Story - The Meade County Messenger


Vol. 118. No. 1	January 6, 2010

Letter to the Editor

To the Messenger:

This is in response to the article in The Meade County Messenger dated Dec. 2, 2009, “Muldraugh selects storm water engineer.

As we know this storm water MS4 is a mandated requirement by the federal government. The city of Muldraugh has known this for years, however Mayor Tate only got serious about implementing a program after the city was facing $25,000 a day fine per violation.

May 13, 2009: Storm water committee met to establish a storm water utility rate. Prior to meeting Mayor Tate said the city needed $2,500 per month to hire an engineer and implement a program. The committee decided to use the same formula as Radcliff as it seemed to be fair to single-family residence as well as businesses. The rate was $3.75 per 3,000 SF of impervious area.

June 8, 2009: committee members presented council with ordinance No. 286, first reading was held.
July 13, 2009: Mayor Tate said he was strongly opposed to the ordinance because it would be too expensive for the businesses, he wanted the fee based on each water meter to generate the same money. The council said being based on water meters was unfair because some property owners only had a few hundred SF of impervious area as to some having thousands...Mayor Tate stated that unless he had a unanimous vote, he would veto the ordinance. A motion was made to have the second reading to OK Ordinance No. 286. The motion ended in a tie vote. Mayor Tate broke the tie by voting no.

Aug. 10, 2009: The council recommended raising the impervious from 3,000 SF to 5,000 SF even though this would only generate half the money the mayor said the city needed.

Sept. 14, 2009: Motion passed to adopt Ordinance No. 286.

Oct. 29, 2009: The city of Muldraugh was notified it is in violation of storm water requirements and was now facing a $25,000 per day violation.

Dec. 2, 2009: Mayor Tate went to Frankfort to meet with the Kentucky Transportation Cabinet, Division of Environmental Analysis. The mayor has not briefed the council on the outcome – all we know (by rumor) is we were fined $5,000. We have a special meeting every time the wind changes direction, why can’t we have one now seeing how important this is to the city?

I hope that you can see your council is doing all possible to make this a city we can be proud of. Our clean-up committee is working to clean up some of the eyesores in town, but without the mayor’s support, things are very, very hard to accomplish. I encourage all residents of Muldraugh to take interest in our city.

City council meetings are the first Monday of each month at 6:30 p.m. Please come, tell us what’s on you mind.

Louis W. Holston
City Councilman, Muldraugh

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