By: Charles Romans
Carter County Times
The Carter County Fiscal Court held its regularly scheduled meeting on Monday, August 11. Items on the agenda included public comment, the 2025 waste tire event, and typical business which included claims, transfers, and department reports. The August meeting also included an Executive Session concerning litigation, but no action was taken.
Rene Parsons from Business Cultivation Foundation presented a report to the fiscal court concerning her company’s performance over the past year. BCF had been retained as a grant writer for the county for a period of one year, and that year ends at the close of August. Parsons presented the report, which included grant writing activities and the company’s assistance in managing funds from the opioid settlement.
Parsons presented the fiscal court with a new two-year contract to continue those services as well as further assisting the fiscal court in completing the setup of the proposed Opioid Advisory Board which would help the court to process and consider the viability of grant applications for use of the county’s opioid funds.
“It’s the same price, and it’s for two years because we applied for an AMLER on your behalf, which takes three years to get,” Parsons said.
The AMLER is a grant from the Abandoned Mine Lands Economic Revitalization program. According to their website, “The AMLER Program is an opportunity for Appalachian communities to achieve economic and community development goals in areas that have been impacted by the downturn of coal production.” The grant proposal Parsons’ company submitted was for 6 million dollars.
The fiscal court discussed the upcoming waste tire event, and annual event that helps Carter County residents dispose of old tires, and judge executive Brandon Burton told the court that approval was needed to be part of it.
“We are ‘piggybacking’ on the state this year,” Burton told the court. “The state is going to host it, and we have the dates set for October 2-4. (The event) will take place at the old entrance to the Road Department in the back.”
The court voted unanimously to approve participation in the tire event. More information will become available on the court’s website as the event approaches.
The court also voted to take Mobley Flats Road into county maintenance. The .25 miles was previously known as Gimlet Creek.
“It does meet the county road ordinance,” Judge Burton told the court. “There are three or more addresses, drainage, and structurally sound gravel.”
The court voted unanimously to accept the road into the county maintenance schedule.
Carter County Jailer R.W. Boggs gave an abbreviated report, but did address concerns following the incident in Boyd County where jail personnel were affected by exposure to a chemical substance which led to one officer being hospitalized in critical condition. Boggs said that some of the new drugs being attempted to be smuggled into jails not only in our region but across the county are difficult to track. Dealers can change the ‘mixture’ on these drugs by a small fraction, and this has in some cases allowed those drugs to even get past drug sniffing canines.
“We don’t even allow regular mail into the jail,” Boggs told the fiscal court.
Now, everything except money orders addressed to the jail go to an entirely separate location, he said. That mail is converted to digital form before it returns to the jail. Boggs said this helps to circumvent contacts on the outside being able to ‘smuggle’ substances in through the mail.
“It has always been a constant battle,” Boggs told the fiscal court.
Drug users who have been incarcerated are always attempting to get drugs from associates on the outside, including individuals representing themselves as attorneys (who are not attorneys) and attempting to slip drugs to inmates through bogus legal correspondence.
Boggs discussed Suboxone prescriptions and told the court he believed they should not be allowed. There are those who need it, he said, but managing the presence of drugs and ensuring that they are administered properly is challenging.
“Some inmates have to have it,” he said. “But I think it should be by shot.”
There are people who may have a valid prescription, he said, who then use that prescription to attempt to smuggle the drug in to other inmates.
“At some point, even if we have to pay for it, I would like to get the body scanner,” Boggs told the fiscal court. ”I don’t want to spend money we might not have to spend, but this is a constant battle. You have a ton of addicts who are trying to get the drugs in.”
Contact the writer at charles@cartercountytimes.com
