Meeting Report: Elizabethtown City Council, August 17, 2026

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This is a plain report of the Elizabethtown City Council regular meeting held Monday, August 17, 2026. Everything below comes from the City of Elizabethtown's own public video of the meeting. We downloaded the recording, transcribed it, and checked names against city records. The full unedited video is embedded at the bottom of this article, and every section notes where in the video it happens so you can watch any part yourself.

The meeting ran about 35 minutes.

Who was there

Mayor Jeff Gregory chaired the meeting. All six council members answered the roll call: Tony Bishop, Marty Fulkerson, Tim Isaacs, Lamar Jones, Julia Springsteen and Mika Tyler. City Attorney Ken Howard read the ordinance and all five municipal orders into the record.

Council Member Lamar Jones gave the invocation. (Video: 4:00)

A new way to speak at public comment

Before the first vote, Mayor Gregory told the room the public comment procedure was changing. Speakers still sign in with the clerk, and still have to give a name. What is new is that you no longer have to say your home address out loud.

"Or if you're not comfortable with saying what your address is, you can just say whether you're a resident or non-resident of Elizabethtown, but we still need your name," Gregory said. "So we're going to try to adopt those procedures and hopefully make everyone a little bit more comfortable." (Video: 5:41)

The change has been building for months, and more than one person moved it. At the August 10 work session, City Attorney Ken Howard said he began researching what a city can actually require of a speaker back in June, prompted by the fact that the council has live streamed its meetings since moving into the current building in January. "Obviously if we're live streaming we cannot redact those as we could in previous times," he said. On August 2 the city received an email from a woman who had spoken at the July 28 Planning Commission hearing and was uncomfortable stating her address on the stream, a concern Howard called legitimate. Resident Jose Torres raised the same thing publicly at the August 3 council meeting. The work session took it up on August 10, and the council formally adopted the change later in this same meeting as Municipal Order 62-2026.

Votes taken

All motions passed. Only the data center ordinance required a roll call; everything else passed by voice vote with no opposition heard.

• Minutes of the August 3, 2026 meeting were approved. (Video: 6:19)
• Resolution 03-2026 recognizes Nonprofit Week and the 5th Annual Nonprofit Roundtable Conference hosted by Central Kentucky Community Foundation. Council Member Julia Springsteen read it in full from the dais. Adopted. (Video: 6:35)
• Motion to reject the Steelgrove Amphitheater ice rink bids. Carried. Details below. (Video: 9:59)
• Ordinance 13-2026, second reading, ADOPTED 6-0 by roll call. The data center zoning text amendments. Details below. (Video: 12:38)
• Municipal Order 61-2026 accepts the bid of Dirt Works Unlimited LLC for the Pear Orchard Road Northwest water main relocation project, not to exceed $491,873, with change orders capped in the aggregate at $73,780.95. Bids were opened July 29. Adopted. (Video: 14:10)
• Municipal Order 62-2026 amends the city's public speaking policy, which was originally adopted by municipal order on February 3, 2020. The order says the city "wishes to afford all people the ability to be heard on matters of City operations in a proper decorum, and wishes to keep the public safe," and amends the policy "to allow for the civil discussion of topics." The amended policy itself is an exhibit to the order and was not read aloud; the practical change is the one the mayor described at the top of the meeting. Adopted. (Video: 15:48)
• Municipal Order 63-2026 approves a lease of the city-owned building at 1117 Woodland Drive to Heartland House Incorporated. Adopted. Details below. (Video: 17:24)
• Municipal Order 64-2026 accepts Arlingwood Court into the city street maintenance system. The street was developed as a private street, and the owners in the Villas at Arlington Park Condominiums Council, Inc. asked the city to take over maintenance. An amended plat has been recorded, the street was inspected and found to conform to city street standards, and traffic control signs and devices will be installed. Adopted. (Video: 23:37)
• Municipal Order 65-2026 accepts the bid of Superior Technologies LLC for the Magnolia Farms Section 2 gas main extension, not to exceed $32,497.50, with change orders capped in the aggregate at $4,874.63. Bids were opened August 12. Adopted. (Video: 25:33)

Data center rules adopted, 6-0

Ordinance 13-2026 got its second reading and was adopted on a roll call vote, 6-0. There was no discussion before the vote.

City Attorney Ken Howard read the ordinance by summary: it amends Title 15 Land Usage, Chapter 154 zoning code, across nine sections, "to update the text relating to regulations for data centers, to include definitions, zoning district restrictions, square footage limitations, and specific design and operational standards to be allowed as accessory uses only."

In practice, data centers can now exist in Elizabethtown only as an accessory use attached to another business, capped at 50,000 square feet in the industrial one and two zones and 10,000 square feet in every other zone.

Our full coverage of the vote, what is now in the code, and the public comment that followed it is in the companion piece: 'Accessory Uses Only': E'town Adopts Its Data Center Rules, 6-0.

Ice rink at Steelgrove: one bid, nearly twice budget

City Administrator Ed Poppe came to the podium to explain why staff wanted the council to reject the only bid it received for an ice rink at Steelgrove Amphitheater.

The concrete area in front of the stage is designed to hold concert patrons during events, Poppe said, and early in the design discussions the city thought it might also be used year round as an ice rink. The city budgeted $400,000 for the equipment and put it out to bid.

"We solicited bids, received only one bid," Poppe said. "We thought we would receive additional, but we did receive only one bid and it was $716,831."

At nearly twice the budget, staff met and decided the money was better spent on the facility's main purpose.

"It is our recommendation that the council reject that bid and we will continue to evaluate that activity and maybe plan some other time."

Ed Poppe, City Administrator

Poppe said the city will keep looking at winter activities that would make the amphitheater a year-round facility, just not an ice rink in front of the stage. The council voted to reject. (Video: 9:59)

A second nonprofit for the Woodland Drive building

Municipal Order 63-2026 leases 1117 Woodland Drive to Heartland House Incorporated. On August 3 the council leased the same address to Mission Hope for Kids. This is a second tenant, not a replacement.

Mayor Gregory explained the building for anyone who has not followed it. The city bought the property several months ago. It was blighted, and it used to be Signature HealthCARE before that company moved out to Veterans Way. The plan is to house several nonprofits in it together: Heartland House, Mission Hope for Kids, and eventually Warm Blessings.

Representatives of Heartland House were in the audience and came to the podium. One read the organization's mission statement: to serve as "a structured program that provides a bridge of hope for individuals, family facing unexpected life crisis," offering short-term housing, mentorship and practical support "to help people regain stability, restore independence, and move confidently toward a sustainable future."

The mayor then raised, unprompted, the question he said he had already been getting from residents: whether it is safe to put Heartland House, a children's charity and a meal program in one building. He asked a Heartland House board member who also serves on the Mission Hope board to answer it.

"That absolutely has been a source of concern for all parties, and a lot of the infrastructure set up, even with our architect, has addressed those issues. They will have no access to one another, separate parking lots, and then even with the outdoor play spaces, they have been critically designed to separate the different parties."

Heartland House board member

We are not naming the Heartland House speakers. The mayor introduced them from the dais, but the organization has no public record yet, the spellings come only from meeting audio, and they are private citizens rather than public officials. We will name them once the city posts its official minutes.

A council member thanked them: "That is a very needed service here in this community, so I appreciate you all stepping up and taking on the task."

Mayor Gregory made the case for the need with a story about his own household. His wife teaches kindergarten at Panther Academy and has taught in the city schools for 24 years, he said, and nearly every year she has a student, sometimes two or three, living out of a car or in a motel on the south end of town.

"They can never really get back on their feet, although they are trying. A lot of them. And it's a very sad situation a lot of times, and this is exactly the kind of place that we need to be able to help those kind of folks that just need maybe a small hand up."

Jeff Gregory, Mayor

"We've never had this before in Elizabethtown," he said. (Video: 17:24)

A question about the gas main bids

The only extended back-and-forth among council members came on Municipal Order 65-2026, the Magnolia Farms gas main extension.

Council Member Mika Tyler said there was "a huge difference in those bids" and asked whether both bidders had read the same bid packet. A city staff member answered that they had, that the city was not familiar with the unsuccessful bidder, and that Superior Technologies has done work for the city before and bid in line with what the city expected. The order passed. (Video: 27:00)

Public comment

Two residents spoke.

TJ Kane spoke first, entirely about data centers, minutes after the vote. He asked whether the new 50,000 square foot cap includes sub-basements, and Planning and Development's Aaron Hawkins answered that the cap is total floor area regardless of where in a building it sits, and that the 50,000 figure applies only in the industrial zones. Kane went on to argue the buffer distances are too small, that "closed-loop" data centers do not actually reuse their water, and asked how often the city would test water near such a facility. He closed by asking the council to model its ordinance on Munfordville's. His full comment is covered in the companion data center piece. (Video: 28:55)

Jose Torres spoke second, and opened by thanking the council. He said they had been "getting hammered pretty bad at certain points" and that he wanted to be positive, crediting a one-on-one conversation he had with the mayor and the city clerk since the last meeting. "Although we don't agree on everything, I think it was good to have a discussion."

His ask was about the gap before the Woodland Drive building opens. People who are homeless have somewhere to go on weekdays, he said, but not on weekends.

"There's churches that do a tremendous amount during the week with intermittent food boxes. Of course, you can go to Warm Blessings Monday through Friday. You can go to SEEK meals. But after Friday at 6:30, there's no place for them to eat."

Jose Torres, resident, during public comment

Torres said he had gone out of pocket the night before, bought peanut butter and jelly, and gone looking for people to feed. He asked the council to consider an interim measure for storms and heat, and floated one idea: the city is planning to move City Hall, and he suggested that move could wait a couple of months so a building could serve as a short-term stopgap.

"It's hot out there, as you all know," he said. (Video: 33:43)

Information items

• The next City Council meeting is August 24, 2026.
• The Heartland parade is Saturday, August 22, starting at 10 a.m.
• The rescheduled concert at the lake is Wednesday at 6 p.m.
• A downtown master plan meeting is Tuesday at Pritchard Community Center.
• St. James church holds its community picnic this weekend at the Robin Brook campus, 401 Robin Brook, with chicken and taco dinners starting at 4 p.m. and entertainment around 6:30.

(Video: 37:02)

Closed session

The council voted to close the meeting under KRS 61.810(1) to conduct deliberation on future acquisition or sale of real property by the city. Mayor Gregory said no action would come out of the closed session. (Video: 38:06)

Watch the full meeting

The complete, unedited video of the meeting:

How we built this report

We want to be straight with you about how this article was made.

Hardin Local built this story using our own custom AI stack. We downloaded the City of Elizabethtown's public video of the August 17 City Council meeting, transcribed all thirty eight minutes of it on our own hardware, ran the transcript through a local corrections database for Hardin County names and places, and used AI to index and analyze the full record so that nothing said in that room got overlooked.

Then a person checked the work. Every quote in this article was verified by ear against the actual meeting audio. Every speaker was confirmed before their name was attached to anything they said, and the council members' names were checked against the City of Elizabethtown's official roster. Nothing was published on the strength of a machine transcript alone, and a human editor reviewed this article before it went live.

That process is not perfect, and we would rather tell you that than pretend otherwise. Where speakers introduce themselves only out loud, those name spellings come from audio and may not be exact until the city posts its official minutes.

If you spot an inaccuracy, please tell us. Email [email protected]. We will check it against the recording and correct the record publicly. We would much rather be corrected than be wrong.

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