Hopkinsville Mayor-elect Carter Hendricks’ plan for the city addresses one large issue for the area: job creation.
Hendricks won election in November. He takes over for retiring mayor Dan Kemp next month.
Hendricks says both working with public schools to develop a stronger future workforce and recruiting industry for those workers are important steps in job creation.
“We’re going to continue to address our workforce development opportunities ensuring that we have students graduating from high school and college that are ready to enter the workforce,” he said. “We’re going to continue to partner with our public schools and work to improve our graduation rates, our ATC scores and out standardized test scores. Good news is we’ve seen some great improvements in those areas in the past few years and we’re going to continue those improvements.”
But Hendricks says the community has other ways too that it can improve and welcome potential employers.
“We’ve got to make sure we’re doing the fundamentals correctly,” he said. “That we have a competitive tax rate. That we have a growing population base. That we have successful regulatory environments for people to be able to navigate and easily understand how to get their businesses going.”
Finding a permanent police chief is also on Hendricks’ agenda. The police department has already asked for internal applicants for the permanent position.
“So that will certainly be a continued priority, looking at how we handle public safety, ensuring that we are reaching out through successful community policing models, have strong relationships throughout our community and region,” Hendricks said.
Former police chief Guy Howie retired this summer and Clayton Sumner has served as interim since then.
