Business View Civil & Municipal - May 2023

65 CIVIL AND MUNICIPAL VOLUME 4, ISSUE 5 industry, Jim Beam, Makers Mark, and Four Roses, all within 20 minutes of Shepherdsville and all supportive of ongoing fundraising efforts in the city. Republic Services, who provide trash removal also recently reached out to discuss ways to invest in the community. Youth sports and other family activities such as bowling and a movie theater are priorities going forward, with the mayor reporting that T ball, basketball, and softball have already been brought back into the community, saving residents the travel to neighboring areas for these activities. A rarely used basketball court inside of city hall has been reinvented as a resource for basketball camps, which are offered to residents free of charge. “In the fall, we’re actually going to put in basketball leagues for different age groups, again at no charge. When you consider the cost of gas and eggs and utilities, a lot of families can’t afford to put their kids in recreational sports. We wanted to find ways to offset some of these rising costs that we’ve seen over the last couple of years. Currently, there is an effort to attract full-service restaurants, and more diverse retail offerings to the community. “Shepherdsville probably holds the record for the number of fast-food restaurants in a square mile,” quips the mayor. He adds that it would be ideal to have more options like Hobby Lobby, Target, or Kohl’s, as well as local small business options. “If we’re thinking about things for families, it costs money to drive 30 or 40 minutes away to go to a nice restaurant or to do some shopping. We’ve got a potential community that would support those things here. Shepherdsville is the county seat for Bullitt County, and because of that, we want to make sure that all the surrounding areas come to us to spend the revenue dollars, we want the dollars to stay here. Those dollars are then just going to be cyclical, put back into the city in beautification, better drainage, and improved roads.” Incentivizing and encouraging entrepreneurship and small business is a priority for Cubero, who notes that 80% of the business in the U.S. is small business. He says, “We always seem to incentivize the warehouses and the big companies, but I’m a firm believer that we should be incentivizing, maybe cutting occupational tax, for a small business for five years, and giving them an opportunity to get on their feet. So, if there is a local business that wants to come, they’re on top of my list, because that’s what we want to support.” Of course, Shepherdsville is continuously grateful for the valuable partnerships they have with the big companies that are part of the city, and the contributions they are making to the community. “We’re talking about trying to build a baseball complex here so we can have tournaments and bring people to our city, and that’s going to take private investment,” Cubero admits. “We have a really nice group of larger companies that we feel are looking for opportunities to invest in us because they want to be able to do something to better the life for the people who work in their facilities.” Other crucial relationships include those with the bourbon SHEPHERDSV I LLE , KENTUCKY