Digital Media Center
Bryant-Denny Stadium, Gate 61
920 Paul Bryant Drive
Tuscaloosa, AL 35487-0370
(800) 654-4262

© 2024 Alabama Public Radio
Play Live Radio
Next Up:
0:00
0:00
0:00 0:00
Available On Air Stations

Gas Tax Meetings, VA Town Hall and Wal-Mart Food Desert

Walmart.com

The Alabama Joint Transportation Committee will be in Dothan to discuss the state’s infrastructure as well as ways to fund repairs and constructions. One proposal is an increase in the state’s gasoline tax. That’s expected to be a hot topic in the upcoming legislative session starting next week.

Representative Mac McCutcheon is the chairman of the Joint Transportation Committee. He says committee members will definitely consider public input when it’s time to write legislation.

“I think it’s going to be important in actually writing actually writing the bill itself. When we look at rural areas, the amount of monies and how those monies, where that money needs to be spent… I think this is very important to gather all this information and hear from these regions of the state.”

Tomorrow’s meeting will be held from 10 AM until noon at the Dothan Area Chamber of Commerce.

The Tuscaloosa Veterans Affairs Medical Center will host a Town Hall meeting for veterans tomorrow. These meetings are meant to create a forum for veterans to make suggestions and ask questions about their medical care. The events are considered more important following questions on how much access veterans have to a doctor. Damon Stevenson is the Public Affairs Officer for the Tuscaloosa VA Medical Center. He says those problems aren’t happening in Tuscaloosa…

Here at Tuscaloosa we pride ourselves on providing quality care and timely access to that care. We are aware that you know other, that there are some other VAs that have had some issues with access. But fortunately we have never had that problem here at Tuscaloosa.

The Veterans Town Hall Meeting will be held at 10am tomorrow in the Sports Atrium of Building 137 at the Tuscaloosa VA.

The closing of more than 150 Wal-Mart stores nationwide will create three food deserts in Alabama, Kansas and Arkansas.

An Associated Press analysis shows that stores slated to shut down Thursday will leave residents in parts of Fairfield, Alabama; Coal Hill, Arkansas; and Wichita, Kansas, without a supermarket.

The federal government considers a neighborhood a food desert if at least a fifth of residents live in poverty and a third live more than a mile from a supermarket in urban areas, or more than 10 miles in rural areas.

Another 31 neighborhoods in 15 states will also lack access to grocery stores after Wal-Mart's closures. But those aren't as impoverished.

Wal-Mart says it has a good track record in needy neighborhoods and is offering help to the communities it's leaving.

Related Content
News from Alabama Public Radio is a public service in association with the University of Alabama. We depend on your help to keep our programming on the air and online. Please consider supporting the news you rely on with a donation today. Every contribution, no matter the size, propels our vital coverage. Thank you.