After more than a year-long dispute between the Cullman County Commission and its estranged Parks and Recreation Board, it seems the end could be in sight this week.

With the board scheduled to meet at 9 a.m. today, Chairman Roger Abbott said he plans to propose a compromise to the full board.

“The board won’t be dissolved,” he said, “but one member per month will come off the board and be replaced by a new one, whoever the commission wants.”

If accepted by the board, it will take five months for all of the current members to be replaced. Abbott said he does not know how the full board will react to the proposal.

County Commission Chairman Wiley Kitchens said Monday the county has little choice but to allow the five-month-long resignation process, and that he will be willing to work with the board once all the current members are off.

He criticized the slow removal the board’s members, calling it a “waste of time.”

“If they’re all going to resign anyway, why not do it all at once and let the county have what’s left of their money?” he said. “They’re just dragging this out to make sure they spend all of the money they have left on attorney fees.”

At its last meeting in November, the board reported it had about $21,295 left in the bank after paying $4,238 in monthly expenses — including $769 for cabins at Smith Lake Park and $2,684 for legal fees from attorney Pamela Nail.

With funds dwindling, some sort of compromise was expected from the board at its last meeting, especially after the entity’s hope that park board-friendly commissioners would be elected during the Nov. 7 general election were dashed.

In that race, associate commissioners Doug Williams and Wayne Willingham were elected over Democratic rivals who favored returning the parks to the board. Both Williams and Willingham said they did not favor the move prior to the election.

Trouble for the board started in mid 2005, when the commission voted 2-1 to take control of the parks from the board and remove its $300,000 in annual funding.

At the time, Kitchens said it was because the board was not cooperating with the commission’s intentions for the county park system.

After filing a lawsuit against the commission, the board won a partial victory this past November, when Circuit Judge Frank Brunner denied a county motion to dismiss the case entirely. Instead, he removed Williams, Kitchens and former associate commissioner Stanley Yarbrough as defendants, leaving the commission to stand as an entity.

The lawsuit still stands today, but with relatively few funds left in the bank, it is unlikely the board has the cash to see the lawsuit through.