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The Harlan City Council held their first meeting of 2025 on Monday, Jan. 13, welcoming incoming council members as well as a new city attorney.

Mayor Joe Meadors called the meeting to order.

“Madam clerk, would you please call the roll?” Meadors asked Harlan City Clerk Carla Jones.

Jones called out the names of the council members: Anne Hensley, Benny Patton, David McCarthy, Jeff Phillips, Jeanne Lee, Justin Luttrell, and Chris Jones.

Patton and Jones have previously served on the council, while McCarthy is new to the panel.

“I want to welcome everybody here tonight,” Meadors said. “We’ve got a mixture of new and old; we’ve got a couple of council members who have served previously but have rejoined us, that’s Benny Patton and Chris Jones. We also have Dave McCarthy here; this is his first meeting.”

Meadors also introduced the new Harlan City Attorney, Scott Lisenbee. Lisenbee previously served as Harlan City Attorney for approximately 10 years.

“I think everybody knows him,” Meadors said. “We’re glad to have him.”

Meadors asked Lisenbee if he wished to address the council.

“I’m happy to be back,” Lisenbee said. “I checked today to see how far back my city of Harlan work went, and I started in 2006 and went until 2016.”

Lisenbee served as the 26th Judicial District Court Judge from 2016 until he left the bench to return to private practice in 2023.

Lisenbee is taking over the Harlan City Attorney position after Karen Davenport departed the seat to take on the position of Commonwealth’s Attorney in Harlan.

Meadors then moved on to city business.

“We got the TAP grant, that’s the safe route to schools – that’s to build sidewalks within the city primarily for children to use while walking to and from school,” Meadors said. “Our first one was when we did all of Cumberland Avenue, then we used what was left over toward the Bailey Hill area.”

According to Meadors, a second TAP grant was used for May Street in Fairview and in front of Harlan Elementary School on Mound and Central streets.

“When we got the grant, we had to wait and in the meantime construction costs went through the roof,” Meadors said. “We weren’t the only ones that had this issue, a lot of cities in the state that couldn’t make immediate use of their grant money by the time they got around to it construction costs meant the portion they had to fund themselves would bankrupt cities, so they had to give the grant money back. They just couldn’t afford the match.”

Meadors explained the Kentucky State Legislature addressed the problem with House Bill 723.

“It gave some relief through the Cabinet for Economic Development for those cities who had gotten some grant money, had not used it yet, and in the meantime those construction costs had skyrocketed,” Meadors said. “We’ve been told we’re going to get that, so that will help. We shouldn’t have any money out of pocket for the increase.”

A motion was made to approve a resolution authorizing the city to apply for a grant under House Bill 723 in the amount of $27,400.

The council passed the resolution with no opposition.