Mayor: Water challenge donation improper; seeks amended commission budget

By JIM BROOKS
Nelson County Gazette / WBRT Radio

Tuesday, Feb. 9, 2016, 11:55 p.m. — Bardstown Mayor John Royalty expressed his displeasure Tuesday night regarding the Feb. 2 vote by the Bardstown-Nelson County Commission on Human Rights to donate $250 to the Flint Water Challenge with public funding it receives from city and county government.

Bardstown Mayor John Royalty told the council he will ask the joint city-county human rights commission to amend its budget to show the surplus funds it is holding. The funds came to light after the commission discussed and voted to approve a $250 donation of its funds to the Flint Water Challenge.

“The human rights commission was set up to help Bardstown and Nelson County residents, and I think that’s where (the money) should stay,” Royalty  said at Tuesday nights’ Bardstown City Council meeting.

The commission voted Tuesday, Feb. 2 to allocate $250 as a donation to the local Flint (Michigan) Water Challenge effort. The goal is to collect bottled water and transport it to Flint for use by city residents whose water supply is contaminated by high levels of lead.

Councilman Francis Lydian asked City Attorney Tim Butler if the donation was proper.

Butler told Lydian it depended on the source of the commission’s funding. If the funding comes from private donations, that money can be donated. But money that comes from public sources — like city and county government funding — should not.

“I told them the same thing I told you all here — it has to be for a public purpose, and it has to benefit the general population of this area,” he said. “Had they asked me beforehand, my advice would have been no, that’s not something they should use public money for.”

The commission has an annual budget that city and county government must approve. In the end, the commission has to answer to the city and county governments for how it uses those public funds, Butler said.

Royalty said the commission’s 2014-15 budget lists only the city and county’s appropriations of $1,500 to the commission in budget year. That budget indicates the commission anticipated spending that money and end the fiscal year with a zero balance.

Tim Butler, city attorney, said the human rights commission answers to the city and county governments in regard to the use of public funds.

Given the revelation of a $5,000 surplus, Royalty said the existing budget needed to be amended to account for the extra money. “It’s hidden and I want it made public,” he said.

Councilwoman Kecia Copeland told the council that as soon as the commission learned the donation wasn’t allowed, its chairman, Kathy Reed, said the individual commission members would cover the donation, and even increase their total donation from $250 to $1,000.

WATER CHALLENGE UPDATE. Bardstown Police Chief Rick McCubbin told the council his officers nearly filled his office with cases of water in response to the Flint, Mich. Water Challenge.

As of Tuesday, his office had 180 cases of water. A social media video showed stacks of cases in his office and all around his desk.

Copeland praised the Bardstown Police Department for the work they had done to bring in donations of bottled water as part of the challenge.

Councilman Francis Lydian and Councilwoman Kecia Copeland listen as the mayor talks about the human rights commission funding.

In other business, the council:

— heard a request from Copeland to provide funding for her trip to Washington, D.C. as a Kentucky delegate for National Preservation Advocacy Week, March 8-11. Craig Potts, the executive director of the Kentucky Heritage Council, asked Copeland to be a delegate.

If approved by the council, the funding would come from the council’s contingency fund.

— approved revisions to the classification and compensation plan to rename some fire department positions and adding one part-time firefighter and a part-time media specialist.

NEXT UP. The council will meet next 7 p.m. Tuesday, Feb. 23, 2016, in the City Hall Annex adjacent to the rec department on Xavier Drive.

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