Cullman County safety director Gordon Dunagan said Tuesday he has no idea how his name was mentioned in connection with a rumor about possible road department layoffs during the public comments portion of the commission’s regular meeting.

In a public comment in which he referred to Dunagan as the “assistant chairman,” associate commissioner Wayne Willingham asked commission chairman James Graves whether Dunagan had approached a west side road department employee late last week with news that Graves, as Willingham stated, “was going to put in a layoff, as soon as me and [associate commissioner] Doug [Williams] left, of 18 employees in the road department.”

In the meeting, both Williams and Graves responded that they had heard no such news.

“It’s not my prerogative to lay folks off from the road department,” said Graves. “It is the choice of the [associate] commissioners on each side of the county to make that kind of decision.”

In a followup interview with both Dunagan and Graves, Dunagan said Tuesday afternoon he had not made the comment and could not speculate on how anyone could have formed the idea that he had.

“Well, lord, no,” Dunagan said. “I did not say anything like that. I don’t where that started . I’m not a decision maker—I’m a worker bee. In my capacity as the safety director, I would never tell someone that they’re going to be laid off. I never have, and I never will.”

Graves said he has heard periodic rumors that road department employees were “scared to death about layoffs by the first of November because of a shortage of funds,” a concern he said has no basis in fact. The talk may have originated with some observers who he says could have misinterpreted the motivation behind a meeting he had last week with Cullman Mayor Max Townson and the four candidates vying for the Place 1 and Place 2 county commission seats in the November general election.

That meeting, said Graves, was not intended to map out a personnel strategy for the new county commission lineup to consider—rather, it was the first in what he hopes is a series of meetings between the candidates and current city and county leaders to help them understand the administrative environment the two victors will face when they take office later this year.

“I gave them information about what the county departments do; our policies and procedures. I had all four candidates with me—Republican and Democrat alike—and the mayor, who met with them and gave them a little handout on the Duck River dam, because the city certainly has an interest in how that project is carried out. I don’t know who’s going to be elected in the Fall, and I don’t want any of the candidates to feel excluded or unprepared between now and that time. I want whoever wins those seats to feel like they can hit the ground running. That’s why we met, and I hope we’re going to have a bunch more of these meetings.

“For that matter,” he added, “any of the current commissioners, if they want to, are as free as I am to meet with the candidates for these offices and give them information about the way the county is run. It’s not an exclusive type thing; I just think it is good for the people who have a stake in Cullman County and how it’s managed to sit down and talk. Any of these candidates, on their own, can also go and sit down with department heads and commissioners and get input from those respective departments to acquaint themselves with how things are done.”



In other business, the commission:

• Approved a request from revenue commissioner Barry Willingham for authorization to contract for aerial photography services, contingent on approval by the county attorney.
• Authorized chairman Graves to sign a tax-exempt note for the Health Care Authority of Cullman County as part of the refinancing of a $3.5 million bond issued through People’s Bank last July. The original bond financed the purchase of Woodland Hospital and expenses related to the hospital’s acquisition by Cullman Regional Medical Center under the Health Care Authority.
• Declared surplus two travel trailers that have been located at the Stoney Lonesome OHV Park for the past two years.
• Declared surplus a printer and copy machine belonging to the sanitation department.
• Donated $1,000 to the Center Hill community center.
• Renewed the county’s participation in the liability fund of the Association of County Commissions of Alabama through 2014. County attorney Dan Willingham noted that representatives from the organization had praised the county for its management of general liability and workman’s compensation claims filed through the program’s insurers. “They told us we’re a benefit to that fund—our claims aren’t bad at all,” said Willingham. “They were appreciative of that fact.”
• Approved two separate resolutions lowering the speed limit on County Roads 935 and 936 to 20 miles per hour. The roads lie in a residential area along Smith Lake near the Winston County line.
• Approved the re-subdividing of two lots in the Crystal Estates subdivision along County Road 260.
• Tabled a request to approve a plat for phase two of a development at WaterBound Subdivision in Crane Hill.

The next commission meeting will be held at 10 a.m. Thursday, August 19 in the commission meeting room of the Cullman County Courthouse.



* Benjamin Bullard can be reached by e-mail at bbullard@cullmantimes.com or by telephone at 734-2131 ext. 270.