Poll watching, local elections discussed at Republican club meeting

BY JOHN BRICE
FOR THE LAFAYETTE SUN

CHAMBERS COUNTY — Local officials and members of the Chambers County Republican Club gathered for their monthly meeting in the party room at Sunny’s Home Cooking in Valley on Sept. 24. Having previously met in the conference room at the Lanett Municipal Airport for the past several months, the CCRC is moving its meetings to public locations to make them more accessible to interested local residents who would like to engage in finding solutions to the challenges facing the community. One key aspect of that engagement is featuring guest speakers at each meeting, which this month included three.

First up was Lee County resident and election integrity advocate Angela Shepherd, who shared details of her efforts to train poll watchers for local elections in the area.

“Poll watching is important because you are there for that candidate. Candidates sometimes don’t see the need. I would say where it is always important is absentee. If I have ever seen any issues with anything it has been absentee for the most part if we see tricky things. Poll watching became something that I worked on in our county. In our county party I sit on our county and our city executive committee. Our executive committee asked why I didn’t train poll watchers.”

Republican candidate for Chambers County Commission District 5 Sara Crutchfield addressed the key issues she intends to work on if elected.

“Some things I have noticed that we need here in Chambers County is, for one, land protection,” she said. “We have a lot of land, and there is no land protection here, so that means anyone from another state can come, purchase land, do whatever on that property. It is very hard, it takes millions of dollars to fight against that. I do believe that we need to protect the land that we have here because with large infrastructure comes a lot of resources that have to be used and that is something our county has to provide.”

Crutchfield continued by highlighting the need for public transportation for senior citizens.

“Having older family members, I have got a grandmother that lives in Fredonia at 94 years old,” she said. “She has a great mind and she can take care of herself, so she obviously doesn’t want to live somewhere else. But she is not able to get from A to B all because of her vision. So, that is difficult. To know that we don’t have anything there in place is challenging. We also have a lot of older people that are still driving on the road because there is no other option for them. I would like to see public transportation come to Chambers County.”

Another issue that Crutchfield is eager to take on is animal control.

“I was on the board of the Humane Society, with that we have got a problem,” she said. “There is tons of pets all over the place. The problem with that is people don’t get their pets fixed because it is $400 or more. I have educated myself on Alabama Spay and Neuter. It is a program through the state and counties can partner with this organization. They come to your area, in some counties it is $10 to get your pet spayed or neutered. I would like to see that Chambers County be on that list as well.”

Rounding out the meeting was Republican candidate for Chambers County coroner Levi Richardson.

“One thing I do get asked a lot is what roles and responsibilities the coroner is actually responsible for,” he said. “A lot of people think it is just showing up, putting the time on the document and going about your business. There is a lot of things that we do at the coroner’s office. One is to establish and determine the time of death, the cause and manner of death. We do our best to determine that off of what we can find at the scene.”

Richardson also remarked on challenges that the coroner’s office currently faces in fulfilling its mission.

“Right now I am very limited on resources of what I have at the coroner’s office,” he said. “I do not have a brick and mortar office to call home. There is no facility that houses the coroner’s office at the courthouse. That is one thing that I really am going to push to get. Need gloves, body bags, there is a lot of things that we need to make our lives easier when we are dealing with these scenes and incidences where we have an individual that is deceased.”