County Storm Shelters discussed at Hawesville Council Meeting
The Hawesville City Council met on Tuesday evening, May 14th. Councilman Danny Doyle had brought up the question about storm shelters in Hancock County at the last council meeting. Hawesville Fire Chief Shane Richards researched since then, and reported that there are zero FEMA certified shelters in the county’s response area.
“There are 2 housing-only shelters,” Richards said. “One is the Hawesville United Methodist Church and the other one is the Hancock County Senior Citizens Center. Those are the 2 shelters we have listed with Emergency Management. Those are the only ones we have in our area.”
Councilman Danny Doyle said, “Thank you, Shane. You all do a good job. I’d like to start making people aware where those places are. We failed to do that over the years. I’d like to see us stay on top of that.”
Richards added, “The FEMA certification on those – there’s a lot of things that go along with those as far as being able to do that certification. Most of that will go through Emergency Management, but we can work with them and see if we can get something rolling in that direction. It is a project that we will take on.”
Fire Dept. Report
Richards continued with his monthly report saying, “For the month of April, total calls were 52 runs for the month; the majority of those being 18 good-intent calls, which were, essentially, anything that was cancelled on. There were 15 EMS calls. Breaking down those totals – there were 39 total for the fire runs and 13 total for the rescue calls. Our grand total for the year is at 186 calls so far.
We got the boat back from the county today with the new Hawesville striping on it. As of right now, it’s going to be housed at the top of the hill until we can free up some space.
We have the Forestry grant we’re working on. We’re processing all the equipment for it. It’s a 50/50 split grant for us, for different forestry equipment. Some changes have been made to that; It’s gearing more toward brush fires and forest fire type equipment.
We have an application in with the National Volunteer Fire Council for a PPE (Personal Protective Equipment) Grant. There are 12 grants for 4 sets each, nationwide. We’re trying to get those, if at all possible.
We went to the fiscal court evening meeting last month and I presented them with a fact sheet. I have copies for you if you would like. We were, basically, told by our vendor on our air packs that Honeywell is getting out of the air pack business; all parts and services are going out on Dec. 16th, 2024. Those will no longer be a viable option for use.
We’re in the process of figuring out what we’re going to do to replace all of them. We went to the county first because all 4 departments in the county have the same model and style packs. We’re going to have to replace everything in the county. It’s totaling out right now at 48 air packs. In Hawesville we’ve got 15. We’re looking at how to replace those.
We are working with different vendors. They’re offering pricing breaks right now. We’re trying to find the funding for it. The ballpark figure for the county was $330K for all 48 packs. Our 15 packs in Hawesville would total approximately between $103K – $113K.”
Mayor Robbie McCormick said, “We see what the fire department is facing. One thing I’ve done is I have reached out to Owensboro on their emergency truck that you all are wanting. They are willing to work with us. I’m trying to keep it from going to auction. So we’re trying to do an inner-city transfer. I’m in hopes that will work out but I can’t make any commitment to that now.”
Richards said, “That plan is, hopefully, to replace our squad 202 truck, our smallest truck we have, that was built in-house several years ago. We want to replace it with an actual service-built rescue truck. We’re in the process of doing that as well.”
City Manager’s Report
The Domtar 2K Your Way program began last year, providing $2,000 for assistance with a variety of areas where it can be applied, at each recipient’s choice. City Manager Jake Powers said, “We’re going to use the Domtar 2K Your Way grant for the reimbursement of the trees and everything that we used for the tree planting along Main Street. We had submitted that application to Domtar to fund the tree planting and Clean-up Day we hosted. We’re still waiting to see if we were awarded on that.”
City Maintenance
Superintendent Brian Patterson provided an update. Todd Adkins has officially retired, and Patterson is the new Hawesville Superintendent. He’s working on getting his new structure, he said, and has one person dedicated for the water plant, one for the sewer plant, one for maintenance, and 2 individuals focused on mowing, weed eating and trash pick-up for the City.
Budget Amendment
The first reading of the city’s budget amendment was read by City Attorney Jamie Stephens. McCormick explained, “This budget has been gone through thoroughly. I’ve gone through it. Councilman Wayne Herndon has gone through it. There are several adjustments on this because we are now working off of facts. We’ve gotten far enough along that we can work off of facts. Next year, this budget will not be written like this. The budget will have line items like our sister city (Lewisport) is using to where we can track that. We need to emulate some of the good things they do and that is one.”
By Jennifer Wimmer
