Calera grant writer details federal, state and local awards; cites environmental reviews as cause of railroad-bridge delays

Cara Stallman, Calera City's grant writer, told Calera Spotlight that the city has secured multiple infrastructure grants — including federal planning funds to study a bridge over CSX railroad tracks, a $1 million Transportation Alternatives (TAC) streetscape award for downtown, and state SRF funds for water and sewer upgrades — but that federal review and partner-agency requirements have slowed progress.

Stallman, who also identified her company as Grant Management LLC and said she works with Calera City departments, said the railroad planning grant was announced two years ago and is intended to begin the design and environmental work needed for a bridge to reduce vehicle delays caused by passing trains. "It's a big project. It's cumbersome and it's slow, but we're on the right direction," she said. She described coordination with the Federal Railroad Administration, the Alabama Department of Transportation (ALDOT) and the city's engineering partner (identified in the interview as Vulker) as necessary steps before construction can proceed.

On the pace, Stallman emphasized federal and state requirements: environmental clearances, historic-district reviews downtown, and endangered-species assessments along a creek the new road would cross. She said the city holds weekly coordination meetings and monthly meetings with federal partners to advance design and approvals, and called the timeframe "painfully slow" but typical for multi-agency road projects.

Stallman described the TAC streetscape grant as a roughly $1 million award to fund sidewalks, landscaping, underground utilities and pedestrian improvements intended to revitalize Calera's downtown. She said the city is using the funds to create a more walkable, human-scale downtown.

On utilities, Stallman said Calera has obtained state SRF (State Revolving Fund) support to upgrade its water treatment plant and system resiliency. She also noted a separate sewer rehabilitation grant of about $500,000 to repair lines in a portion of the city; the work included cured-in-place pipe lining, a trenchless method that inserts and hardens a liner inside existing pipe to reduce inflow and infiltration without full street excavation.

Stallman said a Community Development Block Grant (CDBG) sewer project recently closed under budget and helped seal old terracotta pipes to reduce basement flooding during heavy rain. She also noted Department of Justice grants for police equipment and training and several small grants — for example, roughly $10,000 used with a regional planning commission to plant shade trees downtown, and a $10,000 project to buy benches for an alley — to illustrate the range from small to large awards.

Stallman stressed that local financial housekeeping matters for grant success: clean audits, accurate financial systems and local matching funds increase competitiveness for grants. "There's nothing free, there's nothing easy, and there's nothing quick about grant money," she said.

The interview included inconsistent references to the size of the railroad-related funding in different parts of the conversation; Stallman initially described the award as a federal Railroad Administration grant announced two years ago and later referred, in the same interview, to a larger figure. That discrepancy appears in the transcript and could reflect different phases or aggregated funding; the city did not provide a separate written clarification in the interview.

Next steps Stallman described for the large transportation project are continued design and environmental work, further coordination with ALDOT and federal partners, and iterative design reviews with the city's engineering firm. She said the city and its partners are continuing planning but did not announce construction dates.

The segment ended with the host thanking Stallman; no formal council votes or other official actions were reported during the interview.