Governor Riley Visits Vincent, But We Bet You Didn't Know He Did

The proverbial cat is out of the bag folks.

The Vincent Hills Quarry will be supplying the materials for the elevated highway 280 project. Vecellio and Grogan will probably be one of the bidders through ALDOT. We will be going to Montgomery next week to check ALDOTs lettings on this.

When you live in a one horse town like Vincent, Alabama it is big news that the Governor is coming to visit. One would expect announcements, and maybe something in the Shelby County Reporter along with bragging by City Hall that the "big cheese" is in town.

None of this happened two Sundays ago. Not a peep about it since. Why?

Governor Riley came to the First Baptist Church in Vincent (the root of money and power in Vincent along with being the Mayor's church), and was "introduced" to the congregation by former Shelby County judge Sonny Conwill. Riley stated he had "friends that go this church" which Sonny Conwill certainly is as he was appointed by Riley to the bench in Columbiana. 

But Riley used the plural form of the word "friends."

One of those other friends would be Mayor Ray McAllister of Vincent. Isn't that a coincidence....?

Mayor McAllister’s previous statements to the press SCR Reporter:

August 26, 2008

As to the future, McAllister said, "We've got to do some business development, economic development to get our revenue up."

He also said, "I'm going to work with my contacts at the state level to see if we can get some things to help our revenues."

He said those contacts were friends he could contact to let them know "Vincent exits."

October 27, 2008:

McAllister plans to work with the industrial development board to look at prospective businesses that could come to Vincent, hopefully bringing jobs for residents. He said he’d like to see an employer bring 200 jobs to the area.

(My, what a convenient number he just happens to "come up with"--a similar number to the quarry promises.)

Eventually, McAllister wants Vincent to be well-known — and not just in Shelby County.

"We want the people from the county level, to the state level, to the federal level to know Vincent exists." he said.

We suspect Mr. Riley was here reassuring the Mayor and the City Council that it would be fine to go ahead and vote the massive quarry in, nothing will happen to them as far as ethics and corruption issues, he will make sure of it. Riley has been a big proponent of the elevated highway project as everyone in the state knows.

The Town of Vincent voted in a resolution for the elevated highway at their last meeting including in the ordinance that; "The Town of Vincent believes this resolution is vital to its survival."

Really? It's that important Mayor McAllister?

We are five miles away from 280 and even farther from where the elevated highway would end on 280, approximately 10 additional miles.. This is a nonsensical statement, unless it has "other" meaning; revenue from the quarry, which makes sense because hauling rock is very expensive and a quarry closer to the construction would cut down on those expenses greatly.

The Mayor went on tell the council that it was important everybody sign the resolution and they get it to the Governor ASAP. There was also discussion from the Mayor who attended an ALDOT meeting about the project, and how they have changed the design to make it aesthetically more appealing; adding landscaping and lowering bridge heights. He repeated this at least three times.

It is starting to make sense now why Senator French, the entire Shelby County Delegation, the Shelby County Commission, Senators Shelby and Sessions have been silent to the citizens of Vincent, despite numerous phone calls and emails to all of them.

Bradley Byrne, Judge Dan Reeves and Steve French's election brochures are in city hall and included in the City Councils' materials at each meeting. Why is that? I bet Stephen Bradley could tell us.

Shelby County Commission chair Lindsey Allison, a family law practitioner, has been hired by White Rock Quarries as yet another member of their legal team. It's news to us that quarries need family law attorneys.Surely this is a major conflict of interest and ethics violation as we reported on in a previous post.

Far too many things have happened to not see what is really going on here with this quarry proposal; highway 280.

As we said above, it is much less expensive and more convenient to get the road materials from Vincent than the other side of the county for the elevated highway 280 project.

And it is convenient that WRQs parent company, Vecellio,  has asphalt and road building subsidiaries.

ALDOT is putting the heat on Harpersville to redo Highway 76, which will also be a part of the quarry truck transportation routes and they are hoping no one makes the connection. So far, the Mayor, Theo Perkins is standing strong. We hope he can stop the project to also save his own town which sits on a lot of limestone.


If you are against the proposed elevated highway, you should also be against this quarry proposed for Vincent, Alabama.


Make no mistake, the fix is in and we have to fight like hell citizens of Vincent and Hwy. 280.