Rowan Review - July 2026
Summers in Rowan County always seem to move at racehorse’s pace. The past month has been nothing but busy for us, but that’s okay – because we prefer it that way. In a few short weeks, the university students will be returning to town, the children will be back in school, and we’ll be working our way into a beautiful fall together.
ON THE ROAD AGAIN
BLuestone Road.
Speaking of school and work, that means school buses are going to be out and about again, and the county paving work has only just begun. Base layer paving on Bluestone Road (in the area we remediated the road slip last fall) was completed this week, and we’ll be working with Hinkle Contracting LLC for the rest of the season.
We only bring it up because we ask that you take care and exercise caution on these roads. The school bus or our road crew could be right around the next corner on your commute, so please stay alert and aware - for their safety and your own.
That being said, these are SOME of the roads scheduled for blacktop this season, and these will likely be done first. Next month, we will present you with a list of the rest.
CR-1449 Hallwood Drive beginning from the intersection of CR-1346 Logan Hollow and extending 0.9 miles to Morehead city limits.
CR-1224 Bluestone Road beginning at county maintenance near Kroger Drive and extending 2.0 miles to the intersection of KY-3319 Skaggs Road.
CR-1045 Dry Branch Road beginning at the intersection of KY-377 Cranston Road and extending 1.040 miles due east.
CR-1312 Mellwood Lane beginning at the intersection of KY-377 Cranston Road and extending .5 miles to the road’s terminus.
CR-1413 Meadowlands Drive beginning at intersection of CR-1312 Mellwood Lane and extending .5 miles or the full length of the loop road returning to CR-1312 Mellwood Lane.
CR-1126 Trent Ridge Road beginning at the intersection of KY-32 Christy Creek Road and extending 2.7 miles to the end of CR-1126 at the junction of Laurel Road and J. Trent Cemetery Road.
CR-1012 Brineger Road beginning at intersection of KY-32 Christy Creek Road and extending 1.3 miles to the end of CR-1012 Brineger Road at the county line.
In addition, Rock Fork bridge has been let for construction, and you should expect to see us building a bypass on the road in the next couple weeks.
Finally, we congratulate Mr. Steve Kelsey, our County Road Foreman for the last 8 years, on his well-earned retirement at the end of August. Steve has worked many years with the county, and most of you know that – because we believe that most of you have his personal cell phone number. He has done an impeccable job for all of the citizens of Rowan County, served the public with dignity, respect and courtesy, and made the impossible happen for us over and over again. Not least of all, we will miss his good humor and friendship.
Steve, we wish you nothing but the best in your next chapter – you have earned it.
Rowan County EMS Director Homer Lewis
ROWAN COUNTY EMS DIRECTOR SELECTED
Mr. Homer Lewis has served as EMS Director for the past three years following the retirement of longtime Director Danny Blevins. What began as an interim assignment quickly turned into a lot more. Homer has done a really great job for us in the role, and has particularly helped us in the education side of the house.
About five years ago when it started to become difficult recruiting paramedics, the Fiscal Court decided that we were going to start growing our own. At first, we tried offering a scholarship to our EMT’s and sending them off to get trained. That worked well, but what has worked even better is training our people at our facility with our instructors. Homer has decided that his passion lies in educating the next generation of EMS professionals, and will continue to serve in that role for Rowan County, and as a paramedic on shift. We thank him for all he’s done and will do!
Mr. Levi Hanshaw will be taking over the role of EMS Director in September.
Levi is a returning EMS employee with nearly 20 years’ experience across his career. He has spent the last several years working at the Kentucky Board of Emergency Medical Services in Frankfort and will make a great addition to the administrative team at Rowan County EMS.
TECHNOLOGY IMPLEMENTATIONS GALORE
This big world keeps changing just a little bit faster each and every day, and so your county is doing our very best to keep up with the pace. It isn’t work that you can very easily see, but it’s not any less important for you to know about. There is a whole lot going on behind the scenes to hold the technology side of things up, and our job is to make sure that it works in a sensible and productive way.
Some exciting custom software developments we’ve been working on with our partners are now in beta-testing, those being Building Permit Applications and Online Occupational Tax Collection. Rowan County now has the capability to take those forms and payments directly online for your convenience; however, we’re still going to allow you to pay and report in the way you were used to via check and mail. The programs are now in use on a limited basis, but we will spend the summer fleshing out the programs and bug fixing.
If you’ve read last month, you might’ve seen our new Rowan Alert system, and if you signed up, you may have even received some alerts on roads and weather. We still need you to sign up on our website, because we’re not out of the woods yet on storms by any means, and we plan to use this to better notify you this summer of road closures and delays as well. Future updates to this program will allow you to receive other types of alerts.
You can only receive alerts if you sign up, so please go to our website and sign up for Rowan Alert.
Speaking of roads, we have fully implemented our new work order tracking system at the Road Department, and we’re finding it to be a great tool to track and report projects, needed repairs, assign priorities, and just generally make the maintenance of 320 miles of county road projects (over 700 named county roads) a lot easier to track anyway. As always, please call Morgan at the Road Department with any issues to report, or use our online form!
FUN IN THE SUN
The Triplett Creek kayak launch.
This week, one of our road crews has been hard at work installing a kayak launch into Triplett Creek off US-60. This project has been a collaborative effort between Tourism, the Road Department, and Tripp Holbrook. We’re looking forward to its completion next month, and future kayak launches to come across our county’s waterways. Joy and her team at Tourism have worked with the county and engineers for several years now to find good spots across the community for us to improve stream access and enjoyment for everyone, and so this what you could call the first phase of that greater water-recreation plan.
In addition, an update on where we stand with the county’s new amphitheater. In July Fiscal Court, an authorizing resolution to apply for state match dollars for the ARC grant was passed and that application will soon be submitted for review. In the meantime, we’ve had additional site survey work done as we prepare to wade deeper the design process. We are very confident that this is going to be something you can be proud of when we’re finished.
Nearby there at the park, we wanted to remind people that the playground is indeed open, even though we’ve got fencing around part of it. We’ve laid sod on the disturbed ground turned up when we redid the playground surface, and so the construction fence is just to keep people off the grass while it’s busy taking root.
We’re going to be building a second pavilion between the playground and basketball court, and that construction will likely begin sometime this fall. That will provide a lot of shade for parents and grandparents making visits with the kids, and we think it will look really nice as well.
That’s all for now!