The population of Bowling Green and Warren County is growing rapidly.

South central Kentucky is benefiting from the growth of Nashville, and as the cost of living there is rising.

Many are finding Bowling Green an optimal place to live, work and raise a family.

Warren County Judge executive John Gorman says while growth is good, it needs to be managed to minimize the growing pains.

We picked up his conversation with our Rene Shaw, with his thoughts on what that looks like.

There's a uniqueness in any community, and people are proud of certain things and you want to have that, but maybe just bigger.

What you don't want to do is come back 25 years from now and not recognize the community you grew up in.

And so we want to highlight the great things and have more of that, and then maybe do things to mitigate some of the things we don't want.

How do we preserve and continue to have a great agriculture component?

How do we have a great business component?

How do we have great schools?

All of those things that takes effort.

So luckily we have a lot of people involved and I'm very excited about that.

When I was just going to get to that point, judge about the collaboration that you have with the city that you have with the school system, right, that this is not something that even though is great and mighty as you are, that you are taking pride in the collaborative spirit of this kind of project.

Yes.

One, one, a word that I like to use is oneness.

And what sets us apart, I truly believe from not only the rest of the country, but a lot of places in Kentucky, unfortunately, is our oneness.

And that is the county, the city, our health care, our schools, our universities all making the same decisions and trying to do what's in the best service of the entire community.

As you look ahead and fast forward 25 years from now, you still have some challenges.

Now, though, what are the main challenges or opportunities that you're trying to tap into?

Well, I'd like to say I'll give you a quote that Billie Jean King said.

She said back in the 70s that pressure is privilege.

And we have a lot of privilege around here because we have a lot of pressure infrastructure.

How do you can't have that many more people without widening roads, adding new roads?

Day care?

A crisis in America.

And then on top of that, we have, let's face it, like a lot of communities, we have a rural urban.

So we have a lot of growth there.

Something people don't ever talk about is the key, I think, to growth.

But the right type of growth is sewer.

Oh, because with sewer you can get density.

If you don't have sewer, then you have to go with septic systems and you take up an awful lot of farmland and and we can't afford to do that.

We have great agriculture, a great farming community.

And we have to have we have to have density in the county so that we don't waste those valuable land on one acre or two acre, five acre lots.

You can have that in some places, but that so we invest heavily in the infrastructure so that we can have that type of growth as well.

Housing I mean, the last topic that will broach, but I mean, all you got to do is say housing and people shake their heads like, yeah, it's a big issue.

Yeah, it's a giant issue.

I like that some people say affordable.

I like to say attainable and I think attainable housing.

I think, single family home residential is the bedrock and backbone of America.

Every person should have the opportunity to own a piece of America.

And so we want to do everything we can to encourage home ownership so that they can generationally change their family.

So we we try to do everything we can for that.

And as you know, that there's a housing crisis all over.

We're 15,000 units short right now of what we need to have, in Warren County.

So we have a boom going on.

We're trying to do that.

But you also want to be able to find out where attainable.

So more and more people and their families can own a piece of America.

And so we we do everything in the background of that, whether it's infrastructure, roads, the things that we can do to affect that.

Because I think that's a positive thing for a community.

When you have home ownership, you have to have all types, you have to have multifamily, you have to have senior living.

All of those are in the mix.

But I can promise you, the more people you have that own a home, the better type of community you're going to have.

Yeah.

Well thank you, judge, it's been a pleasure to sit down with you for a few.

Thank you very much.

And success.