Year in review |
It was a year of drawn-out stories in Jessamine County.
Nicholasville residents and downtown business owners endured a long year of Main Street renovation; the state’s highest court considered a case of firefighter overtime pay; and the nation’s oldest Christian-music festival waited to see if it would survive another year.
Officials took their time deliberating smoking bans, an animal shelter and residential livestock.
An economy still trying to recover forced the closure of a decades-old plant and contributed to the county’s highest rate of child poverty, while several governing bodies raised their property taxes.
Jessamine County saw the state recognize the quality of its school-district leader as she made the final cut for Fayette schools chief and then was named the best superintendent in the state.
The stories often lasted months before reaching a conclusion — or reaching no conclusion at all. These are Jessamine County’s 10 most important story lines of 2011.
Schools go smoke-free; governments pass on ban
Jessamine County Schools started the year Jan. 1 by instituting a smoke-free-campus policy — a move some thought would urge county governments forward with similar policies.
Serious discussions began at a joint governmental meeting Feb. 22, with advocates of a smoking ban preaching health effects and dissenters preaching rights of individuals and businesses.
All three bodies — the Nicholasville City Commission, the Jessamine County Fiscal Court and the Wilmore City Council — hosted discussions on the matter and listened to residents’ opinions about a possible ban, but all three let the matter fall without action.
Wilmore Mayor Harold Rainwater had been a strong advocate for a smoking ban in the city, but his council did not share those feelings. The issue died without any action at an April 19 meeting of the Wilmore City Council, with council members saying they didn’t hear community support for a ban and that it was not an “issue in Wilmore to be legislated.”
Ky. Supreme Court tells N’ville to pay lost firefighter wages
After months of debate over tobacco products, a different kind of firefighting made headlines in April when 44 Nicholasville firefighters filed a lawsuit against the city.
The firefighters claimed their overtime pay had been miscalculated for five years — the same issue at hand in a Kentucky Supreme Court case in which the city of Nicholasville was an appellant.
Nicholasville Mayor Russ Meyer maintained throughout the process that the firefighters were owed back pay based on a calculation of education incentive money. But he and the city claimed the Kentucky Labor Cabinet should have been responsible for reimbursement since the incentive pay came to Nicholasville from the cabinet.
The state Supreme Court ruled in favor of the labor cabinet and against Nicholasville and 11 other agencies Aug. 25, with Justice Daniel Venters’ opinion stating the cities were liable for the back pay and not cloaked with “governmental or sovereign immunity.”
The story reached an end in December when the city and its firefighters reached a settlement for nearly $400,000 to be divided among 50 firefighters. Meyer said the money would come out of the fire department’s budget; fire chief Charles Brumfield said manpower and services would not be affected.
Young makes final cut in Fayette, wins top state award
Jessamine County came close to losing one of its top leaders to its northern neighbor over the summer as schools superintendent Lu Young was named one of three finalists for the Fayette County superintendency.
Young, who graduated from Jessamine County High School and had worked in the district for 28 years, called the post in Lexington a “dream job.” She spent June 7 in the public spotlight as she interviewed in Fayette County, touring the district and taking questions from news outlets and the public.
But after making it to the final cut, Young fell short as her friend Tom Shelton, superintendent of Daviess County, was selected for the position June 10. Clark County chief Elaine Farris was the other finalist.
Young returned to Jessamine County with a “renewed sense of purpose” and said she had felt nothing but support throughout the process from her staff, the community and the board of education.
She didn’t make it to Christmas break without taking the state spotlight again, this time by herself as she was named Kentucky’s superintendent of the year by the Kentucky Association for School Administrators.
During a surprise recognition at Jessamine Career and Technology Center on Nov. 30, Young gave credit to those around her for the award.
“It’s really important to me to say that it’s reflective of the work that’s going on across this district,” she said. “The leaders in this room together are the team that makes Jessamine County Schools what it is; I’m just lucky enough to get to be the superintendent of that group.”
County takes over animal shelter, begins construction on new facility
A year-long debate about who should run the county’s animal shelter resurfaced in 2011.
About 15 months after receiving bids from two groups to run the shelter, the Jessamine County Fiscal Court decided to take over operation of the county shelter from the S.A.V.E. Center, which had run the facility since September 2008.
Bids from the S.A.V.E. Center and The Friends of Animals of Jessamine County came in March 2010, but magistrate George Dean suggested considering the alternative of a county-run shelter. The county also received a $150,000 grant for a new shelter in October 2010.
The fiscal court heard public input on the matter on June 8, 2011, with Dean saying a county-run shelter would promote unity among people and pets in the county.
“In our community, we’ve got two organizations, the one in there now and the others that are criticizing them and not working together,” Dean said. “I just feel like if the county operates the shelter ... these groups can work with the county and make an environment where all the groups in the county can work to save animals, which is what their true missions should be.”
The court voted unanimously July 1 to take over operation of the shelter. It also created an advisory committee for the shelter.
Crews broke ground Aug. 15 on the new 9,000-square-foot animal shelter, and in December, the project was still on pace for a February 2012 completion.
Struggling Ichthus festival calls for fan support
The oldest Christian-music festival in the nation welcomed thousands to Wilmore again in June before announcing its future was in question.
Each year, the Ichthus festival includes several days of concerts and speakers who spend hours sharing messages of God’s love with thousands of people of all ages who bring their tents and sleeping bags and camp out at the Ichthus farm for the weekend.
Ichthus officials took the stage Saturday night of the 42nd annual festival in June 2011 and for the first time asked those in attendance for help, saying financial troubles were plaguing the organization and that without raising additional money it might not see a 43rd year. A total of $16,000 was collected that night, Ichthus CEO Mark Vermilion said.
The festival sought a buyer for the 110-acre farm on U.S. 68 where the event is held and used social media to solicit donations. After an outpouring of support from festivalgoers and volunteers, the announcement came Sept. 13 that the festival would see a 43rd year in 2012, although the group’s board of trustees planned to continue with fundraising efforts and attempts to sell the farm.
Cities, schools raise taxes as property values decline
Elected officials faced a tough dilemma in the new fiscal year as they considered raising taxes in a county that saw property values decrease for the first time in at least 40 years.
Jessamine County property assessments saw a 1.01-percent drop from 2010 to 2011, going from $3.31 billion to $3.29 billion, according to property valuation administrator Brad Freeman.
The result was that taxing governments — namely Nicholasville, Wilmore, the county and the school board — had to raise taxes just to keep revenue the same from the previous year.
The Jessamine County Fiscal Court was first up to the plate Aug. 16 when magistrates voted for no tax increase in light of the slowly recovering economy.
The Jessamine County Board of Education raised its anticipated revenue 2 percent with a tax increase Aug. 26. The school district expected more than $1.8 million in added annual expenses each year as federal funding sources go away and local retirement costs to schools increase.
The two city governments followed suit.
The Nicholasville City Commission raised its property tax Aug. 25 from 17.6 cents per $100 property valuation to 18.6 cents; the Wilmore City Council increased its rate from 19.8 cents to 21.1 cents in an Oct. 3 meeting.
Doris Beams, a county resident who owns property in Nicholasville, told the city commission in August that local government had been tax happy in 2011.
“To me, this is the worst time to ask for a property-tax increase,” she said. “... We pay taxes in the county and we pay taxes in the city; you are taxing us to death.”
Wilmore restricts livestock
The Wilmore City Council called foul on livestock in the city in October, adopting an ordinance restricting which farm animals may be kept on residential property.
As with many of the issues taken up by local governments in 2011, this one began many months before — the council discussed an ordinance in late 2010 but did not place it on the agenda until Aug. 1, 2011.
More than two dozen residents voiced their opinions on the proposed ordinance in an August meeting. The meeting featured a heated exchange, after which a local horse owner was escorted out of city hall.
While several residents said an ordinance restricting livestock would take away from the “village” feel of Wilmore and the opportunity to raise food at home, others raised concerns about the welfare of animals in small lots as well as the smell of manure.
The city council adopted the ordinance by a vote of 5-1 at its Oct. 3 meeting, with Jim Brumfield casting the lone dissenting vote.
Under the ordinance, many types of livestock — including horses and cattle — are prohibited on any lot smaller than 2 acres. Pigpens, roosters and male goats are prohibited.
Adcom Wire closes
Economic troubles in Jessamine County came to a head in October when Adcom Wire announced it would cease its Nicholasville operations by Dec. 19, leaving 68 employees out of work a week before Christmas.
Wayne Foster, director of the Jessamine County Economic Development Authority, said the plant that produces drawn steel wire had been in Nicholasville for around 40 years.
Foster said Adcom was consolidating and would work with its employees on job transitions.
“They are required to do this under the Worker Adjustment and Retraining Act,” Foster said. “What the state does is they take that information and they start trying to work with them and train the workers on how to look for jobs and how to write resumés and that kind of information to help them transition from having employment to being unemployed.”
Phase 1 of downtown work reaches an end
The pervasive story all year long in Nicholasville was the headache of downtown renovation — a project that officials promised would be worth the hassle when it was completed near the end of the year.
The Nicholasville Streetscape Project was only a few months old in January 2011 when downtown business owners approached the Nicholasville City Commission and complained that the project had caused structural damage to their building. Several also said the lane closures, lack of parking and temporary sidewalks had hurt their business.
Business owners vented directly to the project’s engineers during a March meeting at the Euro Wine Bar. An engineer told those gathered that the discovery of a faulty culvert had significantly delayed the work. The culvert cost an additional $74,500 in the $1.7 million project.
“I have people that are here for business, and it used to be the people were going to bring the family for a vacation or a drive-through,” Karen Pedigo, owner of The Corner House Bed and Breakfast, said at the March meeting. “But now they are saying, ‘What’s wrong with your town? You all must be about the worst city in the state because everything is closed up, and it all looks horrible.”
Soon after the one-year anniversary of the start of the work, the orange barrels started to disappear as work on phase one of the project was completed in early December.
County child-poverty rate spikes again
The year ended with a disheartening statistic that begged the question of how Jessamine County can face need — nearly 3,000 children in the county lived in poverty in 2010.
That figure, released in late November in the U.S. Census Bureau’s Small Area Income and Poverty Estimates, is 23.6 percent of the children in the county — up nearly 3 percent from 2009 after a similar 3-percent jump from 2008 to 2009.
The need was also revealed in Jessamine County school cafeterias, where 52 percent of public-school students are eligible for free or reduced-price lunches in the 2011-2012 school year, the third consecutive year that more than half the population has been eligible for the program.
Jessica Dodgen, a social worker in the schools who works with hundreds of homeless students each year, said the county has come to a “crossroads” where it must take an honest look at how to address child poverty when federal and state funding is going away.
“The need isn’t going away. The money’s going down, and the need isn’t going away,” she said. “It’s time that we start looking as a community at things we can do to take care of each other, because we’re just not going to be able to rely on those state-funded programs, I don’t think, in 10 years, or even sooner than that.”
