Park Hills City Council officially approves a real estate purchase agreement for site of new city hall

By Patricia A. Scheyer
NKyTribune reporter

Park Hills city council officially approved a Municipal Order which authorized Mayor Kathy Zembrodt to sign a real estate purchase agreement at the regular council meeting Monday night. The contract is with Global Technologies Transfer, LLC.

The city is not releasing any more details because the deal is not finalized until it has been signed and they close on the property.

At the meeting, discussion was brief, but Councilman Joe Daugherty picked out the price of $300,000 stated in the agreement and said he thought it should be ‘no more than $300,000’, but after some discussion, council decided to leave the Municipal Order and approve it as it was written.

With this agreement, Park Hills is likely to realize an achievement that has been a goal of the city for years.

“This is a big accomplishment in my wish list,” said Mayor Zembrodt. “A city building with more space has been promised for at least 10 years.”

In the past, while on council, and even before she became mayor, Zembrodt has always kept an eye on properties on Dixie Highway in Park Hills, hoping that something would open up that would solve the space problems the city faces with their building, that was built in 1937, with updates in 1954 and 1979. They do have a council room that can technically hold 30 people, but the staircase to access the council room is very steep, and the building is not ADA accessible.

Zembrodt told how, in a former job, she would knock on doors and ask owners if they were interested in selling their property. Years of knocking and asking has apparently paid off.

At their caucus meeting in January, Park Hills Council discussed a property on Dixie Highway, that Zembrodt thought might be for sale.

“Somebody contacted me, after four years, that they would be interested in selling,” Zembrodt said at that meeting. “So I wanted to bring it to council to talk about it. We wanted to get the ball rolling.”

The city has been renting halls to use for their meetings, which are held every month, for 12 years, and some months they also have a caucus meeting. Zembrodt said at the meeting that council has been in a better position to deal with the lack of space because they can meet in rented spaces, but for the police department, the space crunch is becoming more serious.

At the March meeting, Zembrodt ran through the list of needs that the police department came up with.

“The current space is 400 square feet, and it’s on the second floor, which is very limiting to growth,” she said during the meeting. “What they do need is lockers, space, desks for the officers, weapons and equipment storage, meeting room, interview and interrogation room, training, records room, Individual office space for the chief and investigator, shower would be great, I know that’s a big need, and just to get up to ADA and State Accreditation specs.”

Police Chief Cody Stanley agreed that he has been putting up with lack of space for 11 years for records and evidence, as well as for his officers.

“There is no handicapped access whatsoever,” he said. “And there are times when privacy demands are == well, so we can respect privacy. We have no place we can go to facilitate this.”

He brought up that if they have a felony, they have to find somewhere else to go to interrogate the suspect.

Zembrodt looked into how much it would cost to try and give the police department the 1250 square feet they need in the current building, and some estimates were about $40,000.

“This was only meant to be temporary, and it has been 11 years,” said Stanley. He told council he appreciates what they have done for his department, with cruisers, and bodycams. “We were one of the first departments with bodycams.”

Council agreed that they had to do something to fix the situation, and their vote on the purchase agreement was unanimous.

Mayor Zembrodt said they should close on the property on or before May 15.