VALLEY GRANDE — Members of the Valley Grande City Council met Tuesday evening to discuss the city’s budget and the appointment of its new city clerk.

After sorting through resumes and conducting personal interviews during an earlier planning session, the council voted unanimously on Mayor Tom Lee’s recommendation to hire Cahaba Furniture owner Kim Harris to replace former clerk Janet Frasier, who left her position in mid-August to help with her family business.

After narrowing the applicant pool to three choices, Lee said he felt Harris was an ideal choice.

“I think it’s going to be a real good addition to us,” Lee said. “The lady has a good bit of background in actually having to manage everything … it’s a small business and she’s had to do 100 percent what it takes to do it. There were some higher academically qualified people that applied but with little practical experience.”

Lee and the council also discussed the city’s budget. Lee proposed that as of now the city has a “completely balanced” budget.

“We should be in pretty good shape, hopefully, and I suspect that we might make some minor adjustments to it, but it looks like we’re gonna be fine,” Lee said. “What we’ve done in the project and what we’ve proposed … is an addition in the budget to be able to compensate our volunteer firefighters to the extent that we’re legally able to do that and maintain their volunteer status … this is something we really wanted to do in the past … it might help us do recruiting,”

Lee said the council also has money in the budget to add more extracurricular sports such as tee ball and Upward flag football.

“We’re trying to keep something going on as much of the year as we possibly can,” Lee said. “The facilities are in place and ready to go for it. We’ve got a proposal to improve the fields with scoreboards being our next addition to the fields that will then be used by all activities to use the scoreboards.”