Neighborhood group meets to discuss issues, hear citizens’ concerns

By JIM BROOKS
Nelson County Gazette / WBRT Radio

Tuesday, July 28, 2015 — The Bardstown Active Neighborhood Delegation (BAND) met Monday night to review progress on neighborhood issues and to listen to additional concerns voiced by its members.

City civil engineer Jessica Filiatreau told BAND members Monday about her role in working with city street and utility projects.

The group reviewed progress from the concerns they discussed at their Jan. 26 meeting, which included the odor from the Barton Distillery complex on Cathedral Manor.

The meeting’s guest speaker, Jessica Filiatreau, City of Bardstown civil engineer, spoke to the group about her role in street maintenance as well as water and sewer project development and planning, and also addressed the recent complaints about the odors from the Barton Distillery.

The distillery recently cleaned their treatment lagoons, and that work generated the odors that people noted became more pungent.

“Their finished now,” she said. “Anytime you stir that stuff up and haul it away, it comes in contact with oxygen and its going to smell.”

Filiatreau said the city’s main concern is the distillery’s pretreatment of its waste that is then piped to the sewer treatment plants. The city has no standards regarding odors that the distillery generates. She invited individual BAND members to contact the distillery directly about their concerns in the future.

Street paving is an area where there’s never enough money available to pave as much as she would like to get done each year, Filiatreau said. The city’s engineering staff develops a priority list for blacktopping city streets, and the list takes into consideration the street’s condition, the amount of traffic it serves, and the time since it was last paved.

Councilman Bobby Simpson listens as BAND members talk about issues at Tuesday night’s meeting.

The cost of paving a street is another consideration, she explained. Streets can only be repaved a certain number of times before they must be milled down, and milling streets adds to the cost of repaving that street.

Arthur Woodson said that after storms, city residents shouldn’t have to call City Hall to request the city crew and chipper truck come to take care of downed tree limbs. Woodson said that the city crews used to canvas the city and do it anyway.

Councilman Roland Williams said he had called about that in the past, and said the crews want to know where the truck is needed rather than drive into areas where it isn’t needed.

Woodson also asked for better maintenance of the city’s stormwater drians. The drains often clog with debris due a lack of maintenance, and this causes roadways to flood during heavy rains.

Filiatreau told the group that it would be helpful if city residents would avoid blowing grass clippings into the street after mowing their yard. The grass clippings can clog drains and wash into the stormwater system where the organic matter decays, adding excess nitrogen into area creeks and streams.

Henrytown resident Arthur Woodson asks a question during Tuesday’s BAND meeting.

Woodson suggested the city draft an ordinance to prohibit blowing grass clippings into the street, and noted that after a rain, the clippings reduce traction and could cause an accident.

The latest big project the city completed was replacing water lines and repairing Second Street in the area between Broadway and Brashear. The street surface was failing and utility lines were upgraded at the same time.

The next utility project the city is considering is replacing a sewer main on Second Street by the railroad tracks near the Northgate Apartment complex.

A woman in the audience asked the delegation for help with bullying she’s experienced in her neighborhood for the past five years. She said she’s been harassed by neighbors, who have fired shots at her dog, torn up her yard, knocked over her trash cans, banging on her door and other acts.

Williams asked the woman to closely document future instances of bullying so that information can be forwarded to Chief Rick McCubbin.

The next meeting of BAND is Jan. 25, 2016, and will feature representatives from the Maple Hill neighborhood who have created a Neighborhood Watch program. The group discussed meeting quarterly rather than twice a year, but took no action.

BAND was created in 2010 to allow residents of Bardstown’s neighborhoods to come together as a group to talk about their concerns in their area. The municipal order that created BAND divided the city into nine geographical areas.

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