Mayor Bray presided over the Paducah Board of Commissioners meeting on August 25, 2026, with Commissioners Henderson, Smith, Thomas, and Wilson present. Commissioner Wilson offered the invocation, followed by the Pledge of Allegiance. The board approved the consent calendar, five municipal orders, and four ordinances, and heard public testimony urging reform of the city business tax.
Commissioner Henderson? Present. Commissioner Smith? Here. Commissioner Thomas? Here. Commissioner Wilson. Present. Mayor Bray. Present. I would ask Commissioner Wilson to do the invocation, and then we'll remain standing for the Pledge of Allegiance. Please join me in prayer. Dear Heavenly Father, thank you on behalf of all of us who are gathered for the many blessings that we have. Thank you for the ability to be involved in useful work. We ask today for your guidance and support as we make decisions on behalf of our city and our community. Jesus' name we pray. Amen. I contend that this system is inherently flawed. Some businesses naturally operate on razor-thin profit margins while others enjoy high margins. A flat tax on gross sales fails to capture that nuance, placing an unfair burden on low margin high volume businesses. Furthermore, this tax structure actively stalls local economic growth. When businesses have money available, they want to reinvest it. They buy new equipment, they remodel their storefronts, and they reward their staff with better wages and safer work environments. By taxing gross sales instead of net profit, the city directly robs local businesses of the capital needed for those improvements. You are penalizing growth and draining the funds that would otherwise flow directly back into our local workforce and neighborhood infrastructure. Let's make our taxing system equitable. We must urgently reform Paduca's business tax structure to evaluate companies on their actual net income rather than their gross revenues. Currently, our local tax system operates in reverse. It imposes a crushing burden on small businesses while granting substantial tax advantages to large established corporate entities. Taxing small businesses with without regard for low profit margins, soaring inventory costs, or high operating expenses is economically unsustainable. It's time for governing entities to stop penalizing the foundational storefronts of our community and implement a fair tiered system based on true take-home earnings. The simplest solution is to implement a net profit tax destructured in McCracken County. I implore this commission to adopt a fair tax based on net profit. I appreciate your time. Thank you, Marshal. Okay, I do have an announcement to make tonight. The city is restructuring two of our departments. And I'll try to walk everybody through it. But we are establishing a department of community development. And we're going to combine our code enforcement and building and electrical inspection departments under the heading of Department of Community Development. This new this new department will be under the leadership of Carol Galt. It's designed to lean into the community growth and development that we anticipate in the months and years to come. And making it making approvals and interactions more user-friendly to developers and contractors. And our deputy fire chief fire marsh fire marshal will remain, and his staff will remain part of the fire department. And I just want to point out while we're talking here that under Chief Deputy Chief Cherry's leadership over the last couple of years, there's made tremendous there's been tremendous uh progress made. We've gotten a lot of positive comments from the community, and I really think that you know the seeing how things can improve and work better, you know, really uh help lead the commission to this decision uh to make things even more user-friendly in the future. Obviously, going forward, collaboration with uh those who remain in the fire department who are working on uh all kinds of things in the in the community, and we'll need to interface with our new department. You know, that collaboration is going to be key. But um we'll be getting a press release out on it as well, but I just wanted to make that announcement uh to the community. And so now we'll move to the consent agenda, and those items are considered to be routine by our Board of Commissioners and will be enacted by one motion and one vote.