City asks for less taxes; county same
Marion property owners shouldn’t feel the increase in taxes sought by the school district and extension service. In fact, their overall tax burden could be a little less in 2008.
Within the last week, several taxing jurisdictions within Crittenden County have introduced their planned property tax rates for the year, with the board of education and Extension service seeking increases in the amount collected off real estate. For those with land inside the City of Marion, though, those increases should be offset by a rate reduction proposed Monday by the city.
“We want people to know we know things are bad,” said City Administrator Mark Bryant. “It’s getting kind of scary.”
The city is asking for 22.4 cents per $100 of assessed real estate, down 7.5 percent over last year’s rate of 24.2 cents. Though the city’s levy on personal property increased slightly to 28.0 cents, Bryant said the amount collected from those tangible assets is comparatively low.
“On personal property, we collect about a quarter of what is taken in from real estate,” Bryant said.
The 0.7-cent increase in the personal property rate is revenue neutral, meaning the city will collect about the same in 2008 as in 2007 due to a decrease in the overall assessment of tangible assets within the city.
Meantime, Crittenden Fiscal Court on Tuesday opted to keep all of its property tax rates unchanged – 12.0 cents for real estate, 12.4 for personal property and 12.4 for motor vehicles and watercraft. All rates are based on $100 of assessed value.
Ronnie Heady, Crittenden County Property Valuation Administrator, said real estate assessments in the county were up about $8 million in 2008 to $277 million. That increase will actually funnel more revenue to the county’s general fund even with the same rate as the year before.
Crittenden County Judge-Executive Fred Brown said that with the school and Extension service proposing tax increases this year, he thought the county's rate should stay the same.
Faced with increased costs to operate the school district on flat funding from the state, the board of education will unveil its higher tax rates in a meeting next Thursday. The board is proposing a rate of 42.7 cents per $100 on both real and personal property, up 1.3 cents from last year. The Extension service, which offers 4-H for youth and a variety of services for farmers, land owners and homemakers, has approved a 0.2-cent increase on real estate, taking the levy to 3.4 cents per $100.
“The Extension service is being faced with (the same) cost increases as everyone else,” said Nancy Hunt, in her 29th year with the agency in Crittenden County. “Money provided by federal and state funds have greatly decreased over the years.”
Stuart Collins, chairman of the six-member board that governs the local extension service, said the increase is needed in order to provide the same level of service that has been provided in the past.
The Extension service’s new rate would mean an extra $2 in taxes paid in 2008 by the owner of a $100,000 home.
“It’s not that much, really,” Collins said.
Together, with the school district’s proposed increase, that same taxpayer will pay $15 more this year. Those rates will affect all real property owners in the county. However, those who also pay property taxes to the city will actually be paying $3 less when the city’s reduction is combined with the increases.
“It’s the right thing to do,” Bryant said of the city's decision to lower real estate taxes.

Beshear: 641 changes would involve local input
Gov. Steve Beshear, while on a visit to Marion Tuesday, said his “Practical Solutions” approach to undertaking highway projects in the commonwealth on dwindling transportation funds will have plenty of input at the community level.
While a new four-lane U.S. 641 has not been specifically targeted for changes by Beshear’s administration, the governor has warned that four-lane projects in the state may be whittled down to two for the sake of maximizing transportation dollars. When asked Tuesday about U.S. 641, Beshear said that while cost-effective construction will mean cutbacks on certain projects, the intended purposes of improved public safety and economic benefits from any project will not be compromised.
“We will have input of local officials before any changes are considered,” Beshear told The Crittenden Press.
The governor, a western Kentucky native, said Rep. Mike Cherry (D-Princeton) and Sen. Dorsey Ridley (D-Henderson) have already let him know of the importance of a four-lane U.S. 641 to the economic health of Crittenden County and the area the corridor would serve. Judge-Executive Fred Brown, who has also lobbied to keep the project as is, made his pitch Tuesday while drawing laughter from a crowd gathered to see the governor at the Ed-Tech Center.
Brown, referring to previous visits to the county by Lt. Gov. Daniel Mongiardo that included meals, apologized for not having Tuesday's affair catered.
"We fed Mongiardo twice, so I hope you will take a rain check," Brown said after introducing the governor. "Maybe when you come back to cut the ribbon on 641... a four-lane 641."
As proposed, a four-lane U.S. 641 would begin in Marion and connect with the Western Kentucky Parkway in Eddyville. That would provide four-lane access from Crittenden County to Interstate 24. Crittenden County is one of only a handful in the state without a four-lane highway.
The parkway has also been considered for incorporation into Interstates 66 and 69.
Keith Todd, a spokesperson for the Transportation Cabinet, said the relatively low cost of road construction in western Kentucky as compared to other areas of the state would be a consideration that could preserve the original plans for U.S. 641.
No indication has been made by Frankfort, state legislators or local officials that construction of the roadway is in jeopardy, nor have any reassurances been given that the initial plan will remain intact.
Land purchases for the first phase of construction in Crittenden County have already begun, but a few property owners are disputing in court the price offered for their land. Construction on the 5.2-mile, $50 million first phase of the road in Crittenden County is slated to begin sometime after July 1, 2009.
The second phase of the plan, which runs from Fredonia to Eddyville, maintained allocations in the revised six-year road plan offered by the governor earlier this year.

Funds help construct health department, sidewalks
Steve Beshear marked his first visit to Crittenden County as governor by handing over more than half a million dollars for monuments to public welfare, an effort he said is satisfying a campaign pledge to his native western Kentucky.
Though two oversized, ceremonial checks were themselves worthless, the $622,000 they represent will help fund a new public health department and reconstruct city sidewalks for students who choose to walk to school. During his campaign last year against incumbent Ernie Fletcher, Beshear vowed to end what he called the neglect Frankfort has shown the state's westernmost counties.
“I promised we would not leave out western Kentucky,” the Dawson Springs Democrat said Tuesday during his stop at the Ed-Tech Center in Marion. “One of the reasons I'm here today is to fulfill that promise.”
Most of the funding announced by the governor will go toward construction of a 9,000-square-foot public health department to replace an aged, cramped facility. The $500,000 from the Kentucky Cabinet for Health and Family Services, in fact, was approved under Gov. Fletcher’s administration, and the City of Marion has pledged another $200,000 from its revolving loan fund. Construction is just a few weeks away, said the director of the county health department.
"We're eight to 10 weeks before construction starts," said Jim Tolley, head of the Pennyrile District Health Department that encompasses five counties. "That may be a little optimistic, though."
Once completed on property adjacent to the very building in which Beshear made the check presentation Tuesdasy, the new health department will be able to provide more efficient, effective service, the governor said. The current 2,700-square-foot building on North Walker Street is 50 years old, prone to flooding from a creek behind the facility and too cramped to provide adequate care.
“We’re literally out of space,” Tolley said.
Despite moving the health department from the heart of Marion to its outskirts on Industrial Drive, Tolley expects a higher visibility to increase the workload at the Marion clinic. He said the number of people who walk to the current clinic and may be inconvenienced by the move are very few.
The new project will be the first new health department building in the five-county Pennyrile district in a half-century, Tolley said.
Another $122,000 headed this way from Frankfort through a federal Safe Routes to School Program will help reconstruct 2,350 feet of sidewalk along the north side of Elm Street from Main Street to the middle and high schools. The matching grant, which will be complemented by in-kind work from the City of Marion, will also fund a new four-foot-wide pedestrian bridge over Rocket Creek.
“We will be able to service the students that walk, bicycle, skateboard, etc., through this grant,” said Al Starnes, director of transportation for the Crittenden County school district.
Marion City Administrator Mark Bryant said the city’s grant application also included plans for future sidewalk replacements in town tied to the Elm Street project. The city’s in-kind work will primarily be tearing up the existing pathways before a contractor pours new concrete.
Because city employees are already slated for a number of existing projects, Bryant said the new sidewalks might not be completed during the current school year.
The governor, en route to Murray for one of his last town hall meeting on his “Beshear About Kentucky” tour, also touched on the current employment environment in the region.
“There are too many people out of work,” he told the dozens crammed into the ed-tech center’s conference room.
Earlier in the day, the state’s Office of Employment and Training announced a 6.7 percent July unemployment rate up 1.2 points from a year ago. Last week, the Rayloc plant in Morganfield, one of the area’s largest employers of Crittenden County workers, announced it was cutting 480 jobs.
“(Western Kentucky) can be one of the economic engines of this state,” Beshear said.
The governor, though, offered no immediate plans or remedies addressing employment opportunities in the state.
Beshear concluded his town hall series Wednesday in Paducah after finishing the 13-meeting tour with visits to three western Kentucky communities in the last three days.

STLP seeks record; humanitarian awareness
Ben Thompson's students have big ambitions for their small school. They want to reach America's next president.
More specifically, they want the president to sign the President's Promise Project, vowing to act on global humanitarian issues. The President's Promise Project is designed by Crittenden County Middle School's technology club, or Student Technology Leadership Program (STLP), which this summer was honored nationally as Kentucky's best student-organized technology showcase.
The President's Promise Project is an online effort to garner one million signatures on the STLP Web site, StudentActionNetwork.org.
"This is a way to get kids involved in political process, maybe gain a little interest in it," said Thompson, a social studies teacher at Crittenden County Middle School.
Thompson, an Indianapolis native and fourth-year teacher at CCMS, hopes interest in the project will spread far beyond Crittendden County's borders.
"The reason we want to do this is I think every social studies class in the country is going to be talking about this election, and this President's Promise Project will help facilitate discussion on it," Thompson said. "If it can help discussion in other classes, that'd be cool... (and to participate), all people have to do is sign the petition on our site and that's it."
Thompson, his students and the school district's technology coordinator, Ben Grainger, developed the online petition and began telling everyone they know – via word of mouth and e-mail – to get online and sign the petition.
The club's Web site is already recognized statewide and in some national circles, since it was recognized in San Antonio at the National Education Computing Conference as a result of being named best in Kentucky last spring.
In fact, Thompson has been in contact with representatives from Promethean, an education technology-based company interested in having CCMS students help train other schools in Adobe software, which is used on the local site.
"Those two companies (have offered to) give us free software and fly people out to train my students," Thompson explains. "The cool part is they want to use our students when they make corporatie presentations, and will fly some of our students out to wherever they're making a big corporate presentation and our students will show how they've used Adobe software in our project... It will show how students can use that software."
But in the immediate future, the STLP students will be encouraging everyone they know to sign their petition so they can present it to the next President of the United States at the end of January 2009.
"We've already done a lot by winning best showcase in Kentucky award for our Web site, we have a good reputation and a lot of people already know about us, so we're starting from a good spot. Hopefully we can get this done," the teacher said.

Fed sentences final of 13 defendants in meth ring
The final defendant in a 13-person meth ring was sentenced this week, more than one year after federal jurors indicted all 13.
Robert Topp, 52, of Marion was sentenced Monday to five years in federal prison for his role in a conspiracy to distribute multiple pounds of methamphetamine, said David L. Huber, U.S. Attorney of the Western District of Kentucky. Topp was also sentenced to four years supervised release following incarceration.
On Aug. 14, 2007, a federal grand jury in Paducah returned an indictment charging  13 area individuals with conspiring to possess with intent to distribute methamphetamine in western Kentucky between the fall of 2003 and the summer of 2007.  During that time frame, Topp entered into an agreement with at least six of the 12 other defendants in the case to distribute meth in western Kentucky.
According to Huber’s office, Topp would obtain the drug primarily from Russell Hunt, 47, of Henderson but formerly of Marion, but on occasion, depending on the supply, would obtain it from others. Those included Kim Cowsert, 29, and Ollie Peek, 53, of Crittenden County, Stephanie Holloman, 28, of Salem and Thomas Dawes, 46, of Calvert City. 
On occasion, Topp would sell “eight-ball” quantities of meth, or 1/8-ounce, to others, including Cowsert, Holloman and Dawes. On a few occasions, Topp received meth directly from Tim Binkley, who was supplying Hunt and the other co-defendants. 
Binkley, 37, of Marion, admitted during his change of plea that he was obtaining the meth in Atlanta for $10,500 per pound and selling it in Kentucky for $22,000 per pound.  Binkley admitted to supplying the group with 10-30 pounds of meth.
Others charged in the ring were Wade Hopkins, 35, Randy Cowsert, 37, and Michael Elliot Towery, all of Marion; Michael D. Lovelace, 36, of Salem; and Riley Marie Baucum, of Paducah.
The 13 defendants were sentenced to a total of 96 years and eight months in jail and $25,716 in cash was forfeited to the federal government. There is no parole in the federal judicial system.
One defendant, Troy Douglas Fox, died Feb. 17, before sentencing.
According to the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration, which assisted in the investigation of the local ring, primary suppliers of meth are Mexican drug trafficking organizations.
A decrease in clandestine laboratories in Kentucky is countered by importation of “ice” methamphetamine from Mexico primarily via U.S. border towns, Atlanta and Ashville, N.C.. Independent traffickers travel to Atlanta and major cities along the border with Mexico to obtain pound amounts of Mexican-produced meth and smuggle it back into Kentucky via privately owned vehicles.
Small “Mom and Pop” operators continue to manufacture methamphetamine in small one- to two-ounce quantities for personal use and for distribution at the local level.
Meth lab incidents in Kentucky decreased from 343 in 2006 to 261 last year. According to the U.S. Department of Justice Web site, federal seizures of the drug in 2007 totaled 17.2 pounds