Mayor asks committee to drop warehouses, start over on annexation plan

By JIM BROOKS
NC Gazette / WBRT Radio

Bardstown Mayor John Royalty addresses the council at its special-called meeting Monday to discuss annexation.

Monday, April 6, 2015, 10 p.m. — Mayor John Royalty formally asked the city council’s Annexation Committee to rethink its annexation plan and remove the local distilleries’ warehouses from consideration.

The request came at the special-called 5 p.m. city council meeting Monday and followed a review of the committee’s discussions regarding annexation. As part of the discussion, committee chairman Fred Hagan gave the council the timeline of how the committee had reached its latest recommendation.

He noted the city’s current irregular city limit lines that are a result of past annexations. A number of large areas of unincorporated land extend far into the city limits, he explained.

“I thought as part of our work the committee we would look at these areas and look at ways to round out these areas of the city,” he said.

Annexation Committee chairman Fred Hagan points to areas on the map of the Bardstown city limits while reviewing the committee’s annexation discussions. Click to enlarge.

The committee’s examination of possible annexation of Maywood included coupling it with annexing the Heaven Hill warehouse complex. The move was intended to couple residential with industrial zoning. In order to annex industrial areas state law requires the city annex two workers for every resident.

“If you envision those areas, it would clean up the borders and take care of things that could be a problem down the road,” he said.

While the economic analysis of the committee’s recommendation isn’t complete, Hagan said the evidence so far makes it clear that annexing Heaven Hill’s warehouse complex would create a tax burden of more than $100,000 for the distiller, depending on the value of the aging whiskey.

“In my mind, that’s clearly not feasible and its out of line,” he said. ‘Heaven Hill is already the largest property tax payer in the City of Bardstown, and its employees pay occupational tax.”

Councilman Francis Lydian suggested the council vote to prevent future discussion of annexation of local distilleries’ warehouses.

Hagan said asked about the possibility of taking the warehouses into the city without adding the tax burden, but found it wasn’t possible. Hagan said other ideas to reduce or eliminate the tax burden for Heaven Hill didn’t work out.

“I think it’s not feasible to include the Heaven Hill property in the first annexation area,” Hagan told the council.

Heaven Hill is a citizen of Bardstown, he explained, and all the citizens of Bardstown benefit from having Heaven Hill in our community.

Mayor John Royalty praised the annexation committee’s work, and asked its members to go back and re-examine its annexation plans without the distillery warehouse tracts.

Councilman Fred Hagan passes out handouts to Councilwoman Kecia Copeland prior to the start of Monday’s special-called council meeting.

Councilman Francis Lydian suggested the council “put the issue to rest” with a vote to prohibit future discussion of annexing the distillery warehouses. City Attorney Tim Butler noted the meeting agenda focused on discussion of annexation, not a vote.

Councilwoman Kecia Copeland questioned if the Maywood development was still being considered for annexation, and how soon the economic analysis would be available.

Maywood is still being considered, Hagan said. Royalty told Copeland it is up to the annexation committee will decide how it wants to move forward.

“Bigger is not always better” Lydian told the council. “We’re already straining our city’s infrastructure.”

The city has 80 miles of streets, some of which are in need of repair. “Some of our streets haven’t been paved in years,” he said, noting that the drop in gas tax revenue means the city will  have $75,000 less funding for road repairs in its next budget.

“We do not need more growth in the city at this time, ” Lydian said. “I think we need to use good common sense, that’s my opinion.”

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