On Wednesday, August 26, 2026, Cloverleaf Infrastructure issued a statement to The Lowndes Signal about the money it has put into this county. It said it has committed $10 million to the Central Alabama Community Foundation through the Cloverleaf Project Red Clay Fund, that the first $1 million has been invested for 2026, and that the remaining $9 million becomes available once project milestones are achieved. Then it listed what had been awarded so far: $75,000 to the Organized Community Action Program, $50,000 to Hope Inspired Ministries, $14,234 to the "Burkeville Fire Department", $10,860 to the Calhoun Fire Department, and $5,426 to the Hicks Hill/Black Belt Volunteer Fire Department. Those five figures add to $155,520.
In the same article, the vice president of the Burkville fire department board said the fourth line was not true. "As of today, we, as the board, have not been presented with any money," Charles Madaris told the newspaper. "It has not been offered to us by any entity formally. And the fire department has not taken any money from the data center or any grant affiliated with the data center."
The Burkville Volunteer Fire Department stands directly across Lowndes County Highway 37 from where the project entrance is proposed. Its board met the following evening, Thursday, August 27, and voted. The Signal reported the result on August 28: unanimously, the department suspended accepting any donation or grant money originating from Cloverleaf until, in Madaris’s words, "it is imminently clear that a data center is going to be built." The foundation had been prepared to bring a check for $14,234. The chief turned it down before the meeting, knowing which way the board was going to go.
Read the condition carefully, because it is conditional. This is not a refusal on principle and the department has not said it will never take the money. Darren Russell, a Burkville volunteer, told the newspaper that if the project goes forward and ground is broken, "then we will reconsider accepting a grant or any kind of money from Project Red Clay." What he said about right now was this: "we will not so that we can totally back and support our community because our community is who supported us. The community does not want it. We don’t want it. It’s kind of personal with me because it’s actually going to be in our back yard."
The next day, Friday, August 28, the Central Alabama Community Foundation delivered checks to the other two departments, $10,860 to Calhoun for three self-contained breathing apparatus air packs and $5,426 to Hicks Hill/Black Belt for two sets of turnout gear, and told WAKA 8 that it has now distributed $141,286 in total in Lowndes County from the fund.
So there are two running totals in public, published two days apart. The developer says $155,520 awarded. The foundation says $141,286 distributed. The difference is $14,234.
We are not going to average those, or call one of them the real number, or tell you that anybody misled anybody. Neither publisher has disputed its own figure and there is a plain reading available: awarded and distributed are not the same word, and one award on the developer’s list was declined before it was delivered. What is worth saying out loud is only this. A company published a list naming an organization in this county as a beneficiary of its generosity. That organization says it was never formally asked. And the arithmetic between the developer’s account and the foundation’s account resolves to that one line, to the dollar.
There is one more thing in the August 26 article that belongs in this record. The Calhoun volunteer fire department, which received $10,860, is led by Lowndes County Commissioner Fletcher Hayes, and he told the newspaper he asked for the equipment the grant paid for. "It was used for the SCBA equipment, the air packs firemen use for a breathing apparatus," he said. "They asked for some things I need, so I gave them that [request]."
Air packs are air packs. A volunteer department that has them is a department whose people can go into a burning building, and this county needs that. We are not suggesting the commissioner did anything other than ask for equipment his firefighters need, and nothing in the public record speaks to why any recipient was chosen. But a sitting member of the body that will eventually be asked to act on this project has now requested and received money from the project’s fund, and said so on the record to the county newspaper. That is a fact about how this arrangement works, and it should be written down where anyone can find it rather than passed around.
This site kept that name off its own pages for two months, because two rosters disagreed about who holds the fifth seat and we would not publish a person as a commissioner on a contested roster. The Lowndes Signal identifying him in print, in his own words, is what settled it. We changed the rule on August 31 and we are saying so here rather than quietly.
The asks are the same ones we published on August 20, and the second round has not answered any of them. Who selects recipients, and against what published criteria? Is any member of the County Commission or the Lowndes County Economic Development Commission involved in choosing them, or consulted about them? Publish the gift agreement between the developer and the foundation, with the administrative fee, the disbursement schedule, and the milestone definitions. Confirm whether the full $1 million upfront tranche has actually been funded, and say where it is held. And say in writing what happens to the fund if this project is denied or withdrawn.
One thing has changed, though, and it is worth naming. Until last week, everything about the community fund was a conversation between a developer, a foundation, and organizations that had applied. Last week a volunteer fire department across the road from the front gate held a meeting, took a vote, and put a condition on the money in public. That is what deciding in the open looks like, and it took a board of volunteers about an hour.1234567