Warren County Fiscal Court is moving forward on its plan to construct new gyms at two county parks.

Fiscal court passed a first reading of an ordinance Friday to approve the issuance of general obligation bonds not to exceed $12 million that will fund the construction of gyms at Ephram White and Michael O. Buchanon parks.

Warren County Judge-Executive Mike Buchanon said the $12 million limit should cover the cost of construction, which has not been determined.

“We put more than we think we need on there because we haven’t gotten the bids back and don’t know exactly what they’re going to be,” he said.

An invitation for bids on the project was published in the Daily News on Thursday. Bids are due by March 22.

Originally, fiscal court planned to invite interested groups to own the property and lease it to the county but later decided to do the project itself after Kentucky’s prevailing wage law – which typically required higher salaries for workers on public works projects – was overturned in January.

“When the legislature changed the prevailing wage law, it allowed us to go ahead and own the property and keep it in our name and build them ourselves and still get the savings on the construction,” Buchanon said.

Buchanon said the prevailing wage law would have increased costs by roughly $2.5 million.

Though the ordinance includes language that authorizes “the levy of a direct annual tax on all taxable property within the county,” Buchanon stressed that fiscal court was not passing a new tax or increasing existing taxes.

“That is required statutory language,” he said to the court.

Buchanon said the purchaser of the bond will be paid back with money from the county’s general fund, probably over a period of about 20 years.

Josh Moore, director of the Warren County Department of Public Works, said the gyms, which are needed to meet demand for the Warren County Youth Basketball League, will probably not be finished until December or January.

The county’s youth league season is expected to begin in mid-October or early November.

In another matter, fiscal court approved a measure to integrate the Warren County Parks Department Walking Trail System into the Bowling Green-Warren County Greenways Commission Trail System.

Greenways Coordinator Miranda Clements said she’s been working with Parks Director Chris Kummer for about a month on consolidating the trail systems.

“It benefits both the Warren County Parks and the Greenways Commission,” she said, adding that the measure roughly doubles the miles of trails in the Greenways network and allows the two agencies to share maps and other information about local trails.

Clements said she hopes for greater connections of parks, schools and neighborhoods in the county via the trails.

Kummer said the Parks Department will still maintain the trails within its parks system.

Fiscal court also approved two separate measures declaring 24 Warren County Sheriff’s Office vehicles as surplus.

The first of the orders declares as surplus six vehicles that WCSO spokesman Stephen Harmon said are old, with about 200,000 miles on them apiece.

“Most of those don’t run,” he said. “The repairs would have cost more than the value of the cars.”

Earlier in the year, the department purchased nine new patrol vehicles, he said.

The other order declares as surplus 18 WCSO vehicles, which Harmon said is “a formality” that needs to be completed for the county to sell the cars to Enterprise Fleet Management for roughly $346,000. The company will then lease new cars back to the county.

This system allows the county to use money received from selling the vehicles to lease more vehicles in a process that replaces old vehicles with new ones sooner than the county had been able to manage before, he said.

“It allows us to keep our first responders in better vehicles,” he said.