Sept. 20, 2010

New P&R Board member ready to put skills to work

By Scott Wright

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CENTRE — The newest member of the Parks and Recreation Board is excited about her new position and what the future holds for Cherokee County. She just hopes the people who hold the purse strings see things the same way she does.

After Daphne Rogers was appointed to fill the vacancy left by the retirement of Linda Prater, she immediately got to work familiarizing herself with the Board's top project, the development of Cherokee Rock Village.

“That is something the Board has been working on for months,” she told The Post in an exclusive interview earlier this month. “I went back and read the minutes from their meetings and saw all the planning, leg work, interviews, meetings, phone calls, all the things they've done over the past year and a half, and I was amazed.”

The other members of the P&R Board were apparently impressed with Rogers, too. Last month, when the time came to go before the County Commission to request an operating budget for Fiscal Year 2011, it was Rogers who made the presentation.

As she mentioned when she address the commissioners, Rogers was guilty of the same oversight as so many other Cherokee County residents – prior to her appointment to the Board by Commissioner Wade Sprouse, she had never taken the time to visit Cherokee Rock Village.

“I was astounded that we have something so beautiful and accessible and a lot of people here don't even know about it,” she said. “I was there for the first time on a Wednesday afternoon, and there was a tour bus and 14 cars there from several different states. The potential here is unlike anything I've ever gotten to work with before.”

Before moving to Cherokee County, Rogers — who lives in Spring Garden with her husband and seven children — spent over seven years in marketing for the Anniston Museum of Natural History. After seeing the natural beauty she will be working with here, Rogers said she hopes proper funding can be found to allow her to put her promotional expertise to work.

“Anytime someone asks what kind of support we need going forward, I want to be able to hand them a packet that shows them in full-color, because the property speaks for itself,” she said. “If I can hand you a picture – and I know it's a cliché — but in this case a picture really is worth a thousand words. That's one of my main goals for this year.”

The big plans that she and the other members of the Board have for the future is one reason for their recent budget request of $158,500, Rogers explained. She said every line in the budget – including items such as surveying and engineering services ($40,000), marketing expenses ($7,500), and landscaping equipment ($25,600)– is desperately needed if the county is going to get serious about developing the attraction.

“These are just things that we are going to have if we are going to expand,” she said. “I don't want to have to say to someone who wants to give us support that we can't move that way because we don't have the local funding.”

Some of that support is already in place and willing to help. The Alabama Nature Conservancy, which Rogers said usually limits itself to federal and state projects, has already visited the panoramic site and wants to help the Board acquire additional land.

U.S. Rep. Mike Rogers (R-Saks) also recently visited, and is willing to help seek federal dollars in the future.

“Cherokee Rock Village is a natural treasure in Cherokee County and I will support the leadership in this area as they work to continue the development of this beautiful landscape,” he told The Post last week.

Rogers said a recent federal stimulus grant of $900,000 that the Board received for development at Cherokee Rock Village should not be considered a replacement for annual operating expenses.

“We're talking about two entirely separate needs,” she said. “The $900,000 is a great place to start, but it would be a tragic place to end.”

Rogers said she expects the grant money to be used to provide basic amenities for campers in the near future. As for what the more distant future holds, Rogers said the sky – and available funding – is the limit.

“The board is very realistic about what we can probably get done this year, and we are also looking at five years down the road, ten years down the road,” she said. “This isn't going to affect just Cherokee County. This is going to affect our entire region.”