By MELINDA J. OVERSTREET
for Glasgow News 1
A local organization is planning an event meant to provide an opportunity for Glasgow residents to learn more about the candidates seeking to fill the nine city council seats.
Concerned Citizens of Barren County wanted to provide the candidates with a chance to be seen publicly and present their views and opinions on current topics around the community and how the council operates, so they decided to facilitate a forum, said Stan Palmer, a member of the group who will serve as moderator during the event. Palmer said he has served in this type of role before in Ohio, from which he and his moved to this area about four years ago to be closer to other family members.
“We’ve worked very hard to come up with questions for the candidates, and we’re keeping those questions confidential until the forum, so nobody gets an advantage or disadvantage,” he said.
Palmer has devised a system to make it so that the questions are matched with the candidates in a random fashion. He explained that, as they arrive, the candidates will draw a number, and the number they draw determines the order in which they will speak but also which questions they get, as each question has been matched with a number as well, through a drawing he has already done.
As each person takes his or her initial turn on stage, they’ll start with an opening statement. Then, in addition to a “common” question they all will be asked, each candidate will get one “unique” question that is asked only of that person and another “random” question from a batch of seven, so two or three candidates will answer that same question, Palmer explained.
After all the candidates have gone through their respective questions, each will be called back to the stage and given a minute, during which they may choose to answer a question asked of someone else but not them, follow up on someone else’s response to a question or simply make a general closing statement.
“So I’ll ask the questions. I’ll keep the candidates on task. I won’t be bashful about it, but I’ll be respectful. And I’ll be the one to enforce the time,” Palmer said.
The timekeeper will hold up a 30-seconds left card. Palmer said he’s not going to cut them off in midsentence, but he won’t let them continue indefinitely, either.
“We’re going to do this professionally, unbiasedly,” Palmer said.
“As possible,” added Mike Miller, the organization’s chair.
The goal, Palmer said, is to keep the entire event to roughly 90 minutes, but he definitely wouldn’t anticipate its going more than two hours.
Each candidate has been provided with a set of the rules and explanation of the logistics for the process.
Invitations were mailed to the candidates, but a follow-up phone call about two weeks later was also made to each, and he said one of the candidates had a prior commitment, but the other 16 have committed to being there.
The forum is scheduled to begin at 6:30 p.m. Oct. 21 in the Family Life Center Gymnasium of First United Methodist Church. Although the church fronts South Green Street, and its parking lot can be accessed from there or South Broadway Street, the Family Life Center is at the rear of the complex of structures, so the street entrances closer to it are off South Broadway, across from Farmers Rural Electric Cooperative Corp. and the Broadway/East Brown Street intersection. From the perspective of someone looking at the complex of buildings from South Broadway, the entrance to the gym is actually to the left of the section with the canopy, where an opening between the buildings is.
All members of the community are not only invited, but encouraged by the Concerned Citizens group, to attend.
About the event organizers
Concerned Citizens of Barren County has been in existence for about three years, said Mike Miller, the group’s chair. The group, which considers itself nonpartisan, meets at 6 p.m. on the first Tuesday of each month, typically at Immanuel Baptist Church along Western Hills Road in Glasgow.
“The best way to explain our group is just to read our mission statement,” he said, but GN1 was also provided with a written copy.
That statement includes a goal, action and statement of faith.
The goal “is to influence local community affairs. We will strive to hold all things to the highest moral, ethical and conservative values. WE place particular importance on supporting Pro-Life, Fiscal Responsibility and 2nd Amendment Freedom, while opposing proposed Woke initiatives.”
GN1 asked the pair to briefly define what they were calling “woke initiatives.”
“We have not approached any of those initiatives on an official basis as of yet,” Miller said. “We’ve had a lot of discussions. In that, we’ve talked about library books.”
He said that if they decide to pursue this, they weren’t necessarily looking to “ban” any books, but they would more so seek to restrict access, based on age appropriateness and possibly requiring parental consent.
David Dickerson, a former Barren County judge-executive and a member of the Concerned Citizens group, has been a member of the board of trustees for Mary Wood Weldon Memorial Library since at least May 2023.
Regarding whether there are any “woke initiatives” that may prompt an initiative of their own in response, Miller said, “If it comes up. We haven’t identified an issue in our area that we all felt needed to be addressed at this point in time.”
GN1 asked again, slightly clarifying, “What do you consider woke initiatives or woke ideas?”
Both paused, with no apparent answer, after which it was determined that the group hasn’t really defined that yet.
Miller, who’s been involved with the group from its inception, confirmed that “pro-life” in the goal section means anti-abortion.
The action portion of the mission statement is: “CCofBC primarily focuses our efforts to influence the City School Board, County School Board, Glasgow City Council and the Fiscal Court. Our efforts will include some attendance at these public meetings.”
The statement of faith says, “We believe and align with God’s Word, the Constitution of the United States and the Constitution of Kentucky. Our conduct will be to represent Christ in our actions and to speak truth in love.”
“We all have our strengths,” Miller said, and over the past two state legislative sessions, one of their members, Dick Sittler, has been “instrumental” in helping to get three bills advanced into law, and group members have done some work to support those efforts.
In the 2023 General Assembly, House Bill 153, which became law retroactively to Jan. 1, 2021, made Kentucky a Second Amendment “sanctuary” state, meaning that Kentucky is not bound to laws to restrict gun control, Miller said.
According the Legislative Research Commission website, the summary of the bill is that it was meant to: “Create a new section of KRS Chapter 237 to prohibit identified entities from enforcing federal firearm bans; prohibit identified entities from adopting rules, regulations, or ordinances that require enforcement of federal firearm bans; and prohibit identified entities from allocating public resources or moneys in the enforcement of federal firearm bans.”
The Kentucky House of Representatives passed the bill 78-19, and the Senate followed suit with a 27-9 vote. It became law without the governor’s signature.
The other two bills were from the 2024 General Assembly – House Bills 11 and 142 – and both related to vaping. Gov. Andy Beshear signed both into law after their approvals by both chambers of the legislature.
Miller said there is a “vaping epidemic … everywhere” and in schools in particular. HB11 focused on the sale of vaping products to underage individuals and, Palmer said, it expanded local law enforcement agencies’ authority to enforce the law.
“As a result of that bill, there’s already been a bust in Barren County by local law enforcement of a local retail store,” Miller said, referring to when police executed a search warrant at Purple Haze last month.
The LRC summary states that House Bill 11 amends Kentucky Revised Statute 241.060 “to allow the State Alcoholic Beverage Control Board to conduct hearings and appeals; amends KRS 438.305 to define terms, to require the Secretary of State to create and publish a list of certain tobacco product retailers, to require the Department of Alcoholic Beverage Control to create and maintain a tobacco noncompliance database and reporting system, to require wholesalers to verify a retailer’s presence in the database prior to transactions, to establish and impose fines for wholesalers that unlawfully sell to a retailer that is in the noncompliance database, to make any retailer with unpaid fines that are more than 60 days overdue ineligible to sell Tobacco Control Act covered products until the fines are paid, to direct manufacturers of Tobacco Control Act covered products to provide safe harbor certification to wholesalers and retailers of their products, and to prohibit a retailer from selling Tobacco Control Act products to persons under 21 years of age; and amends KRS 438.340 to create new civil penalties and appeals process; effective January 1, 2025.”
Miller said a key aspect of HB 142 is that it requires school systems to develop policies to deal with vaping on their grounds at all times, not just during school hours, and those policies were to include any potential enforcement and disciplinary aspects.
The LRC summary of the enacted version of the bill states that it it: “Repeals, reenacts, and amends KRS 438.345 as a new section of KRS Chapter 158; requires local boards of education to adopt policies that penalize students for possessing alternative nicotine products, tobacco products, or vapor products and lists penalties; requires school districts to report annually to the Kentucky Department of Education; requires the department to report to the Legislative Research Commission the number of nicotine-related behavior incidents in schools and the number requiring medical intervention; requires schools to provide evidence-based age-appropriate nicotine prevention and cessation information to all students at the beginning of the school year and access to materials throughout the school year; requires a school to provide nicotine cessation information upon the first incident, requires a school to provide disciplinary action in accordance with the district’s code of acceptable behavior upon the second incident, and allows for in-school or out-of-school suspension and the opportunity to complete a nicotine education program for the third and subsequent incidents; authorizes the department, regional educational cooperatives, and local boards of education to identify and apply for grant opportunities relating to nicotine; and requires by August 1, 2024, that the department, after consultation with the Cabinet for Health and Family Services, post nicotine awareness information on the department’s webpage.”
