By Keith McCoy
City City Hall 3
The Mountain Brook City Council — at its regular meeting for Monday, Sept. 28 — unanimously adopted a budget for the city for Fiscal Year 2021, which begins Oct. 1 and ends Sept. 30, 2021.
The city will have total revenue of about $40,400,000, expenses of $40,200,000 and a budgeted surplus of about $205,000, said Councilman Lloyd Shelton, who serves as chair of the council’s Finance Committee.
The budget looks much better than it did a few months ago — early in the planning process — when city officials had to take into account projected losses in city revenue due to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic.
When City Manager Sam Gaston, City Clerk Steve Boone and the city’s department heads began meeting to discuss the budget, there was a projected deficit of $1.4 million, Shelton said.
However, he said that the city came to a surplus after a lot of work by Gaston, Boone, the department heads and other staff.
“Thanks to Steve and Sam and all the department heads for making this an easier budget than we thought it would be,” said City Council President Virginia Smith.
Property taxes — a relatively stable funding source — makes up about 40% of the city’s revenue.
“That’s a good thing, despite all this craziness,” Shelton said, referring to the pandemic.
City officials, including Mayor Stewart Welch, have said several times this year that Mountain Brook relies much more on property tax than on sales taxes, giving it something of a buffer against the pandemic’s negative impact on retail and restaurants.
Sales taxes make up about 30% of the city's revenue, and business licenses and personal property tax about 10%, Shelton said.
The city will run deficits in a couple of areas, the largest coming in the capital projects fund.
That find will have budgeted revenues of about $4.2 million, but over $7 million in expenditures and transfers and a deficit for the year of about $2.9 million, Shelton said.
A lot of the money is being spent for work on the city’s bridges and major improvements to the athletic fields, he said.
Mountain Brook is in good shape financially compared to a lot of municipalities and has no plans to reduce its workforce, Shelton said.
“When we look and see cities all over the country...making some very hard decisions, we are very fortunate that there will be no furloughs at this time,” he said.
In fact, the city is giving its employees a 0.5% cost of living adjustment, Shelton said.
LANE PARKE DRIVE-THRU
The council voted unanimously to approve the addition of a bank drive-thru in Block 8 of Lane Parke. There is a banking tenant that would like to come to Lane Parke, said attorney Mel McElroy, who represents the developers, Evson Inc. and Lane Parke Retail LLC. A study of the proposed single-window drive-though conducted by Skipper Consulting indicates that it should not cause any traffic problems, such as traffic backing up onto Culver Road.
LANE PARKE SERVICE USES
A more contentious issue was a proposed ordinance amending the Lane Parke PUD Master Development Plan to allow five service uses, including barber shops, beauty shops, nail salons, interior design offices and neuromuscular therapists.
McElroy said that the developers want some more flexibility in signing tenants to pre-leases for the proposed Phase 2 of Lane Park so they can begin construction on the long-awaited project.
All of the council members expressed a desire to see more retail in the development, thereby boosting the city’s tax base, but they approved the ordinance by a vote of 3-2.
Smith, Phil Black and Billy Pritchard voted yes, with both Smith and Pritchard noting that they cast their votes reluctantly.
Lloyd Shelton and Alice Womack voted no.
“I don't like it, but I think it's a necessary step we've got to take,” Pritchard said. “I would prefer it all to be retail, but that's not the world we live in anymore. We need to take this step so the project can move forward to completion.”
“We’ve got to do something to get critical mass to make this more forward,” he said.
The following are some of the other items approved by the council:
- Members passed a resolution increasing the salaries for all classified, unclassified and part-time city employees by 0.5% effective Oct. 13. The resolution also increases the compensation for contract security services for the city’s public works facilities, the city prosecutor and municipal judges by 0.5% effective Oct. 1.
- They voted to increase the salary of the city manager by 0.5% effective Oct. 13.
- The council approved the appointment of Kirk Forrester to the Library Board to fill a position becoming vacant Oct. 1. She will replace Penny Page. Forrester has an undergraduate degree in English from Vanderbilt University and a master’s degree in English from Georgetown University. She has also worked in book and magazine publishing. “Our library is excellent, and I am very happy to be involved,” Forrester told the council.
- Fire Chief Chris Mullins told members about his department’s plans to use six metal shipping containers to build a badly needed live-fire training facility. Live fire training is required twice a year for all fire departments, Mullins said. The new structure will be built at the department’s current fire tower training area. No additional appropriation is required, since the department already has the money in its building and grounds account, and department personnel will do most of the work themselves, Mullins said. “You can do all sorts of training in this building,” he said, citing search and rescue as an example. “The possibilities are endless.”
