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Solomon Crenshaw Jr.
Lloyd Shelton said Mountain Brook has a finite amount of money and must spend it wisely.
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Solomon Crenshaw Jr.
Amanda Hood discussed safety measures in Mountain Brook schools.
The Mountain Brook City Council adopted its 2025 fiscal budget on Monday night. It is what Councilman Lloyd Shelton called the city’s most challenging budget.
“We’ve had some challenging years in the past but this may have been the most challenging from where we started to where we finished,” said Shelton, who is an accountant. “Money and time are finite resources. How do we spend that money wisely? Citizens expect excellent service and we strive to provide it but we can’t just go flip a switch and say, ‘Oh, now we’ve got enough money.’”
Shelton cited the challenge that emerged a couple of years ago when the Personnel Board said municipalities had to give first responders a pay increase. There are two ways you can implement it.
“For a city our size, that was $1 million or so,” he said. “That’s tough. That’s more than our surplus we budgeted. Now we’ve got to figure out where we find that. You get some nice sales tax revenue from Lane Parke and that helps. It’s just a challenge.”
Shelton noted that Mountain Brook is unique in that it’s budget isn’t funded as much from sales tax as other cities.
“We’re the only city in the state – at one time there were two – where our No. 1 source of revenue is real estate taxes,” he said. “Once people’s houses gets assessed and tax gets taken, we don’t have a large sales tax base, which usually drives everybody’s revenue budget. Sales tax is about 28% of our overall budget; real estate taxes are 40%. Then you have various miscellaneous pieces.”
The councilman said Mountain Brook has a fiscal 2025 revenue budget of $54,600,000.
“That’s about a 1½% increase over our prior year and we’re budgeting a surplus of $500,000 for the fiscal year ending Sept. 30, 2025,” he said. “If you look at expenditures by department, the three largest are 20% on fire, 20% on police and another 15-16% on public works.
“We’ve got fields we need to do (and) we’ve got flooding projects,” Shelton said. “All that’s in the capital budget. That’s outside our operating budget, paying employees and keeping the lights on and all that sort of thing. How do we do sidewalks on Montclair? How do we do a grant? How do we do a roundabout? It’s an 80-10-10 with the City of Birmingham and us. We’ve got this finite amount of money so how do we spend it in the most efficient way?”
During the council meeting, Mountain Brook Schools Superintendent Dr. Dicky Barlow and Amanda Hood, the director of student services, talked about school safety.
“Every school system has someone that’s considered a safety officer (and) that falls under my job description,” Hood said. “I work on the school end to coordinate with our city services. We plan and we address issues as they come up.”
Hood said she feels confident that Mountain Brook's system has a team of people who think about the security of Mountain Brook Schools and the community.
“I know we are planning in advance to help to make sure our kids can come to school as safely as they possibly can every day,” she said. “I’m grateful for the relationships and I’m grateful for the board of education and the strides we’ve been able to make in putting these systems in place.”
Following a proclamation recognizing Down Syndrome Acceptance Month, the council:
- Approved the coast-sharing of the local government health insurance plan (LGHIP) medical/dental insurance premiums as established by the State Employee’s Insurance Board (SEIB).
- Increased the salary schedule for all classified, unclassified and part-time employees by 3%.
- Executed a master contract with Alabama Power Company for public safety services in the form of surveillance equipment.
- Accepted the proposal submitted by Wisener LLC for the sidewalk project on Locksley Drive.
- Passed an ordinance to give a raise to the city manager.
- Reappointed Kirk Forrester to the Library Board.
- Accepted the Montclair TAP grant bid from Sain Associates.
- Accepted, subject to modifications, the construction engineering and inspection (CE&I) contract for the roundabout project from CB&A for $1.4 million.
The Mountain Brook City Council will host a special work session at 5:30 p.m. on Thursday to discuss traffic improvements on Halbrook Lane, Arundel Drive and Cromwell Drive.
The next regular meeting of the city council is 7 p.m. on Oct. 14.
