Tuesday, February 11, 2025

Glasgow infrastructure panel chooses new leaders, gets project updates

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Mayor Henry Royse, right, discusses an issue of interest during Monday’s meeting of the Glasgow Common Council Infrastructure Committee. Continuing clockwise around the table are council members Marna Kirkpatrick and Randy Wilkinson; Department of Public Works personnel Wes Billingsley, Nick Miller and Jim McGowan; and council members Joe Trigg and Freddie Norris. Melinda J. Overstreet / for Glasgow News 1

By MELINDA J. OVERSTREET
for Glasgow News 1

With its January meeting having been cancelled, the Glasgow Common Council Infrastructure Committee got two months’ worth of updates on various city projects and services to start off the year at its regular meeting Monday.

One of the panel’s new members for this year, Randy Wilkinson, is new to the council as well. The other, Joe Trigg, had served on the committee previously a few years ago. The other council members on the committee are Freddie Norris and Marna Kirkpatrick.

The first item on the agenda was to welcome the new ones, but before they actually got to that item, per se, their “welcome” ended up being that Wilkinson was elected as committee secretary, as Kirkpatrick said she would prefer to no longer have that role, and Trigg was chosen as chair after Norris said “it might be nice” to choose someone different for that. That transition took effect immediately.

Glasgow Department of Public Works Superintendent Jim McGowan reported that the Street Division had completed the North Green Street sidewalk project last fall, and he believed it went really well.

“We will start looking at other projects in the coming months,” he said.

He later encouraged the council members to provide suggestions on sidewalks and/or streets that most need repair.

Crews got a good start two weeks ago edging along sidewalks and curbs before colder weather set in again, he said, and they resumed once it warmed.

McGowan said that repairs to the ramp from North Race Street onto the city’s parking structure were advertised for bids Jan. 22, and a prebid meeting was scheduled for this week. The deadline for bids to be received is at 2 p.m. Feb. 20.

Mayor Henry Royse asked whether there had been much interest from bidders, and McGowan said at least five companies have gotten copies of the bid specifications.

The pedestrian walkway from the parking structure alongside the Barren County Government Center is in the design process, he said.

The parking structure was constructed in 1980 and had a 40-year life expectancy, the mayor said.

The retaining wall that supports the city’s parking lot off the west side of the Glasgow Public Square and needs repair is still being analyzed by the structural engineers, and the report on that is due 90 days from when they started, which was in December, McGowan said. The property the city acquired last year in the 100 block of West Main Street allows the city access to make repairs to its portion of the wall, but part of it is owned by the county. Royse said he thinks that part is actually in worse condition, and he has met with the fiscal court’s building and property committee and is hopeful they can work with the county government to find the best approach to the issue.

Perhaps the topic that drew the most discussion – but no action yet – was the question of whether to close a portion of West Water Street that crosses Glasgow Water Co.’s property. GWC had requested the closure, citing concern that people would use up the municipally owned utility’s parking spaces to go to the future justice center to be constructed on adjacent property just to the east of it.

The option agreement for the sale of that adjacent land for the justice-center project states that the sale was contingent upon the “buyer developing said project such that sufficient boundary line barriers are erected to keep patrons of the new Justice Center from parking in Seller’s lot and walking over to the Justice Center.” It further has language that the street should be “cut off” at the boundary point between the GWC and the justice center properties. This agreement, though, was between the Glasgow Water and Sewer Commission, which is the governing board for the GWC, and the Barren County Public Properties Corp., the members of which are the same as the Barren County Fiscal Court. The leader of the fiscal court and the corporation, which was the purchaser of the justice-center property, is the county judge-executive, who at that time was Micheal Hale.

Local resident Eddie Atnip had expressed concerns at a previous meeting that closing that portion of the street would deter visitors to the South Central Kentucky Cultural Center, which is accessed from West Water or North Liberty Street, which runs along the west side of the water company’s property. Atnip proposed that, rather than cutting off that through access, GWC should first try something less disruptive, like putting up signage that the lot is for GWC business only and violators would be towed. Only if that is tried unsuccessfully should the road be blocked.

In the interim since that meeting, Atnip, who volunteers at the cultural center, had devised and submitted a draft of possible language for signage, specifying that the parking on the rear GWC lot was for its employees only and emphasizing the words “NO PUBLIC PARKING.” He also had other information on his proposed sign that some at the meeting weren’t sure they could publicly include.

“The problem is,” Royse said on Monday, “is that nobody can close a city street but the city council.”

That means that portion of the agreement regarding the street closure can’t take effect unless the full council votes to approve it and, he said, the full council would likely need a recommendation from this committee as to whether it makes sense before it would make such a decision.

Site development work for the justice center project is happening now, but the advertising of bids for the actual construction of the facility hasn’t even occurred yet, so it has been noted previously and was again on Monday that there is plenty of time to figure out the best way to address the concerns. Early on, there was some thought that there may not be enough parking spaces on the justice-center site itself for particularly busy days, but later it was determined that they would have more than the legally required spots.

For now, the committee decided by consensus, more or less, to ask the city attorney about whether the language on Atnip’s proposed signage was legally allowable and return to the issue again later.

Even if the language is deemed OK, the mayor noted that it’s not really up to that committee to tell the water company – or any other entity – what kind of signs it can post.

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