Although the Parks & Recreation ad hoc committee is suspended, work it had recommended be done at Millennium Park got the go-ahead Tuesday by Boyle County Fiscal Court.

Boyle County Engineer Duane Campbell asked the court for approval to complete pavement of two parking lots, as well as repair an area of the walking trail.

He said the total amount of the work will come in at $40,000, which is the amount of funds carried over from last year through the ad hoc committee, which had earmarked it for the specific needs.

A new parking lot has been cut in near the basketball courts and skateboard park, with rock put in; it will now be paved. Near the softball complex, an older lot hasn’t been blacktopped since it was originally put in and is suffering from several potholes. A portion of it will be repaved.

Also, 500 feet of walking trail has been damaged and is buckling, Campbell said, and needs to be repaved.

Magistrate Jack Hendricks, who served on the ad hoc committee, said it’s a good thing the money was earmarked for these projects and carried over.

“This year, blacktop is cheaper than it’s been in 30 years, so we’ve saved a lot of money doing it now,” he said. Prices, he said, are already being predicted to increase come 2019.

The Parks & Rec ad hoc committee was created in 2015 as an advisory committee to oversee capital improvements in Millennium Park, and had been extended many times over the years.

“It was just best to suspend it because we had so many issues that really needed both bodies (city and county) to get together and discuss,” Hendricks said. “I recommended we just suspend it and not do anything else further, until we’d done what was needed for this year.”

Hendricks said with a new Parks & Rec director coming in soon, after the retirement of John Drake, it just seemed like the best move to make.

The $40,000 includes $20,000 each from Boyle County and the City of Danville.

 

No response from judge

 

In other business, Magistrate John Caywood asked Judge-Executive Harold McKinney for updates on several issues, including a letter he sent to Circuit Court Judge Darren Peckler, inviting him to meet with them and discuss recent findings coming of a jail study completed by consultants with Brandstetter Carroll.

“Judge, you and Judge (Milward) Dedman (Mercer County’s judge-executive) wrote a very nice letter to Judge Peckler. Did you receive any response to that?” Caywood asked.

“I’ve gotten no response,” McKinney said.

Sammons interjected, “I want you all to leave Peckler alone, he’s my friend.”

No one responded to Sammons’ statement.

“Can we assume he’s not likely to respond?” Caywood asked.

“I wouldn’t make any assumptions, but I think what we do is we proceed a pace until such time as we get some sort of response from him,” McKinney said. “But I would never assume he’s not going to respond.”

The fiscal court also approved several other items of interest Tuesday:

• Emergency Management Director Mike Wilder asked for approval of an Emergency Management Performance Grant, in which Boyle County’s allotment is $18,949. The federal grant helps pay part of his salary.

Wilder gave another grant update, which helped supplement another outdoor warning siren, in the amount of $22,000. The court paid $2,500 towards it previously. He said the siren has been installed on top of Tennessee Ridge, on property owned by the Parksville Water District.

“The Parksville siren is located at the old fire department, by Johnson Branch Road, and it’s just not functionable,” Wilder said. “Putting it on Tennessee Ridge will be an asset to that community.”

He said the siren is “an oscillating one, one of the new ones like we’ve got out at Old Bridge.”

• Director of EMS Mike Rogers asked the court to accept a bid for a new ambulance, coming in at $133,461 through Mid-America Ambulance & Coach Sales in Campbellsville. Rogers also requested to hire four new part-time EMTs at $8 and hour, who had started Tuesday. The ambulance and hires were unanimously approved.