News from July 28, 2005 issue



County moves ahead with jail plan
Crittenden County will move forward with its plans to build a new jail.

Magistrates met in special session Tuesday morning and approved a measure that gives the go-ahead to JKS Construction of Hopkinsville to design an 84-bed jail that would be easily expanded to 125 beds.
Preliminary estimates indicate that the jail will cost about $4.5 million to build.

Keith Sharp of JKS told magistrates that the building could be adapted to accommodate greater expansion in the future, but the cost would go up considerably. County officials have been discussing the possibility of building a new jail for several months and throughout discussions, they have expressed a desire to build a jail that could be easily expanded.

Sharp said the 84-bed jail with larger core and common areas such as kitchen and dining facilities could be expanded to 125 beds or even 250 beds. A jail that would be easily expanded to 250 beds would cost $5.8 million initially. No cost estimate was provided for either expansion option, but Sharp said the jail would be designed so that wings could be added to make room for more prisoners.

The fiscal court approved unanimously a motion to have JKS design the 21,732-square-foot jail, which will be built between Carlisle and Depot streets behind the current jail. The county has purchased two lots and has an option on a third at that location.

Judge-Executive Fred Brown said that other than about $100,000 for the land and $5,000 for a survey, there has been very little spent on the jail project to date. However, he told magistrates that by moving ahead, the county will be somewhat committed to the project and will begin incurring more costs for design, engineering and hiring a bond company to handle the financing of the building. Although the county could back out later, Brown said once more money is spent, it would be harder to justify trashing the project.

"The big question is can we pay for this jail?" he added. "We want to continue taking this one step at at time."

JKS will begin work on the preliminary design within the next few days. Sharp said the next move will be getting the county's approval of those plans, submitting them to the Kentucky Department of Corrections, hiring a bond company, getting the Kentucky Department of Local Government's blessing, then completing a detailed architectural drawing. All of that will take at least six months, then the project would be ready to go out for bids.

Heritage Days moves to September
The annual Heritage Days celebration will be held earlier than usual this year, and Chamber of Commerce members hope that will help raise attendance and avoid bad weather.

Though the celebration is usually held in October, the Chamber's Heritage Days Committee moved it to Sept. 17-18, Chamber President Ryan McDaniel said. Last year, numbers were down in the face of a cold spell and rain that hit just in time to dampen spirits at Heritage Days, he said. About $4,500 is usually budgeted for the celebration. "There was just so much money put into it, and it was just not really what we wanted it to be," McDaniel said.

Clement Museum may have to close
The Clement Mineral Museum is scraping the bottom of the shaft to come up with operational funds and might be forced to close. A decision will be reached Monday night by the museum's board of directors.
The museum houses a world class collection of minerals, especially varieties of fluorite collected from around the world and as close as western Kentucky and southern Illinois by the late Ben E. Clement.
Crittenden County Judge-Executive Fred Brown has written Sen. Mitch McConnell requesting $2 million needed to move the collection to the old Marion Junior High building.

Brown, who sent the letter two months ago, said the museum's chances of obtaining federal funds appear very slim.

Currently, the museum operates in the old Fohs Hall annex on College Street on $1,000 a month. Beginning in July, the Marion Tourism Commission increased its support of the museum from $833 to $1,000 a month.

Director Bill Frazer said the museum likely will close but have its phone calls forwarded to the Tourism and Commerce Center where museum officials can be reached for pre-arranged tours.

Museum employee Rose Ann Brasher, who also works at the Tourism office, will still be asked to seek tours from school groups. Since the museum opened in Marion in 1992, group tours average 25-30 per year, Frazer said.

"We have closed in the winter before to conserve cash, but we've never (been closed but still tried to provide tours on an as-needed basis)," Frazer said. "We don't have the funds, and we have to conserve what we have."

Frazer said advertising the museum in trade magazines or in mineral collectors' circles is critical, but the museum can't afford to do that on a regular basis.

Frazer has questioned the feasibility of the museum being taken over by the Crittenden County Public Library, but library officials say that is not probable.

"The tourism commission wants us to keep it open, but there's no way we could without more money," Frazer said. Ideally, he said, the museum needs $3,600 per month to operate, which would pay the salary of one full-time employee and two part-time employees, who especially are needed when there are large group tours at the museum.