Karen Foley came to the City of Bowling Green in the mid-1990s.

Now, the Neighborhood Services Coordinator for Neighborhood and Community Services is preparing to leave that role on Dec. 31 and assume the position of Executive Director of HOTEL INC, replacing outgoing head Rhondell Miller.

From her office at the NCS building, Foley reflected on her nearly 30 years in city government, 25 of which were spent in NCS.

“Getting to watch this community go through amazing progress and then also endure hardship, and through it all, seeing some things kind of come full circle is really rewarding,” Foley said, wiping away tears. “Being able to look back on 25 years in this role … it’s just such a blessing.”

Originally from Hardin County, Foley began her career with the city on July 5, 1995, when she became a dispatcher with the Bowling Green Police Department.

At that time, she said, many of the department’s operations were housed in the small annex next to City Hall, now home to Bowling Green Public Works.

Six months after she started, a fire broke out at the Howard Johnson Hotel.

“There were people in the hotel, and I was on the phone with a family,” Foley said. “The firefighters went into their room (and) basically walked them out. That was sort of a big, landmark thing for me, in my basically six months to the day on the job.”

After four years at BGPD, Foley transitioned to what was then the city’s Citizen Information and Assistance Department. In the early 2010s, part of that department split off to become Housing and Community Development, later rebranded as Neighborhood and Community Services.

She said when she changed departments in 1999, she went to work on two large city projects — preparing for Y2K — which Foley said is “hilarious to think about” — and the 2000 U.S. Census.

“At that time, our population was less than 50,000,” she said. “50,000 is sort of this magic number for a lot of federal funds … and so the push was like, we’ve got to count everybody. We’ve got to make sure they’re counted.”

Foley said throughout her time in the city, she has seen it transform from being “reactive” to working more proactively, especially with regard to maintenance work such as roads and code enforcement.

“The balance of that has completely shifted,” she said. “And that can be attributed to a series of steps (by) key leaders across our organization.”

However, challenges have presented themselves. Foley said in recent years, these have included the continued recovery from the Dec. 11, 2021, tornadoes and the onset and emergence from the COVID-19 pandemic.

With the pandemic, she said the main struggle was making sure connections created between neighborhood residents were kept.

“If the main part of what you do is try to get neighbors together in a room and and do all those things, and now we can’t be around each other, that was a big challenge, because how do you maintain those connections,” she said.

In the aftermath of the tornadoes that struck Bowling Green nearly three years ago, Foley said she “knew exactly where (she) needed to be.”

NCS head Brent Childers praised Foley’s work after the storm, saying “you didn’t know she was there, but she showed up.”

“She was our connection piece to really help us make sure we we were in tune with what was going on in the greater context of of tornado response,” he said.

NCS recently hosted the annual Neighborhood Builders Banquet, an event that highlights the impacts made on the community by different residents and organizations.

Foley said during the planning process, the word “evergreen” kept coming up. On Monday, she used this word to sum up her years with the city and her upcoming move to HOTEL INC.

“Some things in life are evergreen,” she said. “To me, people will move in and out of this community, people will pass away, we will miss them. but at the core, the qualities of the people here and their spirit for giving and take care of one another, that is evergreen.”