GLASGOW – Mayor Harold Armstrong asked for the rules to be suspended during the Jan. 11 meeting of the Glasgow City Council so City Attorney Danny Basil could read a proclamation in memory of Wayne Gaunce.

Gaunce, 87, died on Dec. 27.

“The city of Glasgow recognizes with respect and admiration the contributions of Mr. Wayne Gaunce to our community,” Basil said.

Gaunce served two terms on the Glasgow City Council in the mid-to-late 1960s. He also served on numerous boards and committees, including the Glasgow Chamber of Commerce, Kentucky Tourism Commission and Cave City Convention Center, Campbellsville College, Kentucky Economic Development Finance Authority and other boards too numerous to mention, Basil said as he read the proclamation.

Gaunce was a member of Immanuel Baptist Church in Glasgow where he served as a deacon and as a Sunday School teacher. He was a mason and a Shriner.

He also helped the homeless through Mission 615 in Nashville and helped provide equipment needed to supply clean drinking water to communities in Haiti, Belize and the Dominican Republic. He was co-founder of the Houchens Unit of the Boys and Girls Club of Glasgow-Barren County and helped build a library in Uganda to help train ministers.

“Mr. Gaunce wanted to give back to make Glasgow, Cave City and the surrounding area a better place than it was before. He had a special quote: ‘I just want to make a difference in someone’s life,’ ” Basil said.

Framed copies of the proclamation will be delivered to each of Gaunce’s children.

“There’s no way we could make a proclamation that acknowledged all the contributions that this man made to the community and to everybody’s lives that he affected,” Armstrong said, adding that honoring his memory with the proclamation is a small way to try to return gratitude and appreciation for what Gaunce has done for the community.

Gaunce’s son, Patrick, is a member of the city council. After Basil read the proclamation, he said to the mayor and city attorney: “I just want to say how much that means to me and my family and how much he loved you. … He thought the world of Glasgow and Barren County.”

The city council also adopted a resolution authorizing the mayor to apply for a U.S. Department of Transportation grant under the Fixing America’s Surface Transportation Act. In conjunction, the city council adopted another resolution that commits a local share of the funds necessary to secure the grant.

The mayor said the city is seeking grant monies for the city’s transit system. The city is seeking more in grant funding for this year, and hopes to use that money plus any it may receive due to the COVID-19 pandemic to be able to offer free bus service.

“We are going to try it for one year without charging anything to ride on the transit system,” Armstrong said.

In other business: the city council approved on first reading an ordinance enacting and adopting a supplement to the city’s code of ordinances; and approved on first reading an ordinance to include the recently adopted Glasgow Strategic Plan in the 2019 Barren County Comprehensive Plan.

It was also announced that the First Baptist Church along South Lewis Street has postponed Martin Luther King events that had been scheduled Monday due to the pandemic. A date and time for when the events will take place will be announced later.