Chilton County commissioners hear requests to authorize multiple grants and renew grant administration contract

The Chilton County Commission on Monday heard a series of requests from the sheriff’s office and county staff asking the commission to approve resolutions to hire a corrections officer, accept several grants and grant applications, and renew the county’s grant-administration contract.

Sheriff (unnamed) opened the sequence of requests, saying he would ask the commission to approve “a resolution to hire Anthony Radford” as a corrections officer at the county jail and listed a set of grant-related items the sheriff’s office would seek the chairman’s signature on, including documents tied to 2023 Homeland Security monitoring and an application connected with night-vision equipment. The sheriff also asked the commission to adopt an “updated procurement policy for grant funds” and to advertise a request for proposals for virtual-reality training software related to a SKIP/SCIP grant application.

Commission office staff member Sylvia asked the commission to renew the contract for “grama administration services with grant management,” describing the proposed terms as unchanged from the prior year and indicating quarterly payments. Kara Stallman, the county’s grant writer, addressed the commission and highlighted grant-winning activity she said she had helped secure in the past year: a total of $747,986.08 in new funding, including $246,486 tied to a VR training simulator (SKIP grant), a $10,000 JAG allocation, $300,000 described as a Tuberville appropriation for vehicles, and $143,657 in closed-out homeland security grants that funded a command trailer shared by EMA and the sheriff’s office. Stallman also described two larger projects she is managing: a $646,000 Recreational Trails Program (RTP) grant to add roughly 160 acres to Manuka Park and a Community Development Block Grant (CDBG) project for new water connections on County Road 16 and County Road 26.

County staff and the sheriff characterized Stallman’s work as instrumental to recent grant wins and asked the commission to renew her contract under the same financial terms as the prior year. Commissioners did not take final votes during the discussion recorded in the transcript; speakers said several of the items would be formally considered at the next meeting.

Asked whether the procurement-policy update and the other authorizations required the chairman’s signature, staff said the requests were to “authorize the chairman to sign all those documents.” No formal motions or votes on these items appear in the transcript excerpt; the speakers indicated the resolutions would be presented for approval at a later meeting.

Kara Stallman also thanked staff and commissioners for support while describing the RTP and CDBG projects and noting the complexity of buying land with federal money for Manuka Park.

The commission did not adopt any of the requested resolutions on the record in the provided transcript. Commissioners and staff indicated the matters would be placed on a future agenda for formal action.