Monday, and we'll conclude on Friday, May the 1st, tentatively.

Sometimes we go over, but we really try to get all the debris that's put out during that month.

We try to get that collected on the schedule.

And so it's talking about the schedule, and then I'll summarize the guidelines and then tell you where you can find it uh in full uh format.

But uh the schedule is coincides with brush collection.

However, because of the amount of debris that is put out uh through the month, we will go through the areas not by the week, but we'll start in area one on March the 30th, and we'll continue to run the route schedule through the four areas throughout the month.

Usually we make three to four passes throughout the city.

So put it out.

We're gonna continue to run that route.

Brush collection will continue uh throughout the month of April along with brush collection.

So you'll see different placards or signs on the trucks.

One says brush collection and one says spring cleanup, and there might be a second brush collection truck, but they're they're uh we designate the truck so people don't see a brush loader going through their neighborhood and think why did they pass up my brush and picked up my junk?

So we don't mix them.

So that's another point.

And as far as summary of the guidelines is we need you to keep the items for spring cleanup separate from your brush.

Okay.

That way we don't get them mixed up because then it becomes an issue down at our multi-purpose storage facility.

And so we ask that you place the items for spring cleanup along with your brush is near the street, but not to interfere with traffic or drainage areas, okay?

Curb inlets, ditches, anything like that, but get as close to the street as you can, or right around 10 feet or closer, that way the equipment can pick it up.

The uh items that we will not pick up, again, in summary is no garbage, no household garbage, hazardous materials, liquids, construction debris.

So if it's a vacant lot and someone's building a house, we're not gonna come through and pick up your debris from your construction, okay?

And this is for residential properties only.

We won't pick up tires or automobiles unless the mayor wants to get rid of that Corvette sitting in his driveway or sitting in his garage, it's all dusty.

Call me, I'll personally pick that one up.

So on the last week of the month, April 27th through May 1st is for appliances, okay.

So you call 270-737-7890 and make an appointment, and we will come by and pick up your appliances.

Uh we note on appliances that if they contain Freon, they need to be tagged showing that it's been the Freon's been removed in an approved manner.

Okay, so if we don't see a tag, and it's a refrigerator or an air conditioner unit, anything like that, we won't pick it up unless we see the tag.

And then the last thing is if you have loose items and you want to put uh in plastic bags, we ask that you put them in clear plastic bags.

That way we can see them, limit the weight to 50 pounds.

And if you don't have access to plastic bags, you can purchase those at Public Works or at the Pritchard Community Center.

It's uh three dollars for a roll of 25 or 27 for a case of 250 bags.

Okay.

And the last thing I'd like to announce is that on April the 25th, there is an e-scrap recycling event.

And so this is sponsored by AGC Automotive, Tri-State E-Scrap, Altech, and Harden County Government.

And so, and the location for that is gonna be at the AGC Automotive America's plant.

So are there any questions?

Hey, Don.

Yes, ma'am.

So we know what's not included in junk and debris.

What what are some examples, if you don't mind, of what it will be picked up?

Junk and debris.

Junk and debris.

Uh okay.

So are we talking mattresses, couches, are we talking about?

We will pick up mattresses, couches.

Yeah, okay.

We'll pick those up.

Uh I will I'm glad you said that because whatever can be recycled, we will recycle.

Whether it's plastics, metals, whatever it is, we'll recycle it.

Do me a favor, and I know you've done this 275 times, but talk a little bit about the rotation and the four different districts that we have in the city and why when people call in to City Hall and say they haven't been by here in three weeks.

That's because we just got through their neighborhood the week before and it's on a four-week rotation.

Explain how that works.

Right.

Well, the four the four areas coincide with the weeks of the month.

So if you live in area one, and if you go to the city's website and you can click on the public works page, and then you can click, and then it'll have brush collection, uh leaf collection, spring cleanup.

And then it also has a street area map.

If you click on the street area map on the public works page, it shows the areas and it also shows the schedule.

So you get a description of the four areas uh using the highway department uh state highways, which I can give you area one is west of 31W and north of Kentucky 1357.

Area two is west of US 31W, south of Kentucky 1357 and north of the CSX Railroad.

Area three is east of US 31W and north of Kentucky 251, and then area four is east of US 31W and south of Kentucky 251.

John Road yeah yeah CSX Railroad uh Amy did post that today on the city's Facebook page so if you follow social media look at the city's Facebook page it has the guidelines and the route schedule and to his point anybody that's watching live stream on social media I would encourage them look around your yard look in your garage look in your basement look in your storage room if there's things there that you can get rid of that you haven't used in 10 years because there's plenty at my house and I'm using I'm thinking of myself as an example let's get that stuff out and and get it cleaned up because then it doesn't end up in the yard or anything else and we don't have to worry about that later so let's work really hard and especially the month of April and cleaning up and having a beautiful spring and summer.

Yep we're excited to do it thank you Don thank you Mary any of you all have anything I want to touch on uh another thing that Brother Bell was talking about earlier with the funeral on Saturday I had the opportunity to sit with some higher ups from Fort Knox including uh one two three star general commands that were there and uh two different uh individuals that are representing the army looked at me and said that they have been all over the world all over the country at different military bases they've gone through these things before unfortunately and they had never seen the outpouring of support that they saw on Friday that Harden County displayed and I was pretty proud when they said that so I meant to say that earlier but that's that's pretty special I thought yes sir good point anybody else okay we will not go close session today so we can adjourn if I can get a motion in a second please we'll make a motion second got a motion and a second all in favor opposed seeing none motion carries we are adjourned and thank all of you for coming