Hopkinsville City Council got an update on the L&N Train Depot and heard the annual report from Hopkinsville Electric System at Tuesday’s meeting.
City Administrator Troy Body says gathering of information is currently underway and city officials are making sure to do their due diligence before bringing a more thorough report back to council—he expects a press release to go out to the public before too long. He says he agrees that the building has been neglected in recent years, but the cost to repair it could top $2 million, so council will have to make some choices.
They intend to have a structural engineer inspect the building, to determine what could be done from that point.
Hopkinsville Electric System General Manager Jeff Hurd says 2022 was a challenging year, starting with a tornado and ending with a historic winter system that brought record frigid temperatures to the area that resulted in TVA issued rolling black outs. He says that was due to record demand, peak usage and other unforeseen factors, and he suspects TVA will work to make sure that doesn’t happen in the future.
He says they continue to work on replacing the defective purple street lights—they’ve gotten roughly 1,000 done, leaving about 600 left to go.
HES also received a ‘clean’ opinion on their annual audit and Hurd says they’ve managed to maintain some of the lowest rates in the region, with roughly 73 cents of each dollar they collect going to pay the TVA for the electricity.