By: Charles Romans
Carter County Times
Grayson City Council heard from the Shoes 4 Kids organization at their regularly scheduled meeting on September 9. The organization is a community outreach that provides new shoes for school children in several counties, including Carter County. The outreach began through Oak Street Chapel in Flatwoods, and has spread to answer the needs of school children across the region. Each child the organization helps receives a new pair of ‘name brand’ shoes and a pair of socks.
The Shoes 4 Kids program has been running for around four years and has helped hundreds of school-aged children.
“We started out about four years ago,” Barb Litteral told the council.
Shoes 4 Kids helped nearly five hundred children in Greenup County in the first two years, then added Boyd County the following year and increased their numbers to seven hundred children helped. The average cost per pair, Litteral said, was about forty dollars.
“Last year was our fourth year and we expanded into Carter County,” Litteral said. “And we provided over twelve hundred pairs of shoes last year.”
Litteral told the council that all of the money used to purchase the shoe was from donations and fundraisers like the Riverbend Golf Scramble in Greenup. The organization also sells lunches at the church once a month.
“We also accept donations from other churches and local businesses,” Litteral said. “Because that’s what it takes.”
Litteral told the council that Kentucky was sixth in the nation for childhood poverty.
“And of the four counties that we serve – we also added Lawrence County – Carter County has the highest childhood poverty rate of all those four counties. Last year we provided 303 pairs of shoes in Carter County,” Litteral told the council. “At forty dollars per pair, that is a lot of money. But all of these children deserve to go to school in new shoes.”
In other business, the council heard from Grayson Tourism director Lana Axtell, who told the council that tourism was gearing up for this year’s Octoberfest on October 25.
“It looks like it is going to be the largest one we have ever had,” Axtell told the council. “A lot of the churches have partnered with us, so we are going to be able to make it even larger. There are going to be about 200 to 250 pumpkins painted by kids on the stairs down by the merchant’s lot. And if anyone wants to add to that or volunteer, we are always looking for help,” she said.
Axtell also reported that the Blue Goose Building will be decommissioned on September 22.
“There are twenty days in that contract,” Axtell told the council. “But it will probably be less than that.”
Grayson Utilities director Gerald Haney reported that the recent water project had been completed, and now the final paving would be taking place and be finished by the end of September. Haney also addressed the council concerning the need to raise the price on new water taps in the city.
“We currently charge $600 for a three quarter-inch water tap,” Haney said. “And the parts alone are $1,000.”
Haney told the council that when the utilities go outside the city limits where the pressure on the lines if higher, then an additional cost for additional parts is accrued.
“This adds an extra $400 to the overall cost,” he said.
With those kinds of costs, he said, the utility just isn’t recouping their expenses on materials.
“I feel like our tap fees are relatively low compared to everyone else’s,” Haney told the council. “On gas we normally charge $250 for a residential meter, but those parts are about $600.”
He said that he’d like the city to address those costs concerns by passing a new utility tap ordinance.
“What I’m proposing is to put all the taps into one ordinance. And also, the CPI (consumer price index),” he said.
The adjustment for the CPI is no greater than three percent and no less than one percent, Haney told the council. The proposed changes would create a flat $1,500 water tap fee for new taps on regular pressure lines and $2,000.00 for areas requiring a pressure reduction valve. The council voted to approve the first reading of this ordinance.
In other business council approved the first reading of an ordinance concerning the operation of special purpose vehicles on city streets.
Council moved to approve the water tap fee and the special purpose vehicle ordinances in a special session Monday afternoon, September 22.
Contact the writer at charles@cartercountytimes.com
