Craycraft stresses smart growth, fiscal stability

Had it not been for his oppo­si­tion to large-scale solar ener­gy devel­op­ment on Clark County’s prime farm­land, Stephen Craycraft might nev­er have got­ten involved in local government.

“I got in because of the solar issue that came about a few years ago. It was my part of the coun­ty that was going to be affect­ed,” he said. “That’s what pushed me into politics.”

Now the local busi­ness­man, who is in the last year of his first term as 3^rd District mag­is­trate, is run­ning for coun­ty judge-exec­u­tive in a crowd­ed Republican pri­ma­ry race. And he still wants to make sure growth occurs in a way that is ben­e­fi­cial, not detri­men­tal, to the community.

Craycraft said it is busi­ness and indus­tri­al growth that pay the bills, and that must be a priority.

“We have to pur­sue that as hard as we can,” he said. “In order to do that, we have to have land, but we want the growth to be in the right places. Because agri­cul­ture is the back­bone of our coun­ty, and we have to main­tain our farm­land. And also, our farm­land is part of the char­ac­ter of our coun­ty, and we don’t want to destroy the char­ac­ter of our county.”

“Residential growth has to kind of go hand-in-hand with indus­tri­al or busi­ness growth. You have to have places for peo­ple to live who work in the indus­tries. But res­i­den­tial tax­es don’t pay the bills,” he said.

He point­ed to a study by the University of Kentucky that shows res­i­den­tial growth actu­al­ly costs local gov­ern­ments more than it gen­er­ates in tax­es. And the far­ther hous­ing devel­op­ments are from the city cen­ter, the cost­lier they are.

“We’d like for our growth to be from the inside out instead of sprawl,” he said.

Counties that have plan­ning and zon­ing tend to have bet­ter out­comes than those that take a “shot­gun approach” to growth, he noted.

“I’m sor­ry, but those coun­ties get what they get, and there are a lot of coun­ties that are that way, espe­cial­ly in Eastern Kentucky,” he said.

Craycraft said he is hope­ful about eco­nom­ic oppor­tu­ni­ty here.

“I’m very, very opti­mistic about the future of Clark County,” he said.

Asked to elab­o­rate, he answered: “I’m privy to some things I can’t dis­cuss — one thing in particular.”

Craycraft, 72, was “born and raised” on a farm in Clark County and has lived here all his life, as has his wife, Louanne. They have two chil­dren and four grandchildren.

A grad­u­ate of George Rogers Clark High School, Craycraft earned a degree in indus­tri­al tech­nol­o­gy from Eastern Kentucky University and began work­ing at Rockwell International at 18.

“I worked there for 18 years,” he said. “During that time, I went into the Army, and when I got back, I went to school on the G.I. Bill and got my degree from Eastern.”

While still work­ing for the truck axle plant, he start­ed his busi­ness, Spectrum Photography in Winchester, which he’s had for near­ly 40 years.

“Along the way, I start­ed invest­ing in real estate,” and that has been suc­cess­ful, he said.

As he was “wind­ing this busi­ness down,” he thought, “I’d like to do some­thing use­ful and make a dif­fer­ence.” So he decid­ed to run for office.

“Now, hav­ing served for three years, I’ve seen how local gov­ern­ment works, and I just think that I can do bet­ter,” he said.

Craycraft said he can “get along with any­body and every­body,” and thinks the “atmos­phere in coun­ty gov­ern­ment” will be bet­ter if he becomes judge-executive.

“It has been pret­ty con­tentious, and it doesn’t have to be that way,” he said.

One area of con­tention has been the county’s fis­cal prob­lems. Expenses have soared. The cost of emer­gency med­ical ser­vices, for exam­ple, has gone from about $500,000 at the begin­ning of the Fiscal Court’s cur­rent term to $1.2 million.

And trans­fers from coun­ty gen­er­al funds to jails have risen 76 per­cent across the state in the past sev­en years, accord­ing to a res­o­lu­tion the mag­is­trates passed this week, urg­ing the leg­is­la­ture to help.

“Our biggest prob­lem, with­out a doubt, is our finan­cial sit­u­a­tion,” Craycraft. “It has to get cor­rect­ed and can be corrected.”

“I don’t think we need more of our tax mon­ey; I think we need bet­ter account­abil­i­ty with the mon­ey that we have,” he said. “I think we can make our mon­ey go further.”

Craycraft said he is hope­ful that HB 557, which would pro­vide more state fund­ing for jails, pass­es in this session.

He said he is in favor of study­ing merg­ing the city and coun­ty fire depart­ments and wants to con­sid­er dif­fer­ent options for the ambu­lance ser­vice, which is cur­rent­ly pro­vid­ed by the Winchester Fire Department. One option would be to “bring the coun­ty EMS ser­vice back into the coun­ty fire depart­ment.” Another pos­si­bil­i­ty, he said, would be to cre­ate a spe­cial tax­ing dis­trict to fund the ambu­lance service.

“That’s some­thing that real­ly needs to be looked into. The cost of our ambu­lance ser­vice has more than dou­bled in the last three years,” he said. “We’re just going to have to do some­thing. We can­not sus­tain the path that we’re on.”

“We have to make sure that every­body is pay­ing their fair share, no more and no less,” he said when asked about tax­es. “Working with the PVA, I think things are becom­ing more equitable.”

Craycraft said the thing he’s proud­est of hav­ing accom­plished while on the Clark County Fiscal Court is the ordi­nance he brought to pre­vent indus­tri­al-scale solar farms on agri­cul­tur­al land. He’s also pleased with the mea­sure to put med­ical mar­i­jua­na on the bal­lot, which passed.

“Not that I’m for it or against it, I just think that’s the way you han­dle it,” he said.

And he’s proud of the way the coun­ty has spent its American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) funds.

“We want­ed to make sure that we used it in a way that we would have some­thing to show for that mon­ey. … We didn’t just put it in the gen­er­al fund and spend it to pay bills,” he said.

Part of the mon­ey was used for a sew­er line project, a new fire sta­tion, a fire engine, and broadband.

Craycraft said that in the three years he’s been a mag­is­trate, he has made good con­nec­tions through Leadership Kentucky, Commerce Lexington, and oth­er orga­ni­za­tions, and he is start­ing to feel com­fort­able in his role as a pub­lic offi­cial and is pos­i­tive about the future.

“I know we can do bet­ter. There are some great things on the hori­zon,” he said.