Archive for August, 2010

This is pretty cool… Garrard County’s football game against West Jessamine at 7:30 p.m. Thursday will be broadcasted live on the Wazoo Sports Network. You can watch it online, or channel 18.2 if you use an antenna like me. It’s probably available on cable and/or satellite feeds, too. You can check a listing of Wazoo’s channels on various providers on their Web site.

I took a whole bunch of photos at the Rural Heritage Tobacco Festival parade this morning. I’m posting quite a few here, and several more (including some of my favorites) are running in Sunday’s Advocate.

The pep rally at the old high school kicked off the Rural Heritage Tobacco Festival tonight. Below are some more photos I took. You can check out the schedule for the rest of the festival at the festival Web site here.

I snapped a few photos at Mitchell Lamb’s farm on Monday when I drove past and saw a crew out cutting tobacco. Mitchell’s farm is out near Paint Lick.

The PLSC building was knocked down yesterday morning. I headed out there about 10:30 a.m. and stood in the grass with Deborah Messenger and watched while Gary Mayle used a hydraulic excavator to sort through the rubble. Mayle definitely had some skills behind the controls — he could use the excavator’s giant claw/scoop to pick single electrical wires out for salvage before scooping up rubble and dumping in a Dumpster. The salvageable resources are one reason MCM Demolition agreed to demolish the building for free.

Gary said he could have the entire pile of rubble cleared away within three days but he doesn’t expect the Dumpsters to come and go as fast as he can fill them. He estimated it will probably take more like a week to finish the job.

The demolition got a very early start. Even Deborah didn’t make it out to the site in time to see the building come down. She told me apparently the roof came down very easily, which means the building probably had shifted on its foundation as had been suspected.

I have a story in today’s paper about the demolition, featuring memories of the Sportsman’s Club’s fish fries from Elizabeth Noe and a look forward from Katie Rollins. You can read it here.

I got my calendar screwed up and missed the special city council meeting last week, where Don Rinthen tells me they took about 15 minutes to pass the second reading of the proposed property tax increase. The second reading passed unanimously, with even Bret Bairlein and Brenda Powers who had been opposed previously supporting it.

A quick refresher on the old and new rates per $100 of assessed value:

Real property (land): Was 15 cents, now 15.6 cents

Personal tangible property: Was 25 cents, now 26 cents

Cars and boats: was 23.3 cents, now 24.2 cents

The Advocate has a profile of Jeff Moss leaving his position as county attorney to become a high school teacher in Sunday’s paper. The online version is here.

Bev McChesney, a board member with United Rescue of Kentucky, the volunteer animal welfare organization that coordinated the rescue and transport to Garrard County of 111 neglected dogs found in Casey County, had some things to say about Garrard County and the Garrard County Humane Society when I called her earlier today:

“We are incredibly thankful to the Lancaster Community. They stepped up to help Mark Hurte at the shelter there, and Mark was incredible to offer his facility. Mark was incredible. He didn’t go to sleep — he worked right through,” she said. “You don’t see that community spirit in many counties. We were just bowled over by how the community there responded and very thankful.”

Some interesting news from Nathan Mick:

Garrard County will be represented at the 2010 Alltech FEI World Equestrian Games.  Garrard County will be a part of the Bluegrass Tourism Region booth in the Kentucky Experience.  Garrard County will also be featured at its own booth in the Trade Show Pavilion (booth #627) for six days (September 25/26/27 and October 8/9/10).  Bluegrass South Regional Economic Development Coalition, which includes Garrard County, will be showcased at this booth September 28 through October 7.  Stop by and see us when you are there!

There are incredible opportunities for businesses to participate in the Alltech FEI World Equestrian Games and a host of things for families to experience as well ($25 pass gets you on the grounds for the day and children 12 and under get in FREE!).  This is a world-class event that will help Kentucky shine by all of us doing our part to support it.

Nathan told me he wants to open up the booth to as many people from Garrard as he can so anyone with a desire to promote Garrard County at the games can have a chance.