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The Billy Glenn Rushing American Legion Post 90 voted Aug. 20 to sell its building on West Church Street.

Adjutant Paul Chason said the decision to sell the building was made because of a lack of membership and revenue.

“Probably late last year, we had some indication that our last renter would be closing up shop, and that was our last source of income,” Chason said. “And it actually happened earlier this year.”

Chason was referring to the tax office located on the bottom floor.

“That was our last viable source of continuous revenue,” he added. “Most of our members are aged right now, and not particularly able to do a lot of fundraising, and well, that put us in some kind of water.”

Chason said the legion then shifted into “what now” mode.

“And so we started talking about the annual expenses of maintaining the building and trying to refurbish the building,” he said. “And it was a pretty easy conclusion that it was beyond the scope of what we were able to do with our group of people, and the resources necessary to refurbish it were, you know, kind of hard for us to obtain, even with community support. So we decided that the best thing for us to do was to move forward and find an alternative operational method. We decided that we would move forward and we would do our best to remain a viable American Legion Post, but without the expense of a facility that will allow us to save a good bit of money, and allow us to extend our operational capabilities and our community support.”

Chason said the vote was unanimous to sell the facility, adding that the post is going to maintain its charter, and will continue to operate once the sale is complete.

“Maybe we’ll meet at a local restaurant, maybe we’ll meet at a church, maybe we’ll meet at Watson Cabin, but we’re going to continue to meet,” he said. “We’re going to continue to support the American Legion programs that we have in the community.”

Chason noted the Boys and Girls State, and the oratorical contest as two important programs for the post.

Chason said the post hasn’t reached out to a real estate agency, yet, to put the building on the market.

“What we’ve done is we’ve done all the steps in accordance with the American Legion process,” he said. “We’ve got our executive committee approval. We got general membership approval to move forward, and we formally notified all our active members that it was going we were moving forward to have a vote (Aug. 20).

“We provided an opportunity to for our distance members, we have members that are in Birmingham and elderly members that can’t travel, so we provided them an opportunity to have a voice via notarized vote,” he added. “And we’ve gotten that accomplished, and the Department of Alabama American Legion has approved our sale.”

Ten members and 11 notarized votes were counted for the vote, Chason said.

We had received 11 notarized votes by the published deadline, and our meeting process was witnessed by a district officer, which is required by the department,” Chason said. “After our vote, the district representative validated our voting process and the procedures that we were taking, and so we’ve done everything the way we needed to do it.”

When asked about the butterfly garden right next to the building, Chason said the post voted to continue to maintain the garden.