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The Jessamine County Fiscal Court met Tuesday for a regular meeting.

To start the meeting, the fiscal court discussed a pre-existing Windstream telephone bill and voted to approve payment of the bill. This bill came from the transfer of Camp Nelson from the fiscal court to the national monument. Windstream asked the court to pay the outstanding phone bill, or else it would shut down the county’s telephone service. Judge-Executive David West said this had been an issue because the court didn’t think it owed as much as Windstream was claiming it did, but it had to take action to pay the bill to avoid the county losing telephone access.
Another significant motion of this meeting was approving the first reading of the employee handbook for the county. This comes simultaneously as Nicholasville is updating its employee handbooks. The last update for the handbook was in 2007, so a lot of the updates bring it up to compliance with federal regulations. Many of the changes include better documentation of all departments’ work. The human resources manager, according to West, met with every department head and elected official at least twice to complete this handbook.

Bid results
The fiscal court approved multiple bid results:
• To improve and replace fire alarms, sprinklers, and security systems in seven different facilities throughout the county, the fiscal court sent out bidding requests. Unfortunately, according to County Administrator Kelly Woolums, they did not get any bids this time but will continue searching for bids.
• The fiscal court approved a bid for the countywide cleanup at the end of March.
• The court also approved a bid from Douglass Equipment to replace and install a new freezer and fridge at the Jessamine County Detention Center.

In other news:
• The county clerk announced an excess of fees for 2023. These fees exceeded the budgeted amount by $250,000 for a total of $990,000.
• All 15 new storm sirens have been installed and are currently in the air. They only need to undergo electrical inspection to be fully functional. Johnny Adams, the emergency management agency director, said these are up just in time for the rainy months in the state.