GLASGOW – The Glasgow City Council isn’t interested in jointly funding a Barren River Drug Task Force position with Barren Fiscal Court.

Judge-Executive Micheal Hale made the announcement during fiscal court’s Dec. 15 meeting.

“I’ve had two conversations with Mayor (Harold) Armstrong. Magistrate Jeff Botts had asked me to talk to them about splitting a deputy’s salary. They are not wanting to do that right now,” Hale said.

“They are having a hard time with workforce. They are having a hard time getting people to apply for the police department, but he did assure me that once they could hire four or five more they would put a deputy back into the drug task force.”

Ron Lafferty, director of the drug task force, told fiscal court in November that the Glasgow Police Department pulled back the two police officers it had assigned to the drug task force due to the police department having a shortage of manpower.

He spoke with GPD Chief Jennifer Arbogast about the change. He said she told him it was not permanent and that the police department would eventually return to the drug task force.

Lafferty asked fiscal court to fund a drug task force position. The cost to the county would have been a little more than $54,000 a year, including benefits and some overtime expense.

Fiscal court members said they didn’t think the county could afford to fund the position on its own and decided to table action on the matter until someone could check with city officials to see if the county and the city would work together to fund the position.

Lafferty told fiscal court on Dec. 15 that he spoke with Arbogast after the November fiscal court meeting and she confirmed the police department had no intentions of permanently withdrawing from the drug task force.

As for when the police department would be able to assign another police officer to the drug task force, Lafferty said Arbogast told him it could be as long as six months to a year from now. He also said she told him she would only be able to assign one police officer and not two as the GPD had done in the past.

“That’s still leaving me short, but she assured me she would put somebody back in,” Lafferty said.

No action was taken by fiscal court during the Dec. 15 meeting for the county to fund a drug task force position on its own.

In other business, Magistrate Carl Dickerson talked about Contemporary Amperex Technology Kentucky LLC purchasing the former LSC Communications Inc. property on Donnelley Drive and commended the judge-executive and magistrates for the work they have done in helping to bring new industry to the county.

CATL is determining production plans that will be announced after the first of the year, he said.

“Also this year, we have had the biggest job creation and capital investment in a decade,” Dickerson said. “With this announcement that was made, and my understanding is, we have created 527 new jobs and have a capital investment of $126 million. Our court, this court sitting right here, we have done this.”

Hale said: This project that we have landed is the top project in the state of Kentucky. I don’t think we’ve ever landed a No. 1 project for Kentucky as far as Barren County is concerned. We do have something to be proud of.”

Dickerson and Magistrate Mark Bowman serve on the Barren County Economic Authority’s board of directors.

Hale told them he appreciates the work they do as members of the board.

“There’s going to be other suppliers that are going to be needed. Hopefully, there will be a lot of jobs gained from that, too,” Bowman said. “Just a lot of positive things (going on) right now in economic development.”

Bowman said he appreciated everyone’s efforts.

In other business, Hale talked about the county road supervisor’s position, which is vacant and has been since former County Road Supervisor Jeremy Runyon retired in October.

Hale has been running day-to-day operations of the county road department since then and told magistrates he has no plans to fill the county road supervisor’s position at the moment.

“Things are running real well. The crew is pretty well taking care of what needs to be done. They definitely don’t need to be micromanaged,” he said. “Right now, we are going to move on like it is. I will continue run the day-to-day operations until I can’t handle it.”