By: Charles Romans
Carter County Times
The City of Olive Hill held its regularly scheduled meeting last Tuesday, July 15. The first item on the agenda the council addressed was the membership of the new Olive Hill Tourism Board. There had been seven members originally on the board, but two members had resigned before the board took any action. Initially, the board had decided to proceed with the remaining five members, but after consulting with the Kentucky League of Cities, it was determined that this was unacceptable. To resolve this, Olive Hill appointed two additional members to the board to bring the membership up to the required number of seven.
The city also held the first reading of an ordinance authorizing the operation of street legal special purpose vehicles on public roadways within the City of Olive Hill. Such vehicles include ATVs, UTVs, Mini Trucks, Pneumatic Tired Military Vehicles, or custom or modified vehicles with specified equipment and registration that meet inspection standards set by state law.
This ordinance does not include slow moving vehicles (such as golf carts) which are governed by a separate city ordinance. It also only applies to city streets and does not authorize their use on roads or trails where they are specifically prohibited. Many trails, such as those at the city lake, specifically prohibit the use of any motorized vehicle.
The city’s grant consultant Jennifer Meade spoke to the council and gave updates on current grant progress.
“We have a small grant right now for ARC through the Center for Rural Development,” Meade told the council. “It a capacity building grant, so we can get everything in line and all the metrics we need to apply for the big grants such as Brownfield Grants.”
“I am actually going to the conference in Chicago in August,” Meade told the council.
The first thing Mead said she had done was a land utilization assessment for the Olive Hill Business District.
“I took the liberty of defining what we would call our central business district,” she said.
Meade provided maps of essentially three blocks of the city.
“The bad news is that thirty-eight percent of your business district is blighted,” Meade told the council.
Blighted property is generally defined as properties that can include structurally unsafe conditions, being a visual “eyesore,” and unkept landscaping – such as overgrown lawns, uncontrolled weeds, dangerous conditions of trees, etc. Blighted properties might be inhabited, abandoned, foreclosed, or even vacant lots.
“That is a really high number,” she said. “But I have broken that down into what is actual blight and those that are undeveloped,” she said. “So, this is the first step (the assessment) in building your portfolio that everyone can draw from and apply for grants.”
“The next thing I will do is look for lost potential tax revenue if these properties were developed,” Meade told the council. “Potential money circulating through the city.”
“Brownfield Grants would really be helpful for this,” Meade said. “And you pretty much check every box to apply for those.”
Meade said that the thirty-eight percent was high, but the silver lining was that the percentage put them in a better position to receive those grants.
Contact the writer at charles@cartercountytimes.com
