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The Harlan City Council met for the last regular meeting of 2024 recently, addressing matters of city business including sidewalk upgrades possibly taking place over the summer.

City of Harlan Mayor Joe Meadors brought the panel up to speed on a couple of sidewalk projects the city hopes to begin soon.

“We have submitted the sidewalk project for May Street and the sidewalk project on Williams Street on the hill going down,” Meadors said. “We’re hoping to get that project ready for bid by early spring. Maybe we can do that this summer.”

Meadors explained that the sidewalk projects are long overdue.

“The sidewalks there now are the sidewalks that were there when the 1977 flood hit,” Meadors said. “How long they were there prior to 1977, I don’t know. But that’s 47 years since the flood hit and they’re still the same sidewalks. That’s a bad situation.”

Meadors noted grant funding may be used to fund the project.

“We got that grant funding back in early 2022, we’ve been sitting on it until we could get all these other things done,” Meadors said. “We anticipate going to bid on that in probably April or May, so we should be in good shape.”

Meadors mentioned conversations are picking back up concerning a possible hotel project in downtown Harlan.

“I talked to Michael Scott,” Meadors said. “He told me they are going to be back in on the new hotel project in the next two or three weeks. I guess it’s just a furtherance of the discussion of where the money is going to come from, how many different pots their going to have to go in to try to do that.”

Meadors addressed a question he has been asked by local residents regarding parking on city streets.

“I’ve had several people just ask me why the city doesn’t enact an ordinance prohibiting business owners and business employees from parking on the streets in front of their businesses,” Meadors said.

Meadors pointed out there are other parking options available.

“It makes it difficult for people who want to do business with some of our merchants when all of the owners of the business and the employees are parked in front of the stores. You’re not leaving your customers any place to park.”

Meadors added he was unsure if an ordinance could be passed.

“I don’t know if it would be legal to tell anybody they couldn’t park on the street, because it is public parking,” Meadors said.

Meadors asked Harlan City Attorney Karen Davenport about the legality of such an ordinance. Davenport indicated such an ordinance would not be advisable.

Meadors also updated the council on a sewer line project.

“We did sign the contract last week for the sewer line,” Meadors said. “Rural Development came in and we didn’t have to go to them, they came to Harlan. Rural Development’s engineer came to Harlan, he’s from Pikeville…Akins Contracting got the bid, they’ve got a start date of Jan. 1, and they’ve got 180 days to complete the project, which means he has to be finished by July 1.”

Meadors said the contractor’s only concern is the need to go under a railroad in the Baxter community.

“He’ll have to coordinate his efforts with whenever the railroad says they are ready to do it,” Meadors said. “That would be the only hang up, but he says he’s got plenty of time and there should be no issue getting finished by the finalization date.”