Master Gardeners plant sale returns in April Page A-7
Tigers stumble in Buccaneer Classic Page B2
Hometown newspaper of Bruce Fitzgerald- since 1933
Hartselle Enquirer
50 CENTS
WEDNESDAY, APRIL 3, 2024
VOLUME 91, NO. 14
Council hires architect for new fire station, library and event center By Rebekah Yancey rebekah.yancey@ hartselleenquirer.com At its latest meeting March 23, the Hartselle City Council approved contracts with Leonard Designs for the development of blueprints that will see a new fire station, library and event center built in Hartselle. Fire Station No. 1 will be relocated to the new building on Shull Road NE from its current location at 200 Main St. E. It will be 10,000 square feet and will include equipment bays and sleeping quarters for personnel. Accord-
ing to the contract summary, the aesthetic of the new buildings will align with the current municipal building. The new library and event center will be on donated land with historical significance on Sparkman Street. The library will span 7,500 square feet, while the adjacent event center will be 13,500 square feet. The structures will be linked by a shared outdoor area covered by a canopy. The 3.5-acre plot of land, valued at $110,000 including the parking lot, holds significance as the former site of the Hartselle Medical Center, which
served the community for nearly 60 years before its closure in 2012 and subsequent demolition in 2021. It was donated to the city by Huntsville Hospital Health Systems after the former healthcare center was demolished. “We are excited to work with Leonard Design on the new building projects for the City of Hartselle. Leonard and staff were great to work with on the remodel of the municipal building and I am confident the new facilities will be the same,” Mayor Randy Garrison said. The city will be using proceeds from bonds
issued in 2022 to fund the projects, Garrison said. Once the new station is complete and occupied, Station No. 2 will be relocated to the current building and be remodeled, he added. “The library is not in good condition and conducive to remodel, and there is a lack of parking there too,” Garrison said. “The building was constructed for a bank and while the space has been useful for many years, a new modern facility designed for today’s media use will be helpful to increase programs and use for our library patrons.”
PHOTO BY RACHEL HOWARD
A prime 3.5-acre plot of land, that was once home to the Hartselle Medical Center, was donated to the City of Hartselle by Huntsville Hospital Health Systems after the healthcare center was demolished in 2021. The Hartselle City Council approved contracts with an architect this past week for new buildings that will include a new library and event center that will be built on the donated land.
Priceville council Strong man green lights drug, Teen powerhouse invited to compete search dog in international strongman event
By Jean Cole For the Enquirer
PRICEVILLE — A pooch from Poland may become Priceville’s next police officer — a drug-sniffing and human-trailing dog. Priceville City Council members agreed this week to spend $15,500 to bring aboard a Belgian Malinois drug dog following a proposal from Priceville police Officer Lucas Ferrell. “Prevention is the biggest reason we want to do it,” Mayor Sam Heflin said Wednesday. “We don’t have a big problem with drugs; we don’t want it to become a problem. We want to head it off before it becomes one.” A message printed on the back of the department’s police cruisers sums it up, he said. The message reads: “Not in Priceville.” Heflin said there have been several arrests involving people either coming off the interstate and getting fuel or coming off the interstate and staying in a hotel who were transporting drugs. The desire to prevent crime and the addition of Ferrell to the police force brought the issue to the forefront because the officer has expressed a desire to have a drug dog, the mayor said. During the pre-meeting work session Monday, Ferrell told council members, “I know that in prior times a canine unit has been proposed to you. On multiple fronts, we’re at a point in time where — as a department, as a city — I think that it’s paramount that we have one. “Just from my personal experience in the fight against drugs that I’ve had since I’ve been here — a year and a half — it’s getting worse, and it’s not necessarily that Priceville is going downhill, it’s just the amount of people we have coming through Priceville. He added that the high school is growing. “There’s become more and more I’m not going to say issues at the school but I’m gonna say as you get bigger, issues come with it,” Ferrell
Obituaries • Joy Hardin • Sherry Kylene Chenault Linda Doyer Terry • Joe Harris • Robert Olen “Bobby” Cooper
Helfin said. The department is now at a point where staffing and vehicles will allow them to start moving forward with a drug and trailing dog, he said. “I’ve vetted a kennel for the last year. They import dogs from overseas, and they have expedited the training program from the traditional 12 to 16 weeks down to two weeks,” he said. “The way they do that is they train and certify the dog. They bring me in for a two-week program and train me to the dog. That has held up to a Supreme Court standard.” Yearly maintenance on the dog includes a $140 recertification program. There is no additional insurance cost, he said. The dog and the handler school costs $12,000 plus $3,000 to $3,500 for all the other equipment needed to start the program. The process to put a kennel in a new Dodge Durango police vehicle already scheduled to come into service is $1,500 more than the prisoner compartment is already expected to cost, Ferrell said. He is also researching a possible grant that is available, one that could cut about $7,000 from the cost. The next 80-hour handler school is about four months away. During the regular meeting that followed Monday’s work session, council members Charles Black, Patrick Dean, Ashley England and Tommy Perry and the mayor voted to pay $15,500 for the dog and the training. Councilman Melvin Duran III was absent. For full obituaries, see page A-2
• William Lang • Emogene (Jean) B. Wilson • John Henry • Donna Fitzpatrick Stallions
PHOTOS BY JERONIMO NISA
Jonathon McCleskey will compete in an international strongman contest in Scotland
By Rebekah Yancey rebekah.yancey@ hartselleenquirer.com Jonathon McCleskey, a senior at Hartselle High School, has proven himself to be a force to be reckoned in the world of strength athletics. After clinching the title of Alabama’s Strongest Teen in August, McCleskey has received an invitation to compete in the World’s Strongest Under 23 Championship in Scotland this fall. McCleskey’s passion for
strength sports began two years ago when he saw a reality documentary on Hulu entitled The Strongest Man in History. The reality-show documentary takes four strongmen, Eddie Hall, Brian Shaw, Robert Oberst and Nick Best around the world investigating strongmen legends as they try to beat the legend and each other in a quest to prove who really is the strongest man in history. McCleskey was intrigued. Shortly thereafter, fueled by his natural athleticism
and determination, he hit the gym to slim down and build muscle. Today he trains at the Hartselle Fitness Center and the Misfits Barbell Club in Moulton. His journey to becoming a competitor on the strongman stage gained momentum when he participated in Alabama’s Strongest Man this past August. In total, he has competed in four Alabama Strongest Teen competitions, bringing home the second and first place title in his first two years,
respectively. He also competed in the teen division of the Static Monsters event this past summer that qualified his participation in the USS Nationals. That competition will be held this June in Denver, Colo. Strongman competitions usually consist of an overhead press, a carry and a deadlift, according to McCleskey. Other events include Atlas Stones — spherical stones that are lifted and placed at the See STRONG, page 3
Solar eclipse locally will be 90% total on April 8 By Erica Smith For the Enquirer Alicia Carpenter plans to see her third solar eclipse on April 8, and she can’t wait. In the Decatur area, for about 2½ hours beginning at 12:43 p.m. that day, a partial eclipse will be visible. A few hours driving time to the north or west, and a total eclipse can be seen. Carpenter, 53, of Danville, said she has always been fascinated with the planets, space and everything about astronomy. “In college you have to take two sciences when you’re a liberal arts major,
and so I took astronomy and geology,” Carpenter said. “Astronomy might have been one of my favorite classes in college. We met at night and went to the big telescope at school, and we looked at Saturn and, well, some people just have a fascination with space. I’m one of those. “The fact that we get to experience actual things going on in space, I want to be a part of it.” At its maximal phase, the eclipse as viewed from the Decatur area will be about 90% total. The last eclipse visible in the contiguous United States was in August 2017, and the next one will not be until Aug.
23, 2044. Carpenter said she will be watching the eclipse with her “eclipse group,” in Moulton again, as she did during the 2017 eclipse. “I’m superstitious and I want to be with them during the next eclipse,” she said. Carpenter was born in 1970 and said she can remember her first eclipse experience during her childhood. “I can remember us making the eclipse boxes out of milk cartons or something in grade school and us looking at the eclipse,” she said. “That’s the only other one I remember besides that last one in 2017.”
John Golben, Calhoun Community College astronomy, physical science and physics instructor, said solar eclipses happen when the moon crosses the ecliptic plane between the Earth and the sun. In the path of totality, the moon will line up perfectly between the Earth and the sun, blotting out the sunlight. It will slice a diagonal line from the southwest to the northeast across North America, briefly plunging communities along the track into darkness. Locally on April 8, the moon will block 90% of the sun. See SOLAR, page 7