Weird night at the Wilmore city council

For those of you who thought I had forgotten how to sit back and just tell a story — this one’s for you. This is long, but I think it’s interesting, especially the end.

My main beat at the Jessamine Journal is to cover the city of Wilmore, particularly the local government — the Wilmore City Council. The city council is made up of six members, Jeff Baier, Mary Jo Morrow, Leonard Fitch, Jim Brumfield, Ed McKinley and Kim Deyer. The mayor, Harold Rainwater, leads the meetings, and the city clerk, Colleen Brandenburg, keeps the minutes. Those eight personalities are so remarkably different that I am convinced I could write and produce the first-ever small-town government sitcom based on Wilmore.

Monday night, the main item on the agenda was approving the goals and objectives section of the new joint comprehensive plan. In case you aren’t up on Jessamine County government, the city of Nicholasville and Jessamine County/city of Wilmore have separate comprehensive plans, which direct development in the county. The big project this year is to combine those into one all-encompassing document. That takes about a year because the update committee has to get each portion approved one at a time by both planning commissions and all three governments. The goals and objectives is the first part of the document — it sort of guides the rest of the process by defining what type of development planners should encourage and discourage. Anyway, the other four bodies had approved the goals and objectives over the last two months, and it was coming to Wilmore for a final seal of approval so the update committee could move on to the next portion. There’s your background, now onto Monday night.

The item came onto the table, and Deyer had one section that she wanted to change Goal D, Objective 6 says “Avoid any commercial growth along new and old U.S. 68.” Kim was concerned that the words ‘avoid any’ were not strong enough to really discourage growth along that corridor. She wanted it changed to ‘Prohibit.’ This stemmed from previous public meetings that had discussed putting something at the intersection of U.S. 68 and Ky. 169 along the lines of a gas station or drycleaners. Kim said she didn’t want to see ANY commercial development, no matter how small.

“I think that people from Wilmore are interested to perhaps keep U.S. 68 a lot like Paris Pike, so we would prefer that if they need to do any kind of shopping that they would be coming to a destination and that would be Wilmore,” she said. “My feelings are that we would want people to just stay on 68 and come on into Wilmore, go to Keene, go to Nicholasville, but not have any commercial development at that intersection.”

Right away this bothered Pete Beaty, who is the chairman of the Jessamine County-Wilmore joint planning commission and a member of the update committee. He knows that if Wilmore decides to make any changes to the document, it has to go back before the other four bodies, two of which meet just once a month and then come back to Wilmore, setting back the process by one or two months. Also, there have been proponents of developing U.S. 68 to some degree, especially with the new four-lane highway coming through. His third point was that the intersection in question is outside Wilmore’s jurisidiction, and the fiscal court may not take to kindly to Wilmore using such a strong term as ‘prohibit.’ Finally, he brought up the fact that the planning commission originally rejected the golf course proposal on U.S. 68, which shows that they are also averse to development. However, he made the mistake of bringing up the first point last, which obviously irked some of the council members.

“If we make any changes here tonight, it’s going to have to go back to all these other bodies — it’s going to have to get the approval of all these other bodies again,” Beaty said.

McKinley interjected at that point.

“That can’t be an objection to our discussing this frankly, or it would mean that whoever was the last body to approve was rendered impotent because the objection would be if you raise the least objection, it’s got to be approved by the other (five) again, which renders the last body just a rubber stamp,” he said. “I do agree with what you say about terminology prohibit vs. avoid, but twice you’ve said that if you dare to raise an objection, it will be an inconvenience to everybody. Well — yeah.”

“The issue I’m trying to bring forward — it’s a matter of wordsmithing,” Beaty responded.

“All legislation is,” McKinley said.

Rainwater was with McKinley on this point.

“I think if this had come to us first, this would have been changed probably to restrict, and the others would have adopted it, no doubt in my mind,” he said.

Beaty went back to the jurisdiction issue.

“Your jurisdiction is the city of Wilmore,” he said. “The fiscal court’s jurisdiction is the unincorporated county. You all would not feel comfortable with the city of Nicholasville coming in and telling you how to run your streets in the city of Wilmore. I’m sure the city of Nicholasville wouldn’t be comfortable with you guys coming in and telling them how to run their streets over in Nicholasville.”

This went back and forth for a while, with council members wondering about the merits of the words ‘avoid any’ and Beaty, Dal Harper and Dave Carlstedt, who are also on the update committee, trying to convince them those words were sufficient. Rainwater brought up the fact that if the five bodies all get hung up and can’t agree, the whole project dies, meaning Wilmore has no say as to what happens to U.S. 68 outside of its jurisdiction. At least with the joint comprehensive plan, Wilmore gets a hand in the planning process. But as of now, there is the chance that Nicholasville could grow to the north side of Wilmore and develop U.S. 68 according to its comprehensive plan.

All of a sudden while people were still debating, Deyer, who had been silent for much of the discussion, moved to amend the document, replacing the words ‘Avoid any’ with ‘Prohibit.’ Everybody got silent. After a brief pause, McKinley seconded it, saying it’s not fair to let a motion die for lack of a second. That brought it to the table for a vote.

Carlstedt made one last effort to convince the council not to make a change.

“By saying yes to this, even if it’s not quite strong enough, we still know today that every body has said we are willing to live with avoid,” he said. “Maybe it doesn’t get us perfect, but it’s a whole lot better than the alternative that if Nicholasville has their say so with Harrodsburg Road like they did highway 27, and they haven’t shown any particular foresight — that’s just been a runaway train for them. Avoid is still really, really strong. It’s a pretty strong step forward, and they said yes to that.

Here’s where it gets bizarre.

Rainwater called for a recess — things were getting a little heated. He got up and went to the back room. Deyer got up and followed him. The two were gone for about five minutes, then they came back in the room. Deyer sat back in her seat.

“I’m going to withdraw my motion,” she said.

Everybody was silent again.

“What did you say?” Morrow asked. “What did you all do in that two-minute recess?” She asked that question jokingly, but the rest of us were thinking the same thing along more serious lines.

McKinley, who knows his way well around local government and knew that whatever had just happened was COMPLETELY outside the rules, quickly moved to approve the goals and objectives. Morrow seconded, and the council voted 4-1 to approve the goals with Deyer representing the lone ‘no’ vote.

After the vote, the mayor came clean.

“I want to personally commend Kim for stepping aside in the best interest of the city in this issue,” he said. “I have not used that pressure on a council member before, and I apologize to Kim for doing that. We would rather have a package agreement then not.”

I’m sure he saw my mouth hanging open. I had never heard of back room dealings DURING a public meeting. Usually that stuff happens before or after.

After the meeting I went up to Kim, and her “No comment” was out of her mouth before I finished the question.

It seems to me that the council did what was best for Wilmore by being players in this joint comprehensive plan, but geez, strong-arming a council member to withdraw a motion to amend the document in a way she thinks would be better for the city? I’m still shocked. I want to know if I’m the only one who feels this way — leave a comment and let me know who was right, wrong or just doing his or her job.