The current Barren County Courthouse sits in the center of the square in downtown Glasgow.
(WCLU NEWS FILE PHOTO)
By Angela Briggs, special to WCLU News
GLASGOW, Ky. – New judicial centers have popped up all across the Commonwealth, including Metcalfe and Hart counties. AOC, or the Administrative Office of the Courts, oversees Kentucky’s judicial system and its courthouses and they are the ones picking up the tab for these new centers. Nearly two years ago, Chief Justice John Minton, reached out to Barren County and offered one of these centers to be built in Glasgow. After fiscal court approval, not much was heard about the project until a few months back.
Many are wondering what is the holdup? Several ideas have been tossed around for potential locations and opportunities for partnerships have been offered, but no action has been taken by the Project Development Board, or PDB. This is the group that is tasked with making many decisions regarding the project, including where it will be built.
The board is comprised of the County Judge Executive, Circuit, District and Family Court judges, Circuit Court Clerk as well as representative from the local Bar Association. The make up of the board, along with the strings attached to the money, were all included in a bill passed by the state legislature and had support from both Senator David Givens and Representative Steve Riley.
Judge Executive Micheal Hale says there are a lot of misconceptions about the project, so he was asked point blank if payment would impact local taxes:
“No, it will not make your local property taxes go up.” said Hale.
As far as a needs assessment, AOC completed one for all 120 counties and Barren County did show deficiencies in the current courthouse in areas including safety and security. Barren County has the second largest drug court in Kentucky, so overcrowding of the current courthouse is an issue as well.
With the PDB meeting today at 1:00pm and closed session to discuss land acquisition being included on the agenda, many were anticipating the location of the judicial center would finally be announced. Judge Hale says that won’t happen today:
“There’s two other pieces of property that we have agreed to have an appraisal done. With the holidays hitting it’s going to be a couple more weeks before he actually has those two appraisals done.” said Hale.
What is timeframe they are looking at? At least two weeks to finalize the location and after the land is purchased, the design process starts which will take around six months. Shovel hitting dirt will likely not happen until late 2022 or early 2023.
Since the PDB has been meeting, less than a dozen people from the community have attended. Again, the PDB will meet today at 1:00pm in the Barren County Fiscal Courtroom.
