The Paducah City Commission met on August 12, 2025, for a regular meeting that included a presentation on the Greenway Trail extension, public comments, approval of grants and contracts, adoption of the South Side Revitalization Plan, introduction of budget and solid waste ordinances, and a discussion on allowing golf carts on city streets. The meeting also included a moment of recognition for the police department and a tragic event over the weekend.
The commission adjourned following the executive session.
All right, good afternoon everyone and welcome. Um I'll go ahead and call this meeting to order on August 12th, 2025, and ask the city clerk to please call roll. Commissioner Henderson. Present. Commissioner Smith? Here. Commissioner Thomas. Present. Commissioner Wilson, present. Mayor Bray, present. Um I will ask Commissioner Thomas to do the invocation, and then I'd ask everybody to remain standing for the Pledge of Allegiance. Dear Heavenly Father, thank you for allowing us to gather again today. Continue to guide our footsteps as we make the decisions for the city. Allow us to have the wisdom to make the right decisions for all that reside here in Jesus' name we pray. Amen. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America. And to the Republic for which it stands one nation, under God, indivisible with liberty and justice for all. Okay, the first item up is a presentation on the Greenway Trail extension, and I'll let uh Hope Reasons do the introductions. Good evening, Mayor Commissioners, City Manager, and City Clerk. Um it's been almost two years now since we first had our first meeting about the Greenway Trail. Um, and we have been through a lot of steps over those two years. And so I am really excited to stand up here and introduce Russ Clark with the National Park Service. He is going to do a presentation over the steps that we have taken and what the proposed Greenway Trail, the path of that is going to look like. So part of our our effort in assisting a community is helping with organizational development, and so we established the city leadership uh team and we established the steering committee of community members, and then we started a project partners meeting bringing everybody together and did a tour of the community on a bus to help everybody get on the same level of what the possibilities might be within the city of Paducah. Then we went into a strategic planning workshop process. That primary effort was to put the vision down in terms of what we are trying to accomplish, establishing an analysis through SWAT of what the possibilities might be and some brainstorming, ultimately leading to some goals of what this project was how we're going to accomplish the project, and then establishing subcommittees within the steering committee to help move those goals forward. And the goals that we came up with were connecting neighborhoods, creating an urban loop, offering community education on the value of the expansion of the greenway, implementing a complete streets process, and looking at improving safety as well as bolster the economic development in the area, and have Paducah become known as the destination for attracting visitors and new residents, and then Paducah as a great place to build a life and raise a family. And it's all quality of life factors when you put these types of recreation amenities forth. The accomplishments over the course of the planning process, we had 12 planning meetings. And we had a strategic planning workshop in December, January, December 23 and January 24. And then we did engaged in a public engagement process, which the staff was a tremendous asset in putting together leaflets and reaching out to the community and trying to engage folks to come to those public meetings because there are always so many public meetings that involved through the process of community development. So we did two community meetings over a couple day process and seven focus groups, and we did an online survey to collect additional information. I'm sorry, next slide. There we go. What we heard was we had 435 responses to the survey, which was fantastic. We had 128 participants in the two public meetings, and the seven focus groups looking at economic development, the cyclists, the runners, the health and wellness community, young professionals, and trail adjacent businesses, as well as city staff. Each of these focus groups came and worked with us on the maps, providing ideas, looking at concerns, and providing their input on what this vision might look like for the South Side expansion of the greenway. And there were over 900 flyers distributed through this process. 50% of the responses was safety. Safety was the number one concern for folks that responded to the survey. 39% was looking at personal safety concerns as well as cycling safety. And 33% indicated that they'd really like to have barriers if possible to help separate cycling and vehicular traffic where that's possible. They also indicated that they're looking for comfort and conveniences, restrooms, number one, number two, water stations, places to get drinking, fill up a water bottle, and 50 29% of the residents said they'd like to have shade trees along this corridor as well. And the other, in terms of amenities, was uh it's important to expand this greenway system into more areas of the community, even beyond the south side. And so we did look at multiple alternatives through this process. So in the planning process, we came up with a recommendation, and this is a the initial recommendation of getting from the riverfront down to the uh Wayne Sullivan area of the community of the South Side where the commercial development is, where there's employment opportunities, where there are services for the residents, and we broke that down into two phases. The first phase was from riverfront to Bridge Street, looking at a couple loops in there, utilizing primarily on street uh bike lanes in lower volume traffic roadways, where is the safety aspect is come is important, and we're looking at connecting the assets of this neighborhood together, being parks and services. The second phase of this project is Iron Cobb as a complete street, looking at being able to provide the safety considerations for walkers, for cyclists, and for vehicles, and that is a complete different type of effort in most cases, and we'll be uh Austin will be talking a little bit more about that aspect because this is the state corridor. And that gets us down into that service area that was the destination focus for this expansion. We had a community review of these master plan concepts in May.