No matter who wins in November, a new face will take over the District 1 Magistrate seat come January.
Republican challenger J.R. Stanley unseated incumbent Keith Berry in the spring primary, leaving him to face Democrat Jon Douglas on Nov. 3.
Stanley’s goals, if elected, are to oppose burdensome green energy incentives, to provide financial support for volunteer fire departments and make the county’s codes department more efficient and user-friendly.
Meanwhile, Douglas wants to pursue economic development goals that can come from Interstate 69, and he hopes some of those improvements will attract young people to stay in town and work here. He also wants to improve volunteer fire departments and take care of the infrastructure already in place in the county.
Stanley is currently serving as the president of the Baskett Community Fire Department. In that role, he knows that there needs to be some sort of financial incentive for the fire departments. He just doesn’t know exactly what that will end up being. He said it’s going to take getting the volunteer fire chiefs in a room and talking it out.
Options that could come include paying firefighters who stay at the station and work during the day, while leaving the night runs to stay as volunteer, he said. There’s also Kentucky statute that allows a county to pay a volunteer firefighter up to $6,999 per year, he said.
“There’s a lot of options and things that need to be talked about,” Stanley said.
He said with nine different volunteer fire chiefs, there will probably be nine different opinions about how to better financially support the departments. Some sort of action in that regard would also need to be supported by Henderson County Fiscal Court, Stanley said.
He said state and federal grants would also need to be looked into. Getting the right equipment is also important, he said.
Douglas also mentioned the volunteer fire departments in his interview with the Hendersonian. He said he’s visited several volunteer fire departments, and most were comprised of volunteers in their late 40s, 50s and 60s, a concern because the younger generation isn’t signing up to help. He said the county needs to do better to attract younger firefighters. He said the newly implemented Firefighting Pathway at Henderson County High School could serve to increase volunteerism at the county fire departments.
Regarding the codes department, Stanley said obtaining a building permit, for example, can take longer than what it should. As president of the Baskett Community Fire Department, he said it took six months to get a building permit for the fire station that was completed in 2025.
He said there’s too much red tape in dealing with the codes department. He said he wants to put together a team to look at the department and determine what’s the best way to move forward with the county’s codes department.
Douglas said he’s got economic development goals that can come from Interstate 69, which he added is probably going to be the best opportunity for economic growth locally in his lifetime. He said if retail, restaurants and hotels are brought here—both along I-69 and on the U.S. 41 Strip—then Henderson has the chance to attract people from Evansville and Owensboro to come spend money here.
Douglas, who works for the school system, regularly drives the bus for Henderson County High School teams when they take road trips. He said on one such trip, they were at a development with a half-dozen restaurants and some hotels in Shepherdsville, a town near Louisville, and he learned many of those who frequent it come because they don’t have to battle the big-city traffic. And he said he learned the development had been a field just five years earlier. Douglas believes that can happen for Henderson, too.
Douglas is also optimistic about keeping the Strip a vital economic area in the city. He said businesses are looking to locate there, and they think it’s going to remain active after I-69 is opened. “I do, too,” he said. He added that local officials need to think positive and get a strong plan in place for the future of the Strip.
He also mentioned that with the right business opportunities in place, more young people will want to stay in Henderson or return to Henderson after finishing their education.
On data centers, Stanley said it is part of technology that is coming. He said if they were to ever come to Henderson County, they would have to be put in some of the very desolate areas of the county and there would have to be county guidelines that would prevent any resident utility rates from increasing.
Stanley also said he’s going to be against any burdensome green energy incentives that companies could use to help build renewable energy installations here.
On data centers, Douglas said he’s going with a ‘no’ until he can learn more about them.
Another point for Douglas is preparing for road work that he said could be needed with an increase of traffic on U.S. 60 in District 1. He foresees that more people living in western Daviess County will drive on U.S. 60 and take I-69 to get to Evansville once the bridge is built. Road work could also be needed on streets that offshoot of U.S. 60, he said.
Douglas said he’s an approachable person and constituents will be able to talk to him and he’ll bring their concerns to Henderson County Fiscal Court. He also said he’s a man of his word. “If I say I’m going to do something, I’ll do it,” he said.
Stanley touts his experience working with the City of Henderson, where he served as streets superintendent for many years. In that time, he said he gained “extensive knowledge” about government policy, infrastructure and public safety.
