Fiscal Court approves firefighter hirings, first reading of amended ordinance

By Aubrey Kimble | The Winchester Sun

The Clark County Fiscal Court approved the hir­ing of five new fire­fight­ers, agreed to an amend­ment to an ordi­nance and approved a motion to cre­ate a strate­gic plan for the opi­oid abate­ment fund at Thursday night’s meeting.

​Magistrates unan­i­mous­ly car­ried a motion to hire Kyton Joseph, Colton Price, Evan Rowe, and Mason McLemore to fill open posi­tions as full-time fire­fight­ers for the Clark County Fire Department.

​Magistrates also approved the hir­ing of William Puckett to fill an open posi­tion as a part-time fire­fight­er for the Clark County Fire Department. This approval came with a motion for dis­cus­sion from Magistrate Steve Craycraft, with Magistrate Robert Blanton voic­ing an oppos­ing opinion.

​“He retired here four, five years ago; just a per­son­al opin­ion of my own, I hate to hire back peo­ple who retire to any posi­tion, even a less­er posi­tion; I think it caus­es issues,” said Blanton. “I’ll vote nay if it comes to a vote. Nothing against Mr. Puckett; I just…when you retire, you retire.”

​Magistrate Mark Miller and Chris Davis voiced their opin­ions, say­ing that after speak­ing with Fire Chief Doug French, and giv­en that it is on a part-time basis, they both will be vot­ing yay. Magistrate Craycraft also echoed his approval.

​“I think, giv­en how hard it is to find any­body, espe­cial­ly some­body that already has train­ing… I’ll have to go along with it,” said Craycraft.

The motion ulti­mate­ly car­ried with a split vote of 4–1, with Magistrate Blanton cast­ing the sin­gle oppos­ing vote.

​Magistrate Ernest Pasley was not present for Thursday night’s meeting.

​Aside from appoint­ments, the court also approved a first read­ing of an amend­ed ver­sion of Ordinance 2022–13. Ordinance 2022–13 approves a lease and oth­er var­i­ous doc­u­ments relat­ed to such lease for the financ­ing of a “project.”

​The pur­pose of amend­ing this lease would be to rede­fine the term “project” to per­mit the pro­ceeds of the lease agree­ment to be spent on oth­er costs relat­ed to the Clark County Detention Center and the Clark County Fire Department.

​“This is amend­ing the orig­i­nal ordi­nance that bor­rowed mon­ey for the work at the jail,” said Judge Executive R.J. Palmer. “There’s mon­ey remain­ing. I’ve worked with bond coun­sel (legal coun­sel regard­ing the bond) to amend the ordi­nance so that we can spend it on oth­er cap­i­tal items…the major­i­ty of it is [for the] fire depart­ment; there’s one expense at the jail to fix the ele­va­tor. That is it.”

​The motion was approved and car­ried unan­i­mous­ly, with the only dis­cus­sion from Magistrate Blanton, who men­tioned that the coun­ty attor­ney had reviewed the amend­ment to the ordi­nance and com­mu­ni­cat­ed it by email.

​“We had to tight­en up the lan­guage a lit­tle bit, which was good advice from the coun­ty attor­ney,” said Palmer.

​In the mag­is­trate com­ments sec­tion of the agen­da, Magistrate Miller com­ment­ed that they’ve been through the first round of inter­views for the opi­oid abate­ment fund. Magistrate Miller said that the inter­views are going very well and that he is very “hap­py and proud to be a part of that group.”

​Magistrate Miller went on to present three project options for Clark County as part of the opi­oid solu­tion net­work, a sem­i­nar the court has signed up for.

​“The first one is to become a recov­ery-ready com­mu­ni­ty,” said Miller. “The sec­ond one is to cre­ate or expand the opi­oid abate­ment advi­so­ry com­mit­tee. The third one is to cre­ate a strate­gic plan for the opi­oid abate­ment fund­ing. We all, pret­ty much, are lean­ing towards the point of mak­ing num­ber three.”

​Magistrate Blanton com­ment­ed that Clark County is, in his view, already a recov­ery-ready com­mu­ni­ty. Magistrate Miller said he believes that is cor­rect as well.

​“We’re just mov­ing along on try­ing to make sure that the fund­ing gets out to where it needs to go, or not go,” said Miller.

​Magistrate Miller made a motion to go with num­ber three, cre­at­ing a strate­gic plan for the opi­oid abate­ment fund and turn­ing it into the opi­oid solu­tion net­work group. The motion was unan­i­mous­ly carried.

​The next reg­u­lar­ly sched­uled meet­ing of the Clark County Fiscal Court is set for Wednesday, June 13, at 8:30 a.m., with a pub­lic hearing.

Note from the edi­tor of WinCity Voices: As we report­ed pre­vi­ous­ly, Clark County has indeed achieved recov­ery-ready sta­tus, thanks to the hard work of many individuals.