A Hopkins County-Madisonville Public Library board member says Christmas has come early in the form of a $500,000 dollar fiscal court allocation for the library’s new facility.
Library board president Carolyn Ferrell says the board reviewed the court's plan this morning and voted to request the funding the court had made available for them. She says, for now, the board will pay the county back with interest it draws annually from its endowment.
“The payment from that endowment that we get every December should be enough to make the repayment to the county,” she says. “There’s the hope that at some point we’ll become a taxing district, and we will have a stable income and can allocate a percentage of that to paying it back.
Hopkins County Magistrate Larry Wilson says the funds come from the county’s contingency funds. The library has a minimum of 20 years to pay the fiscal court and no maximum. He says the library will pay the money back at a rate slightly higher than what the contingency fund typically draws.
“We decided in court that we would not micromanage the use of the funds,” he says. “So the library is permitted to do what they think is best in utilizing those funds.”
That includes paying off the almost 70,000 dollars in prevailing wage debt. The board has more than 20 years to repay the loan to the county. Ferrell says the board hopes to pay off the debt within the next month and start construction early next year.
Work on the library’s new facility was halted in March due to a lack of funds and a Kentucky Labor Cabinet prevailing wage investigation.
