We're focused on attracting new industry to this area.

We want to sell the quality of life, the low cost of living, the things that would attract the workforce.

Paducah is looking for new ways to grow.

I've been in the madness for 30 some years.

I've been on drugs, started when I was about nine years old, smoking weed.

But today, Anthony is sober and thriving.

We'll tell you how he got clean after decades of addiction.

And imagine driving home at 2 a.m. on a Kentucky night and seeing this production of Kentucky edition is made possible in part by the KET Endowment for Kentucky Productions, the Leonard Press, Endowment for Public Affairs and the KET Millennium Fund.

Good evening and welcome to Kentucky Edition for this Thursday, August 3rd.

I'm Renee Shaw, coming to you on the road and Paducah and Western Kentucky just two days before the fancy farm picnic in Graves County, about 25 miles south of here.

Thank you so much for joining us tonight.

Our team has been on the ground here for a couple of days now, and we're really enjoying exploring this gem of a city.

Yesterday, I had the chance to meet with some locals and to get a tour of the downtown area.

And there are lots of beautiful historical buildings, a thriving art scene, and a really neat atmosphere here in Paducah.

Coming up, you'll have my conversation with the president of West Kentucky Community and Technical College, Dr. Anton Reese.

And we'll also take a look at a number of economic development projects that are underway right here in Paducah.

But first to the news.

Former President Donald Trump pleaded not guilty to new federal charges related to January 6th.

A grand jury accuses Trump of defrauding the United States, obstructing an official government proceeding, specifically the certification of the Electoral College vote and depriving people of a civil right, the right to have their votes counted.

U.S.

Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky offered his thoughts on the Fox News Channel Tuesday night.

Senator Paul says the former president is being persecuted for, quote, an opinion.

You know, I don't know how you can indict someone for claiming that was fraud in the election.

Many on the left say, oh, well, there is no fraud because the court said so.

Well, most of the courts didn't say that, as most of the court said they wouldn't hear the election question To try to put Donald Trump in jail for this, I think is absurd.

The indictment specifically acknowledges Trump's right to state his opinion that the election was stolen.

It says he broke the law because of his actions as a result of that opinion.

Four Kentucky counties are in the news for investments.

Site Selection magazine recently put together a list of the top 20 counties across America for spending on business projects per capita.

Kentucky had four of the top 20.

This was from January of 2022 to March of this year.

The governor talked about the four counties in his news conference yesterday.

Number five was Todd County with three projects, novellas being the largest, more than $400 million of investment during that period.

Just in Todd County.

Number seven was Union County, which had three projects.

A little more than $27 million invested.

Number 14 was Shelby County.

Ten projects, over $500 million.

New investment.

And what those 1514 months in Shelby County, the number 17 was Simpson County with four projects totaling over $370 million.

This is great news.

The governor says everyone deserves credit for these four counties being in the top 20.

Now on to weather rain and recent weeks has helped Kentucky's drought picture.

This is a map of Kentucky from the U.S. drought monitor from July 18th.

Yellow is abnormally dry.

Light orange is moderate, drought, darker orange is severe drought.

You see some of that in western Kentucky.

Now, let's switch to the new map just released.

It shows much of the drought disappearing.

There's a tiny bit in western Kentucky, southeastern Kentucky, and the very tip of northern Kentucky.

The state will be able to gather more drought and weather related data with the help of a new maisonette station on Wednesday, Kentucky medicine that unveiled its latest weather and climate monitoring site located at the University of Kentucky North Farm in Lexington.

We have 79 stations deployed in 74 counties across Kentucky.

And of course, the goal is eventually to deploy one Kentucky resident station in each of the 120 counties that we have across the Commonwealth in these stations now provide data in real time and are archived as the official climate record of Kentucky.

Each station measures air temperature, relative humidity, wind speed and direction, atmospheric pressure, solar radiation and thermal temperature and moisture at five levels.

The data is used by farmers across the state, helping to optimize planting, fertilizing irrigation, pest control and harvesting schedules.

That's critical information for those in the agricultural community as far as what to plant when planted, especially at the beginning of the growing season in spring.

And then to gauge how those trends are developing as we go through the rest of summer and even into the early part of fall before the end of the growing season here in Kentucky.

In addition to emergency management and agriculture here, Kentucky resident data are used for aviation ground and rail transportation, recreation, tourism, public health, energy, education and commerce.

Having this massive debt say so close to the interstate is key because you can look at the site online and through our app, The Kentucky Maisonette Dawg, and see how temperatures are behaving or fluctuating.

And that helps those in the transportation cabinet make pertinent decisions.

As far as how road conditions are behaving in certain events during the course of the year.

We collect something on the order of 150 million observations so that data is made available to the in real time to the National Weather Service and and the Weather Service interests that data into all their operational models, thereby providing much improved weather prediction over all of Kentucky where every station that we aired those forecasts become more accurate and more critically important to everything that we do.

In December 2021, during the catastrophic tornado outbreak that affected western and central parts of Kentucky, we saw one wind speed record occur at our site in Gray's County, just southwest of Mayfield.

That wind was clocked at 107 miles an hour when that massive EF four tornado missed the site by only roughly 1500 feet.

That record was down to just about an hour later as the same tornado ripped through our sky right over our station in Caldwell County near Princeton.

And as it did so, it produced a three second wind average of 120 miles an hour.

That is the record for not only Kentucky measured at, but also the all time wind record for the state and from that information, combined with what they were seeing on radar that night with a hook echo associated with that tornadic supercell thunderstorm, the National Weather Service in Paducah was able to issue tornado emergencies farther to the east in an effort to get the word out and save more lives.

It's all about hazard mitigation.

And nearly every station is solar powered and communicates via cellular, so they're completely autonomous.

If this got knocked off the grid, it would continue to collect data for a month without communication or anything.

So each station collects the data.

It's process disseminated to users and near or near real time every 5 minutes, 24 hours, every day of the year.

The operations center for the Kentucky Men's and that system is housed at Western Kentucky University, the university said for WQ, students will be working on projects connected to the maisonette site this summer.

Q You recently hosted a forum on the Public Health Crisis of Addiction.

It included stories from recovery advocates, survivors and providers.

And tonight we share one of them with you.

There are support and resources available in Kentucky for those already who are ready to find sobriety.

Our Laura Rogers shares more on a treatment center that works to set up clients for lifelong success.

Alison, After I hear Anthony Bennett as maintenance crew leader Amy Branum as the receptionist at the Shelly Center location of Isaiah House in Harrodsburg.

But they're not just hard working staff.

I voted over 20 times.

Things weren't going very well at all, and I had two children that needed their mom.

They are success stories of addiction recovery.

I come from a dysfunctional family.

I come from a lot of abuse.

And it started my lifestyle of living in drugs and everything.

I was raised in church my whole life and was raised to be a good girl and did all the right things.

But life led me down a crooked path.

Their addiction origin stories are different, but their recovery is similar as it began with residential treatment.

Here at Isaiah House, you've got to be sick and tired of sick and tired for a woman.

And I was going to die.

I was going to die because it was either take a next drink or I wasn't going to live anymore.

Isaiah House is a nonprofit, faith based addiction treatment center with soon to be eight campuses in Kentucky.

It's very individualized for that particular client, based on use history, based on treatment history.

There's a lot of things that go into kind of that decision on what that client needs.

It is a phased treatment program that provides both short term and long term care.

Typical day in treatment will consist of clinical groups, individuals with your therapist, peer support, and peer support as a really unique and great service where you're talking to people who have been in sobriety.

They've had the certification, now they've been where that person is like Bennett and Branham, many of the nearly 500 employees have been through the program.

You've got people you can reach out to here who never give up on you.

They always answer the phone.

They give you the tools, all the tools that you need to be a productive citizen in society.

When I was a client, just watching the staff there and hearing their stories about how they survived and how they come out on the other end of that, it gave me hope.

It was inspiring.

I really, truly wish to be that for somebody else.

Many of our managers, directors, we even have executive staff who were once clients at Isaiah House.

So they are wonderful role models for new people coming in.

Kraut says the center aims to offer a, quote, mind, body and soul approach to recovery, and they partner with Kentucky high schools, colleges and universities to help clients further their education.

At present, going into the fall, we have over 100 of our clients who are going to be getting degrees or certifications.

Isaiah House also works to break the cycle of addiction by addressing the root cause the disease of addiction as a cycle.

And we have to figure out what keeps someone in that cycle of addiction.

And a lot of times it is because they have co-occurring mental health disorders, whether that be past trauma, depression, anxiety.

McGee says it is often a stigma that keeps people from seeking treatment.

But she hopes as that is addressed, more people will get the help they need to turn their lives around.

The great thing about it is, is that we have a lot of great services in the state of Kentucky, not just as a house, but other services too, who provided that to help us fight this epidemic.

Recovery is a lifelong endeavor, and so you must continue early, evaluate what you're doing.

You must have someone who's going to hold you accountable, and you've got to constantly work to improve yourself.

The will happen and will happen and just stay strong.

Don't give up.

Do it for yourself before you can do it, or making anyone else happy.

Do it for yourself.

For Kentucky Edition, I'm Laura Rogers.

Thank you, Laura.

You can watch our panel discussion.

Disrupting Addiction to Form online on demand at KCET dot org.

We continue our program of Kentucky edition on the road.

This time here in western Kentucky, we've shared with you about the arts and creative community here.

And we've also discussed some of the things that make this part of the state unique.

Tonight, we're focusing on education.

Yesterday, I sat down with the president of Western Kentucky Community and Technical College, Dr. Anton Reese, about how they're meeting the needs of the business and workforce community and earning top recognition at the same time.

Dr. Reese, thank you for allowing us to come into your office and spend some time with you.

It's a privilege to having you here, Renee.

Thank you so much for this opportunity to welcome you and host you here at West Kentucky Community College.

W.K., CDC, It sounds like call letters, doesn't it?

It is.

And I should say that resonates with you because you have a background in what we do.

Yes, indeed.

My I'm a two career guy.

My first career was in broadcasting news starting of the Caribbean nation of our business.

And then Eastern Kentucky University colonels and then before coming to higher education.

And certainly in this role as president here at CDC.

Yeah.

How have you seen the growth expand since during your tenure here?

So October 1st will be seven years at the helm.

I would tell you, Renee, that one of two things that brought me back, given opportunity to be president, was I always felt that for the western region, the western portion of the state, that we didn't do as great a job, a really creating synergy around growth, particularly population.

So on the outer periphery, several of the counties have been losing population.

So the city and the county, McCracken and Paducah, have had some growth, but in terms of a region as a whole.

So I always felt there were some opportunities for growth there.

And then certainly, I believe very powerfully in the equity that we really have all hands on deck to really maximize workforce and hence grow the region.

So as I look back, having been here prior and then returning certainly to see pockets of growth, but then there's tremendous opportunities for more growth.

Yeah.

Talk to us about the student population.

How many students are they?

Mostly from this area.

Where are they from?

So as I would say, in normal years and this all goes back to COVID.

We serve about 8500 students a year.

I was very intentional and want to return that.

I wanted a regional expansion to include Tennessee, Missouri, Illinois.

So the growth of the college and the concentration of our resources being really intentional is spreading really throughout 1820 county region.

So that is a real healthy and important growth for us.

Certainly COVID has played an impact, but we continue to climb and it is a balancing act.

You know, with the economy really encouraging individuals to seize the opportunities through education.

But there has been some growth specifically, but clearly opportunities for more growth.

And we need to really boost our workforce readiness and to grow the population to be competitive throughout this entire region.

The types of programs that you offer.

So we do as part of the 16 college system, KC, DCS.

So we do offer the Social Science and Arts Associates and Science Applied Science Certificate diplomas to about 33 different aisle type programs.

Very heavy emphasis on the Janet Track one direction for students going on to great schools like SMU and Murray and UK, Western, etc.. And then certainly the technical high wage, high demands, which is a gigantic part of our focus as it pertains to workforce.

So everything you know, from electrical age, vac syndrome, I mean, we just the whole plethora of hot demand needs, right?

You know, we get calls for welding and, you know, we just try to stand ready for the various programs that we have and anchor nursing and health amongst those programs as well.

So we do a pretty comprehensive array of programs and opportunities for individuals to, you know, the sky's the limit.

What do you see as the emerging need and workforce?

The two part emerging need, right, is like the chicken egg analogy, but we got to certainly have more individuals.

I like to term all hands on deck, certified, qualified, ready to go to be competitive to these like selectors and bring in more.

You know we really you know everyone wants the big one right to tie orders etc.

I would even take a combination of some good small medium ones.

But, but, but we need to get more individuals in that pipeline to stand ready.

I think that the geography, the West, the beauty, the resources here in Paducah, it really in many ways is one of our state's best kept secrets.

You know, with a real robust we got our triple rail site.

We got a robust rover industry, you know, brand new Berkeley Airport.

You know, So we are positioned really to really do extraordinary things, serving not only western Kentucky, but the entire region, Illinois, Missouri, Tennessee, and certainly in that gateway to Saint Louis.

Right.

So cargo, they've got to come to a 24.

And as a unique skill, creative city, you know, we are known for the arts, right?

So I think the combination of those things say that we like music, seeing that we punch above our weight.

And I think in this case it really is through.

Without fail, people who come to the city are surprised with the scope of offerings and the range of opportunities that we have here in Paducah.

Are you ever concerned about the public perception or the public relations idea about what community and technical colleges do, who they serve?

Is there a stigma still associated and how is that being addressed?

Yeah, you know, those are one of those things that stay constantly on my mind.

Right.

And is really, quite frankly, ways of continuous education, empowering, crafting the narrative.

You know, what I feel over the years and people mean well they would say things like, Well, students don't really need to come to AC DC, you know, they don't need to go to college.

Well, we are a college, one or two.

They would pretty much say, I just want people doing hands on work.

And I would I would say, Well, why is that curious?

And I'll say, Well, you know, I'm from a small rural area coming off the farm, and I go, I think we may be confusing what we are surrounded by versus who responded with.

I want the sky to be the lower limit, right?

So the dual pathways, whether it's technical or transfer, we are fully equipped and ready to do.

And that benefit certainly again, or a marketability and workforce sort of efforts.

So it's continuous education.

There's always a value question about the costs, etc..

I mean, we've got clear data to show that the costs 186 bucks of credit, you know, 50% than it would last in terms of tuition going to a four year basically anywhere.

So this is a strong case, but it is continuous improvement in education and quite frankly, some misperceptions about technical community colleges being lesser than or one dimensional.

We are multidimensional and certainly we produce quality here at this top ranked in the nation college.

Well, congratulations and continued success.

Thanks so much.

Thank you.

Yeah, Thank you.

The largest city in the far western portion of Kentucky is in transition.

It's looking to grow its economy and take advantage of its natural resources.

Paducah is known for its artistic downtown, but the community has a number of economic development projects in the works that could change the town.

The town of more than 27,000, our Kacey Parker Belle has come to Paducah to learn about the changes just on the horizon.

So we've got a great opportunity.

Our location is perhaps one of the best in the nation.

The hub for most of the far portion of western Kentucky.

Paducah is starting to make some changes.

The small community is installing a massive sports complex will soon be a stop for America's biggest cruise line and hopes to lead in New energy production.

We're focused on attracting new industry to this area.

We want to sell the quality of life the low cost of living, the things that would attract the workforce, the things that would attract attract new industry.

Paducah Mayor George Bray says his focus is on creating jobs.

The proposed outdoor sports complex will sit on more than 100 acres and will have baseball, softball and soccer fields.

Mayor Bray says the shift to travel sports has created an economic opportunity for Paducah.

There's just any number of things that that kids travel for, and this sports complex is targeted to take advantage of those travel teams.

It's going to give our local people a really nice place to recreate and play.

Another one is the economic driving aspect of it is going to bring.

This Travel mall generates millions of dollars in revenues for communities such as such as ours.

McCracken County Judge executive Craig Clymer says the facility would be the only one of its kind.

In a two hour radius.

When you have people coming in for, say, a weekend for a tournament, they're going to bring all that money and they're going to spend all that and leave that here, promote our local businesses, sustain those things, and then they go home.

Paducah is also working to redevelop the area.

It's most well known for the riverfront.

The area is getting a facelift, and the mayor says it will help the downtown attract new visitors and businesses, much like the new cruise line stops planned for 2024.

Viking Cruise Lines, which is the number one cruise line in the world, and who is developing their Ohio and Mississippi River business here in the United States has announced three stops in Paducah.

They're making a special.

They're going from New Orleans, Memphis, up to Cairo, and then coming back down on the Ohio just to come to Paducah.

But the opportunities don't stop at the downtown area.

The Paducah Chamber of Commerce is receiving a $2 million grant from the federal government to study possible uses for the site of the former Paducah gaseous diffusion plant.

And nuclear's the future for not just a community, but for the nation.

We're playing the long game here.

I mean, we still have many years of cleanup left to do out there yet.

If we want to do it correctly, we need to begin the focus now.

Paducah is looking forward into the future, one that hopefully spells economic success.

That's a huge opportunity for this, for this community.

And when you look at the build grant, which is really the funds that we have to develop our riverfront, once that's all completed with the new hotel, the new boutique hotel, we will have an unbelievable, even more unbelievable downtown than we have now.

For Kentucky Edition, I'm K.C.

Parker, Belle.

Mayor Bray says Paducah is also working with a new company to help recruit people to the city.

The company is helping develop a website that will give leads to people interested in moving to new communities.

Once Paducah knows someone is interested, they'll receive a call from a city official that will outline incentives for new residents and extend a welcome for those interested.

The person calling you may even be the mayor.

Across the Kentucky sky, we have a unique perspective on it.

One of our directors, Chris Brookfield, happened to be driving in the area at the time.

They keep watching the top of your screen near the center as the meteor becomes visible.

This was around 2 a.m. Wednesday morning, Christmas in Esko County at the time.

There have been no reports of damage and none to him, thank goodness.

Meteors usually break up in the atmosphere.

We won't question how he was driving and getting that shot, by the way.

It's been a while since we brought you an update on Fritz, the hippo of the Cincinnati Zoo.

Fritz turned a year old today.

He didn't have cake, though.

Instead, zoo workers gave Fritz and his family watermelon.

Appropriate because it's World Watermelon Day.

It seemed to be a hit with the entire family.

As we move closer to a fancy farm, how much do you really know about this iconic Western Kentucky event?

When did it start?

Was it always political?

Who are some of the famous political figures to grace the stage?

Well, tomorrow we'll take a look at the history of Fancy Farm as we get you set for Saturday.

And we hope you'll join us tomorrow night, Friday at 630 Eastern, 530 Central for Kentucky Edition, where we inform, Connect and Inspire.

Subscribe to our email newsletter and watch full episodes and clips at Ket dot org You can find us on the PBS video app on your mobile device and smart TV and follow us all the way as you see on your screen.

Facebook X formerly known as Twitter and Instagram to stay in the loop.

I'm Renee Shore from downtown Paducah and I will see you tomorrow night at Fancy Farm.

Take good care.