Council approves bid for new entrance signs

The Mountain Brook City Council on Monday approved a contract with an architecture firm that will make two new entrance signs for the city. 

City Manager Sam Gaston said that one will be placed on Mountain Brook Parkway, near its intersection with Cahaba Road, and the other will be placed on Cahaba Road in English Village. The council approved a bid from Architectural Graphic & Design Specialties, Inc. for $10,785 plus tax. 

Gaston said the city will contribute $5,000 toward the project, while the remaining cost will be shared by the Mountain Brook Chamber of Commerce and the 2018-19 Leadership Mountain Brook group. Leadership students raised $1,400 for the signs, Gaston said, and installation will take place in the next six to eight weeks. 

Also on Monday, the City Council approved an election services agreement with Jefferson County for Mountain Brook's upcoming schools tax referendum. On Sept. 24, residents will head to the polls to decide if they want to raise the city’s ad valorem property tax rate by 10 mills to benefit the schools. According to Mountain Brook Schools Superintendent Dicky Barlow, the increase would generate an additional $6 million per year for the school system. 

Steven Boone, Mountain Brook's finance director, said the city will pay about $11,000 to rent voting equipment from the county for its six polling sites. In total, Boone said that the election will cost the city about $27,000. That figure, he said, includes the cost of ballots and poll workers. 

Additionally, the City Council on Monday discussed its options for using the Birmingham-Jefferson County Transit Authority’s MAX Transit in fiscal year 2019-2020. Council members heard a report from MAX officials at their June 24 meeting, when they learned about the city’s low ridership numbers and upcoming MAX route changes. 

The council is leaning toward an option for the upcoming fiscal year that is estimated to cost $139,353 and reduce transit hours by about 500 annually, to 1,692. A bus line that services the Birmingham Zoo would account for more than half of those hours, and an on-demand microtransit service similar to Uber or Lyft would account for the remaining time. 

Council members agreed that the combination best meets the city’s needs. 

“I think that makes all the sense in the world to me,” City Councilman Billy Pritchard said. 

A final decision will be made at a later date as city officials cement their 2019-20 budget. 

In other business on Monday, the City Council:

• Approved a contract with Goodgame Company, Inc. to construct a storage shed for the city’s Public Works Department. Projected equipment and labor costs are $46,460.
• Approved the minutes from its June 22 meeting. 

The council was set to address a couple of other items at Monday’s meeting that were pulled from the agenda. One pertained to the installation of bullet resistant glass and other security improvements at City Hall, and the other pertained to recent coyote sightings. 

Both topics will be addressed at a later date. The City Council will hold its next meeting on July 22 at 7 p.m. at City Hall.