By: Sen. Roger Bedford

It is certainly a pleasure to see the Fall weather returning.

It makes attending college and high school football games a lot more fun.

I’m sure it’s easier on the players, cheerleaders and band members as well.

It’s always great to see progress being made in Hackleburg and Phil Campbell as well as across the top of the mountain in Franklin County and on down to the Mt. Hope area.

I’m so proud of our communities coming together after last Aprils devastating tornados and working as a team to rebuild back bigger, better and stronger.

I look forward to our two new schools, K-12 in Hackleburg and a high school in Phil Campbell getting underway soon as well.

This past week we had the opportunity to give out some grants in the west end of Franklin County.

Representative Morrow and I went together using our Franklin County TVA in lieu of tax money to make the following appropriations, $500 to the Red Bay High School 8thand 9th grade trip to UNA, we were also able to give a grant of $500 to Red Bay High School FBLA to the FBLA Conference.

It was also good to be able to help out the Red Bay High School Tip Off club with a $500 donation.

I want to thank the Mayor and the Red Bay City Council for joining Representative Morrow and I in re-doing the Red Bay Elementary water fountains.

They were old and out of date; some were not even working at all.

Representative Morrow and I made available a grant of $2,000 towards that project.

It has been sometime since Vina High School was able to upgrade its athletic field equipment.

As such Representative Morrow and I were happy to make a $6,000 grant available to the Vina High School for a lawn mower purchase that will be used on both the baseball and football field as well as around the school campus.

I’m also continuing to work hard to see that our ATRIP road projects whether from city or counties are funded in Montgomery.

We’ve had a great deal of success on these types of road grants thus far. I think it’s important that we insure that our tax dollars are brought home and put to good use.

I was also glad to see Franklin County Commission endorse the Alabama Scenic River Trail.

This was followed by the City of Red Bay endorsing the Alabama Scenic River Trail which as you may know is a beautiful river trail for personal watercraft along Bear Creek as it flows through the City of Red Bay in Franklin County.

As you know the Town of Hodges is doing an excellent job developing their equestrian trail and by adding this scenic river way it will hopefully bring more tourism and tourist dollars into our area.

Roger Bedford is a state senator for Franklin County.