By Patricia A. Scheyer
NKyTribune reporter
The August meeting for the Kenton County Mayors Group was held at the city of Elsmere at the Community Center on Dell Street.
Elsmere Mayor Marty Lenhof welcomed the group and told everyone about the bridge on Garvey which recently was downgraded by the railroad and now cannot have heavy trucks on the bridge. Lenhof said they hope to fix or replace the bridge.
He also showed a picture of the new public works building they hope to build at 717 Bedinger Street in the old Grant’s Trailer Park. The new public works building should be approximately 24,000 square feet, and 6,000 square feet will be the office area, break room, conference room, locker rooms, and sleeping quarters to be used in inclement weather.
The city is looking for a Construction Manager at risk for the public works building. Earlier in the year the city built a salt barn on the same site, and it will hold 900 tons of salt, since the Kentucky Transportation District has told cities they will not sell them road salt anymore, so the cities have to come up with storage on their own or buy from the county.
As the meeting progressed, the topic of what to do to regulate ebikes and scooters in all the cities came up for discussion.
Ft. Mitchell Mayor Greg Pohlgeers told everyone that there will be a meeting on Monday evening where they will have a first reading on an ordinance that bans anything that goes over 28 MPH from the sidewalk, like class 3 ebikes and emotos.
“About a year and a half, two years ago we passed an ordinance about scooters, obviously now that is working into ebikes,” he said. “Manufacturers classify ebikes into class 1, 2 and 3. Class 3 is defined by the bikes being able to go 28 miles per hour. Class one and two go about 20 mph, max.”
He said emotos can go up to 60 mph, so he said they are basically motorcycles that are electric.
“This is a next step for us. If this doesn’t help curtail the issue we are seeing then we can bring additional restrictions.”
He said a council member from Fort Thomas said that there is no silver bullet for this issue. That city also had a first reading of an ordinance about scooters and ebikes.
The other issue, he said, is that the KRS from Frankfort defines ebikes as bicycles, so he said he didn’t want 14-year-olds on Dixie Highway riding bikes.
“I think it is better to take a scalpel approach rather than a sledge hammer approach,” he said. “Right now, we are just banning them from the sidewalks.”
Villa Hills Mayor Heather Jansen said that she thought it was a parenting issue, and Pohlgeers agreed.
He said he wrote an op-ed two years ago saying to parents that he wanted them to take care of the problem, and two years later it is still not taken care of.
He told a story that a kid on a bike recently rear ended a Tesla, but the parent got on line and claimed the Tesla brake checked him. Pohlgeers thought no, your child was following too close. He also said that Friday a child was hit while he was in the crosswalk for the expressway entrance, so some adult drivers may not be paying attention either. He didn’t know the condition of the child.
Crestview Hills Mayor Paul Meier told a story about a time when his son who was riding a bike and when the crosswalk signal permitted him to go, he rode the bike across, but he was supposed to walk the bike across the street, so he was at fault when a car hit him. That is because under a Kentucky KRS ebikes still fall under the category of bikes, and by law bicycles have to be walked across the street.
Mayor Jansen asked if Pohlgeers would send a copy of his legislation out to all the mayors.
Another topic of conversation was the recent storm that hit the area on Tuesday, and the resulting clean up efforts.
Each mayor documented their experiences and thanked Duke for their efforts to restore power as quickly as possible and to clear the downed trees.
A representative of Duke explained that there were 4400 distinct outages with a varying number of households and businesses in each outage. He said as of Saturday morning that number had reduced to 255. Still a lot of people without power, but they were working constantly.
Director of Emergency Management in Kenton County Steve Hensley said that he had a truckload of MRE meals brought up to this area, which he said are not steak dinners, but when the power goes out for a longer period of time, and the food in the refrigerator and freezer goes bad, MRE meals can be a good alternative.
People can call the county if they need MRE meals because they have some left.
Hensley also said they have contacted Frankfort to see if they could reload the SNAP benefits in advance, because if people bought food, put it in their refrigerators and then the power went out so that the food went bad, potentially people could go hungry. However. he said the governor would have to declare a disaster and that hasn’t happened, although Mayor Ron Washington declared an emergency for Covington, and Judge Executive Kris Knochelmann declared an emergency in the county.
The September meeting of the Mayors’ Group will be in Taylor Mill.