By John Brice
Correspondent
Local officials, community leaders and nonprofit staff gathered for a new pavilion project completion celebration along with a community outreach event at the Chambers County Community Health and Wellness Center in LaFayette during the afternoon hours of Thursday, June 27th of 2024.
Grant money provided by the Coosa Valley Resource Conservation and Development Council, a non-profit organization located in Heflin, funded the construction of the outdoor structure located in the rear of the center.
Some of the notable guests included Councilman for District C Toney B. Thomas, Street, Sanitation and Cemetery Superintendent George Green, Representative for District 37 Bob Fincher, Alabama Senator for District 13 Randy Price, Commissioner for District 3 James “Moto” Williams, LaFayette Main Street Director Deanna K. Hand, Chambers County Development Authority Executive Director Chris Busby.and Executive Director of the Coosa Valley Resource Conservation and Development Council Ciara Turner.
Alabama Cooperative Extension System Coordinator for Chambers County Rachel Snoddy welcomed the attendees and remarked “This health center has been a wonderful project that we have worked on for the past three years. But we knew we had other opportunities to expand our services here. If you haven’t been inside, by the way, and tested out the OnMed station I do encourage you to go do a demonstration. It is free healthcare for anyone, ages two and up. We know that we want to do a lot of health education. We do a lot of other health services out here with our Auburn University partners and some other community partners. We wanted to have this pavilion, this outdoor space, to be able to do some additional classes. RC&D granted us the funds to be able to build this pavilion and our city worked on it. Mr. George Green over here, who probably hates me a little bit, because I have been on him for months.”
Providing further details, Snoddy continued “But it has been wonderful and we are so glad to have it done and start using it. As you can see, we jumped right in. RC&D wanted to do their plant giveaway and outreach event here. Since they are our funders, I was like ‘yes, let’s do it!’ We have had a good crowd today out here already, getting some plants and some information from our other resources that we have available to us. Again, thank you all so much. We are so pleased to have this as an additional way we can help educate LaFayette and Chambers County. Thank you all so much. I do want to introduce, you all probably already know, Ciara with RC&D and thank you so much for your helping and seeing our vision and awarding us this money.”
RC&D Director Turner followed up by commenting “Today we have Senator Price and Representative Bob Fincher with us. They are the reason that we get to do what we do. Our legislators get us in the budget so that we have the money to give out these grants to do wonderful things like this. Now we are going to do a check presentation.”
Superintendent Green gave exclusive remarks to the LaFayette Sun, stating “We got an RC&D grant and partnered with the county extension office to build it. The highway department has the ability to help out. With them partnering with the city, we did our part of constructing it, designing it. We constructed it in about a month and a half. With the funding that they had, they felt like that they needed to partner with the city to be able to fulfill what they were trying to do. Me and a couple of my guys, I designed it and then we took about a month and we built it and it turned out great. We are kind of proud of it.”
