Message from the mayor: Asphalt firm buys new lot in Midway Station, absolving city of interest due this year

Map projection at March EDA meeting showed lot sold this week. 

By Grayson Vandegrift
Mayor, City of Midway
    I’m excited to welcome Imperial Asphalt as our newest addition to Midway, at Midway Station. Owners Seth Christian and Aaron Gillund have purchased 4.01 acres at the “nose” of McKinney Avenue, address 775 McKinney Ave.
    This closing, which occurred late yesterday afternoon, comes with additional good news. Because the 4.01 acres was not originally platted with Midway Station, the bank does not claim a release price towards the principal. For this reason, the Woodford County Economic Development Authority has agreed to use the proceeds, close to $120,000 after closing costs, to use towards paying the interest due at the industrial park.
    Because of this, as expected, we will not need to make an interest payment this year, as EDA will make that payment for us. This is not only a sign of goodwill from EDA to both the City of Midway and Woodford County, but also signals as new phase where our EDA is beginning to become self-sustaining, a fact that is good for the entire county.
    This also means that the $40,000 we have budgeted for this fiscal year in our general fund for paying interest is now freed up. My recommendation is that we let it sit for now as a rainy-day fund in case we have an unexpected expense this year, and if we should not need it, let it roll into our projected surplus at the end of June 2020.
    I want to thank the EDA board and Chairman John Soper for their diligence and excellent work, as well as their continued cooperation with the City of Midway.

Health Dean Barbara Kitchen retires from Midway Univ.

Mayor Grayson Vandegrift proclaimed June 28 as Barbara Kitchen
Day in honor of her service. Dr. John Marsden, president, is at right.

Dr. Barbara Kitchen, longtime dean of health sciences at Midway University, has retired with honors.

The university Board of Trustees granted Kitchen the title of Faculty Emerita, which was presented to her at the May commencement ceremony. At a June 28 reception, a plaque honoring her was unveiled in the Anne Hart Raymond Building, where she worked.

Kitchen first came to Midway in 2001 as a faculty member in the nursing program. In 2004, she was appointed chair of the nursing programs, and in 2005, chair of the Nursing and Science Division. In 2014, when the college became a university, she was appointed dean of the School of Health Sciences.

Dr. John P. Marsden, university president, said Kitchen has run a highly respected program and been an ambassador for Midway University in the health-care industry. “She has had a tremendous impact on the education and preparation of numerous students,” Marsden said. “She has developed and fostered many community partnerships so that our nursing students could have clinical experiences as well as community service projects.”

Kitchen was highly involved with the task force that helped establish The Homeplace at Midway, a nursing home and assisted-living facility.

Recommendations for affordable housing may include accessory dwelling units, apartments above businesses

Rich Schein, Midway's member on the Versailles-Midway-Woodford County Planning Commission, points to a zoning
map of Midway as Lori Garkovich and City Council Members Logan Nance, left, and Stacy Thurman, right, look on.

Midway has been asked to join Versailles in asking local planning officials to allow accessory dwelling units in residential areas and apartments in commercial zones, and make other changes in the county's zoning ordinance to encourage more affordable housing.

The city's Affordable Housing Committee heard the request Monday from Lori Garkovich, a member of its counterpart committee in Versailles that has already developed recommendations. She said a joint request from both towns to the countywide Planning Commission would "have more traction."

"I think if we went together, it would be more persuasive, and it would be easier to sell to the public," said Garkovich, a retired University of Kentucky sociology professor who has long been active in land-use issues in Woodford County.

The Versailles group also wants other measures, such as a community land trust to lease land to homebuyers, but those will take more time and effort, and allowing accessory dwelling units "was something they could act on right away," Garkovich told the Midway group.

ADUs can be part of a home or detached from it, and can be occupied by renters, adult children, other family members, caregivers and so on. "We had a vision there would be a mix of private homes, townhomes and apartments," to give people a wide range of choices and flexibility when their living arrangements need to change, Garkovich said.

City Council Member Stacy Thurman, chair of the committee, noted that there are many details to work out, such as whether detached units should resemble the main house and whether off-street parking should be required. Before the meeting, Thurman distributed an article from a land-use planner about accessory dwellings, which can be downloaded here.

"I certainly don't think accessory dwelling units are the answer to affordable housing in Midway altogether, but it's a good start," Thurman said. She asked Garkovich what the downside of allowing such units would be.

Garkovich said the usual issue is that people next door to an accessory unit fear it will reduce their property's value, but added that she didn't think that would be a problem in Midway because it has such as small supply of available housing. She said the Versailles plan calls for "quality standards consistent with the neighborhood."

Thurman said, "Most of the people who would be against something like this would be people who don't want Midway to grow at all."

The lack of affordable housing has been a concern in Midway for several years, but gained more currency with the addition of about 300 jobs, and more to come, at the Midway Station industrial Park. Committee member Dan Rosenberg said the city could ask Midway Station employers to provide financial support to affordable-housing efforts.

Garkovich said Midway has a choice: have people commute to the town, work here and leave their payroll taxes behind, or capture their consumer spending and reduce traffic by creating housing for them in the area. "You need economic growth, but how do you want it to happen?"

She said some towns, when expanding their urban service areas for development, require "that a certain inventory of workforce housing" be included in developments in the expanded area.

Rich Schein, a UK geography professor who is the city's representative on the Planning Commission, said the fundamental question facing those who want more affordable housing is how local governments can encourage property sales by owners who aren't now willing to sell.

Garkovich said the two committees might want to have a meeting for property owners, developers, bankers and other citizens to discuss the issue.

The Affordable Housing Committee's next meeting is scheduled for 5:30 p.m. Aug. 12 at City Hall. Its meetings and all meetings of committees created by the City Council are open to the public.

This story replaces the meeting notice posted this morning.

Midway Christian Church celebrates 175th anniversary

Rev. Heather McColl opens the service that marked the anniversary. On the wall above her was the beginning of a
video from Rev. Teresa Hord Owens, general minister and president of The Christian Church (Disciples of Christ).

"This moment has been 175 years in the making," Rev. Heather McColl told a nearly full sanctuary as Midway Christian Church celebrated a landmark anniversary Sunday. Later in her sermon, she said, "That sense of history continues to define us as a community of faith."

"Not many congregations can claim that longevity," Rev. Teresa Hord Owens, general minister and president of The Christian Church (Disciples of Christ), told the congregation in a video greeting.

The church on Bruen Street was dedicated on Christmas Eve in 1844, 12 years after the Lexington merger of two religious movements that still couldn't quite agree on a name. Three years later, Midway church leaders founded the Kentucky Female Orphan School, which is now Midway University. Pieces of that rich history were traced at Sunday school by John Batts, who noted how the church and its ministers led others into ministry.

From left, Sandy Gruzensky, Adele Dickerson, Rev. Heather McColl and
Cindy and John Batts talked at Sunday school about the church's work.

At Sunday school, 91-year-old Lois Redden recalled her baptism in 1942 by pastor Ronald Lorimer, who was only 22 but organized food and scrap-metal drives and victory gardens during World War II and died of a heart attack two months before the war ended in 1945. The church's broad sense of community service continue with relief efforts after floods and hurricanes, Batts noted.

Today, the church's monthly community dinner "has become one of our main missions for this community," McColl told the group in the fellowship hall, where the dinners began in August 2011. She said the dinners are boons to food-insecure people and elderly people on fixed incomes.

"It's like going to a restaurant," she said. "You see people from all walks of life," including people who don't need a free meal but want the fellowship. "It's been for me and for this church a wonderful, eye-opening mission. She said the church has never asked for donations, "but people do donate, and we're not turning those down."

At the worship service, McColl announced that the church was starting a three-year capital campaign to raise $175,000, half of of which is to be used for capital projects. The other half would be placed in the church's endowment.

At Sunday School, Adele Dickerson talked about the environmental work that has earned the church a designation as a certified Green Chalice congregation in the denomination, and Sandy Gruzensky discussed the "Food for the Soul" dinners the church has on first and third Sundays "to help us develop spiritually but also to discern some of the major issues that play in the world we're living in."

After the service and before a barbecue lunch, the congregation gathered for a group photo in front of the church.

Opinion: State Rep. Joe Graviss, fellow Democrat offer alternative to Republican governor's plan for pensions

By state Reps. Joe Graviss, D-Frankfort, and Buddy Wheatley, D-Covington

With Gov. Bevin expected to call a special legislative session soon to pass his public pension plan, we are reminded of Henry Ford, who famously said his customers could have cars painted “any color, so long as it’s black.”

For weeks now, the debate has focused solely on the governor’s bill and a few tweaks he’s made. Legislators have been told that he wants an up-or-down vote on his bill, specifically, and that we would be free to make additional changes in 2020. But there are other, less bumpy routes leading to the same destination.

The two of us serve on the General Assembly’s Public Pension Oversight Board and have a thorough understanding of the damage the governor’s bill would do if enacted. We share the same goal of protecting our public health departments, rape crisis centers, domestic violence shelters, regional public universities and other quasi-governmental agencies from a crushing 68 percent increase in pension costs, starting in July. This bill, however, is not the way to do it.

Governor Bevin’s bill offers these critical agencies and universities massive debts; costs taxpayers hundreds of millions of dollars; harms the nation’s worst-funded public retirement system; and it would severely undermine retirement security for potentially thousands of career employees who have dedicated their lives to public service – not to mention it would face likely legal challenges which would put us all back to square one.

The governor’s plan freezes these agencies’ payments to Kentucky Retirement Systems for a year, and we agree on that. It’s the long-term fix we differ on.

Our recommendations – think of them as different colors on Henry Ford’s Model T – are faster, cheaper, and far more legal.

The first necessary change is slightly increasing the projected investment target that KRS uses for the fund that these quasi-governmental agencies and state government pay into.

The KRS Board of Trustees dropped the rate dramatically in 2017 to the lowest in the country, when that decrease should have been phased in over years. We propose moving it up slightly, where it still remains the lowest public retirement plan target in the country, but more closely aligns with KRS’s actual investment experience over the last decade.

Second, our plan recommends an annual payroll growth of 1%, versus the 0% KRS now uses. State government has already shrunk to levels not seen since the 1970s, but basing pension contributions on 0% growth over the next 24 years is unrealistic and unfair, given a growing population and the need for employee raises to combat inflation.

A third hallmark of our plan is a five-year shift in excess payments from the retiree health insurance fund to the pension side of the ledger. All normal costs continue to be properly funded to maintain the health fund.

This will not put at risk current or future benefits – the fund would have all it needs during those five years and still be fully funded by the end of the amortization period – and we have already set aside much more money for retiree health insurance than most other states. Many retiree health systems, in fact, have no savings at all, choosing instead to pay for actual costs month to month.

Finally, we think it is prudent to freeze the employer contribution rates that the quasi-governmental agencies currently pay KRS. They are paying KRS almost 50 percent of their payroll now and can’t afford anything higher.

This is very reasonable because this retirement fund is seeing a positive cash flow. We can revisit this freeze in the future, if KRS investments ever suffer a sustained downturn. Using a 20-year investment horizon also helps smooth the peaks and valleys.

Taken together, these proposals erase the long-term liabilities faster than the governor’s plan, and they do it without illegally reducing employee benefits or harming the quasi-governmental agencies that are already in a precarious financial position.

We did not get in this situation overnight, and it will not be solved overnight. Public employee retirement plans are similar to a 30-year home mortgage. While it would be great to have 360 monthly payments in the bank, the reality is that we don’t have it or need it all right now.

Our plan is much like restructuring the mortgage so that the bank does not take the home. By making modest adjustments to the terms of the loan to lower payments, we can still pay it off within a year of what the current law already calls for.

Unlike the governor’s bill, our recommendations maintain current services in a way that still meets the long-term goal of making KRS more solvent. Our plan won’t be tied up in court because of legally questionable actions; it won’t force some of our most critical agencies to close their doors; and it allows a quality workforce to continue serving you.

At the very least, members of both parties and stakeholders should be able to sit down and discuss this as a viable alternative. We stand ready and willing to work with any of our colleagues who are seeking to do the most good for the most people at the best price.

Kentucky taxpayers and those with a vested interest in the outcome deserve nothing less.

'Sparks in the Park' starts at 6 p.m. Wednesday; mayor urges thoughtful use of fireworks July 3-5

Midway's annual "Sparks in the Park" event will begin at 6 p.m. Wednesday, July 3, in Walter Bradley Park.

The city will provide a dinner of barbecue, buns, coleslaw and baked beans for 250 people, and activities for children, including a bounce house.

As he reminded the City Council of the event at its Monday meeting, Vandegrift was asked if he was ready to start getting telephone calls at 11:01 p.m., the first minute after the end of the period for legal use of fireworks on July 3, 4 and 5.

He turned the jest into a serious point, urging citizens to "be a little more mindful" about where and when they use fireworks.

"We have veterans in Midway with PTSD," post-traumatic stress disorder, he said. "I just wish more people would think about that." 

Council accepts sidewalk bids, raises city's maximum share on each project to $2,000 from $1,000

The most expensive project will replace 160 linear feet of walk
at 105 S. Winter St. at a cost of $8,800. (Photo by Casey Parker-
Bell, UK School of Journalism and Media, November 2015)

The Midway City Council voted Monday night to accept the low bid for sidewalk work and to double the city's potential cost-sharing on projects to $2,000 each.

ADE Contracting Inc. of Lawrenceburg bid $39,790 to do the 11 projects. RT Infrastructure Inc. of Winchester bid $42,177, including a $1,345 bond fee that wa not part of ADE's bid. Council Member John Holloway and Mayor Grayson Vandegrift said the fee seemed high for such a relatively small project. Holloway also noted that RT lists itself as a sewer contractor, and ADE seems to have more experience with sidewalks and is re-qualified with state government.

Council Member Logan Nance moved to award the bid to ADE, and Council Member Bruce Southworth seconded. The motion passed 4-0. Council Member Sara Hicks was absent due to illness, and Council Member Kaye Nita Gallagher abstained, since one project will be on her property.

For the last two years, the city has shared in the cost of sidewalk repairs, up to a maximum of $1,000 in city funds. The council voted 3-1 to increase the maximum to $2,000, which will reduce the remainder to be paid on eight of the 11 projects. On the four most expensive projects, that reduced the owners' shares by $1,000 each.

Holloway said after the meeting that he voted against paying more of the cost because he thought it was too much. "I've had to replace my sidewalks, and nobody gave me any money," he said.

UPDATE, July 5: Vandegrift told the council that "No tree will be cut down or altered as a result of the project. In some cases, the sidewalk can be tightened by a foot and still meet code, and in other cases in can be diverted around the tree."

At a special meeting June 27, the council voted to accept the low bid of Randle-Davies Co. of Frankfort, $155,525, for blacktopping projects. The other three bids ranged from $188,355 to $223,875. These bids and those for sidewalks are in the council meeting packet, downloadable here.

The council also declared surplus a house and lot at 426 S. Winter St. that was once used for the local library and is now used for storage by a local business. The declaration will allow the city to advertised for sealed bids for the property.

Holloway, who joined the council in January, suggested that the city could get more for the property by putting it on the open market. Vandegrift said the city can always reject bids as too low, and city attorney Phil Moloney said state law requires sealed bids. Gallagher, a retired state employee, told Holloway, "Welcome to government." The vote was 5-0.