By: Charles Romans
Carter County Times
The Olive Hill City Council heard from representatives of the Carter County Library at the council’s rescheduled April meeting. Library Director Diane Wingert told the council that until recently the library has paid an annual rent of $12,000 to the Center for Arts and Heritage in Olive Hill. This amount was paid out of a yearly budget of $84,000 Wingert said. Wingert also provided figures to the council of other budget items, including the mortgage for the Grayson Branch location, which is $8,451 annually.
Wingert told the council that the annual expenses for the library were at $85,721 (against the $84,000 available budget) and that the library was partially dependent upon donations in order to continue operations. This deficit was further complicated recently, Wingert told the council, due to the Olive Hill Branch of the Carter County Library being evicted from the current Olive Hill location.
“We have been asked to leave because I made a flood,” Wingert said. “It was an accident, but our insurance covered it.”
The water break and resultant damage, as well as increased utility bills themselves, became the point of contention between the Carter County Library and the Arts and Heritage Center. The library maintains that the damages were covered by their insurance, but Arts and Heritage maintain that damages were not completely covered due to the library bathrooms being altered (by the library) before the water damage event. The library was granted a 60-day extension at the current location, but it will be required to move in the near future.
The City of Olive Hill along with Carter County and the City of Grayson are in an interlocal agreement where each entity supports the library in the amount of $27,000 annually. Wingert asked the council, given the library’s current immediate need, to pay them the agreed upon amount. The council did not vote to pay their share of the interlocal agreement at the April meeting, but did discuss options for a future location for the Olive Hill branch.
In other business, the City of Olive Hill discussed garbage pickup in the city. The city had been using Rumpke on a temporary basis for city-wide trash collection while their garbage truck was down for repairs, and in the meeting the council listened to both a proposal from Rumpke to continue that service as well as a bid to purchase a vehicle for that purpose.
Olive Hill Mayor Jerry Callihan told the council that the reason behind the garbage truck being down was that the vehicle was worn out and had declined to the point where maintenance might be more expensive than other options.
“It’s time to buy a new one,” Callihan told the council. “It has 379,000 miles on it.”
Callihan stressed that those miles were “in city” miles, which would be the functional equivalent of many more miles compared to highway operation.
Callihan said that while the garbage truck had been down for numerous repairs, Rumpke had been working with the city to provide necessary services.
“They have offered to do a contract with us for garbage,” he said.
The contract would be for a three-year term, he said.
Councilman Kirk Wilburn (present virtually) disagreed strenuously with the possibility of hiring an outside business to provide a city utility, saying that he would prefer the purchase or lease of a new garbage truck. Wilburn also pointed out that three city employees typically worked the city garbage and that he was concerned about their positions. Mayor Callihan responded to the last concern, saying however the council decided to vote, those employees’ positions would not be terminated but rather shifted to other areas of city work.
Councilman Wilburn made a motion to purchase a new truck, and added that he believed most of the payments could be recouped by what would have been spent on future maintenance. After discussion, the council voted 4-1 to move forward with the purchase of the truck, with Councilman Eric Rayburn being the one dissenting vote. The city said they planned to revisit the motion and vote in a special meeting on Tuesday, May 5, under “Consideration of Emergency Purchase of Sanitation Equipment (Garbage Truck) pursuant to KRS 45A.095 and KRS 424.260.”
Contact the writer at charles@cartercountytimes.com
