Birmingham City Council passes long-awaited budget focused on schools, cleanup

The Birmingham City Council finally passed a Fiscal Year 2017 budget today at City Hall.

The city’s budget was almost two months late – the mayor and council are expected to finalize the budget each year by July 1.

But Council President Johnathan Austin said the document is a good one overall.

“I think it reflects the needs of every citizen” and accounts for “every dollar,” Austin said immediately following the council’s nearly unanimous votes to approve a series of 17 ordinances and resolutions that make up the overall budget.

Passage of a budget was delayed in part by long, sometimes tense negotiations with Mayor Bell over such items as funding for the proposed Carver Theatre renovation and for a new fire house in Kingston.

Bell and the council reached an agreement during last week’s meeting regarding the amount of funding for the Carver and a few other issues. They also voted to pay for Kingston’s long-awaited fire station.

That breaking of some rather thick ice set the table for today’s vote on ordinances the administration tweaked last week to reflect the council’s desires.

The 2017 budget – which takes effect immediately – puts “more focus” on schools and cleaning up neighborhoods, according to a news release from the council following the meeting. The total expenditures are in the range of $420 million.

During their summer budget tour of the city – after seeing Bell’s proposed budget in May – council members heard complaints in the neighborhoods that downtown Birmingham was getting all of the attention, according to the release.

“We thank Mayor Bell for joining with us to make neighborhoods and schools the city’s priority,” the release states.

Today’s meeting was not without some controversy.

The council had Bell make one key change in the wording of a single line item – $1 million in funding for a reading initiative in the Birmingham schools to be carried out in partnership with Birmingham Public Library.

The council voted 8-1 to approve the ordinance but insisted that the name of the reading initiative, as listed in the budget, be changed to include the names of the city and the library only, not the school board.

Some council members – principally Marcus Lundy Jr., Lashunda Scales and council Pro Tem Steven Hoyt – raised concerns about the performance of the Birmingham Schools and their leadership and wanted to see much more detail about the planned initiative.

Hoyt and Scales both noted that 18 of the city’s 43 schools were rated as failing by the state in early 2016.

The schools have tried numerous other reading initiatives since 2000 and that “most of them have failed,” Councilor Kim Rafferty said.

Bell suggested that the line item be merely be removed and the money temporarily put back in the general fund – giving the library and the schools time to come up with more a detailed proposal.

However, the council made the changes, with Abbott – who had said earlier that she didn’t want to “poison the well” with the school board – as the sole dissenter.

Austin told Bell that the council “had issues of accountability,” not with the mayor or his administration, but with the school board.

To read the entire budget at a Dropbox page set up by the city, click here.