2018 General Election by Precinct

Official results are on hold as the county election board counts hundreds of write-in votes.

However, unofficial totals show that Adair County will have a new county judge executive, PVA and sheriff and Columbia will have a new mayor.

Gale Cowan beat incumbent Michael Lee Stephens by a strong lead of 600 plus votes for county judge executive. Josh Brockman will be the new sheriff, beating incumbent Harrison Moss by around 1800 votes.

Landon Edwards earned the job of PVA by defeating Scotty Neat by more than 1300 votes.

The mayor’s race concluded with Pam Hoots winning by 55 over incumbent Curtis Hardwick.

City council members will be Sharon Payne, Mark Harris, Craig Dean, Doc Ronald Rogers, Linda Waggener and June Parson. Payne was the top vote getter.

Numbers will be posted as soon as they become available.

Top city council vote getter Sharon Payne and incoming mayor Pam Hoots talk wtih officer Charles Greer.

A major hurdle to providing natural gas in much of the county was cleared this week because of an Attorney General’s opinion.

The Columbia Adair Utility District and County Judge Executive Michael Lee Stephens have been working for months to find a way for the county to provide natural gas to residents not being served by the city’s natural gas lines. The city is not interested in expanding its operations throughout the county but regulations limit CAUD from adding a separate gas department.

Since July, CAUD director Lenny Stone and Judge Stephens have asked how a gas program could be legally implemented. On Monday, they got their answer. Attorney General Andy Beshear’s office wrote in a legal opinion that it is unable to find any authority preventing the county from establishing a corporation to sell natural gas. Stephens said the corporation would be a legal entity separate from the current CAUD and would be operated by a separate board. He said the next step would be to determine what is necessary to establish a legal corporation.

Stone and the district have been working on the project for some time and the district surveyed water customers to determine the level of interest in providing natural gas to various parts of the county. Poultry houses, which have become a large revenue source for farmers in the county, tend to be major users of natural gas when it is available.

The Attorney General opinion states that the county must comply with applicable statutes regarding acquiring debt and related to starting a corporation.
More details will be provided in Thursday’s edition of the Community Voice.

By Sharon Burton
snburton@adairvoice.com

Gas prices in West Central Kentucky are down by four cents this week to $2.513 per gallon, according to AAA East Central’s Gas Price Report.

Motorists in seven Great Lakes and Central states are seeing some of the country’s largest month-over-month decreases when filling-up at the pump, including Kentucky (-28 cents). The cheaper pump prices come as regional refinery maintenance season begins to wrap-up, and are in-line with the national trend.

Gasoline inventory plummeted by 2.5 million barrels this week, bringing stocks to the lowest level of the year at 47 million barrels according to Energy Information Administration (EIA) data. Typically, a large draw and low supply levels would push prices higher. However, the region saw lots of volatility in gas prices throughout the summer and early fall, which is continuing.

This week’s average prices: Western Central KY Average $2.513
Average price during the week of October 29, 2018 $2.555
Average price during the week of November 6, 2017 $2.407

Average prices of unleaded self-serve gasoline in various areas:

$2.461 Bowling Green
$2.405 Elizabethtown
$2.740 Louisville
$2.452 Owensboro
$2.508 Paducah

On the National Front
At $2.76, the national gas price average is at its cheapest in six months. On the week, motorists in every state except Hawaii are paying as much as a nickel less to fill-up. Today’s national average is six cents less than a week ago,15-cents less than a month ago – but still 24-cents more than a year ago.

This price drop is happening at a time that analysts previously thought prices would likely increases, as the White House’s re-imposes sanctions on Iran – some of which will target the country’s energy sector and impedes its ability to export oil. However, in May when the decision was announced (to take effect in November), the market reacted quickly with crude oil prices spiking as high as $77/barrel during the summer. At the same time, Iran’s exports began to dip.

With the market anticipating and reacting to the pending Iran sanctions throughout the summer, motorists may have seen the worst in terms of retail prices for the year. If the crude oil market remains steady, gas prices are likely to continue to fall in the near-term, though any unforeseen factors could disrupt this trend and cause an upward shift in crude oil prices.

Oil prices moved lower last week as total domestic crude inventories grew by 3.2 million barrels, according to the EIA’s latest weekly petroleum status report. Stocks now sit at 426 million barrels, which is 28.9 million fewer than this time last year, but the highest level since mid-June. Six consecutive weeks of steady growth in crude inventories has helped to check excessive increases in crude prices.

Motorists can find current gas prices nationwide, statewide, and countywide at GasPrices.AAA.com.