The establishment of the Warren County Fire Department and work at Sugar Maple Square are some of the accomplishments Judge-Executive Doug Gorman is most proud of for the county in 2025, with several continuing projects on the horizon for 2026.

Creating a paid firefighting force in the county is Gorman’s top noteworthy event for 2025.

“I’m proud of the work that (the) … Warren County Fire Department has done, with the City of Bowling Green as well,” Gorman said.

Reworking the volunteer fire departments has been a focus for county government for some time. Last year, the Warren Fiscal Court solicited a study of the county’s VFD’s from fire-consultants MissionCIT, a study that resulted in hiring Fire Coordinator Bill Rector.

“Our nine (volunteer) departments have done such a great job in the community,” Gorman told the Daily News. “As we continue to grow, the growth has been outpacing what they can do.”

Magistrates on June 13 approved a laundry list of equipment purchases for new part-time personnel, from helmets and other personal protective equipment to four defibrillators. Four million dollars has been set aside for the project in the county’s FY2026 budget, money that will go toward equipment, training and various other needs.

Sept. 1 marked the first day of the department’s operation. Under the new model, part-time, paid firefighters are on duty across the county during daytime hours, a time of day that the MissionCIT study found was lacking in fire coverage.

Gorman said in the first two months the department responded to three medical calls where CPR was performed. He said on the second day, personnel were dispatched to Anna for a trailer fire. For that call, the department reported a five-minute response time.

“That just never happened before,” Gorman said of the rapid response.

He said prior to this, volunteer crews were under great pressure when a call came in. Many firefighters would have to leave their jobs and get suited up before heading to the scene.

While county crews do not respond to emergencies within the city, they are now coordinating with the Bowling Green Fire Department on trainings, something Gorman described as a “great relationship.”

“The more training we can have for every member of the fire department, the better (we’re) off.”

Looking down the road, Gorman said the goal would be to have 24/7 coverage across the county while keeping the largely volunteer system in place.

“It’s going to take us a while to ramp up to that, but it should be a goal of ours in the years to come,” he said.

Work to create a new home for the Warren County Sheriff’s Office moved into overdrive in 2025 and is expected to wrap up in 2026. The new site will sit in Sugar Maple Square off Ky. 185 and will mark an end to WCSO’s more than 150-year presence inside the county courthouse.

The Sugar Maple strip mall was purchased by the county in 2021 for $1.4 million. Last December, the county accepted a roughly $104,000 bid from Bowling Green-based DRF Architects that provided design and engineering work for a remodel of the building. Sunbelt Construction, Inc. is handling the $2.2 million project.

Once completed, the building will house office space for WCSO personnel, building entry and virtual reality training areas, expanded evidence storage and a drive-thru window for paying property taxes.

“Every 160 years, I think it’s a good idea to kind of upgrade and improve facility locations,” Sheriff Brett Hightower said in May. “Warren County has probably grown a little bit in population since then – we can’t conduct business the way we did in 1867, or 1967, or 2007.”

Gorman said the facility will likely open this spring, and described the building’s enhancements to detective and investigative work as its biggest boon for the department.

“Our detective part will be enhanced considerably,” he said. “They’ll have their own space — they’re very cramped right now.”

Other projects are coming up for the county. Earlier this year officials greenlit a feasibility study that will gauge a possible expansion of the Warren County Regional Jail, something Jailer Stephen Harmon has been pushing for some time.

“It’s not a thing that you need to celebrate that we need more bed space in a correctional facility, but in a community that grows at the rate which ours does, the incarcerated population grows also,” Harmon told the Daily News in July.

The oldest part was constructed in 1987. The inmate population regularly swells well beyond the jail’s 562-bed capacity, with an average daily inmate count landing between 675 and 750.

“The can has probably been kicked down the road for years and years and years,” Gorman said. “We finally decided we’re going to at least look at this — the numbers might scare us, but we’re going to address it and see what we can do.”