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By DONALD MOTTERN | Staff Writer

Pelham City Manager Gretchen DiFante delivered an in-depth review of Pelham’s approach toward the future during the presentation of the city’s proposed budget for the 2025 fiscal year on Wednesday, Sept. 4.

In doing so, DiFante debuted the development of a new operational doctrine for the city and explained how it will be focused on planning for the future and setting up Pelham to continue its success in the years to come.

Setting the groundwork for this new approach, DiFante highlighted and defined the two preceding eras of Pelham’s development, that have taken place during her tenure and the time immediately prior to her taking the role in August 2017.

The first of these eras was defined by DiFante as Pelham’s “Build” era, and highlighted how the period of 2016-2018 was specifically focused on building a plethora of new projects. During this time, the city primarily used cash in its possession to afford those efforts.

“They used a lot of cash to build a recreation center, public library, expanded the city park and did major expansions and a renovation on the Pelham Civic Complex and Ice Arena,” DiFante said. “That was in two years—very quick.”

Then from 2019 to 2024, DiFante identified that the city shifted its focus to that of fixing properties and assets that it already held in its possession through the mutual use of bond funds and cash.

“When I first got here and was working with the Council, we realized very quickly that the city had no capital plan,” DiFante said. “What we had (to tackle) in our fix focused years was a lot of infrastructure that was in disrepair.”

DiFante specifically cited projects such as the complete restoration of City Hall which had developed water leaks and mold due to years of under-maintenance. Another example was that of the drainage repairs and infrastructure improvements to the Ballantrae golf course.

The closing and replacement of Fire Station No. 3, the restoration of Fire Station No. 2, improvements to the Pelham Tennis Center and Racquet Club and the city’s focus on repairing its aged water infrastructure were also specifically listed among the projects that were begun during this phase.

She also described this phase as having brought focus toward the revitalization and renewal of Pelham’s internal culture. It was during this time that the city first brought in a trained Human Resources professional to manage the city’s HR department.

“This is not a small thing,” DiFante said. “When I got here in 2017 there were just under a dozen cases in litigation related to personnel practices. There have been no personnel related litigation actions since we hired the right people. That is huge.”

Moving forward and looking into 2025, DiFante described that the city of Pelham will now be approaching its mission with a new doctrine—Planning.

“We’ve fixed all of this,” DiFante said. “We’ve built a lot and I would dare say that, while there a few things that still need to be fixed, it is now time to step back and plan. We are going to be doing our second citizen survey. For the past three years, this Council has made its priorities based on what the citizens say their priorities are and this Council wants to continue to do that.”

DiFante explained that the reasoning for a new survey is to ensure that the city’s knowledge of what the public desires is accurate and up to date.

“We’re also investing in artificial intelligence technology that can give us insight into how and where people spend their time in Pelham and what people go outside of Pelham to do,” DiFante said. “This specific technology has been around for a long time and has gotten more sophisticated. Now it has (also) become affordable.”

She assured the public that these systems do not track individual or personal identifiers or characteristics and can be described as measuring public traffic on a generalized basis.

The city’s new enterprise resource planning system that will complete its rollout in 2025 was also credited in the city’s initiatives toward developing its ready access to data along with Pelham’s 311 system which serves as the municipality’s outward facing interface with the public.

“For planning you need data,” DiFante said. “We have a lot more data available to us now, which will be able to inform our planning process. We have started strategic planning and zoning plans which will be completed in 2025 along with a long-term plan for economic development and a park master plan that is already completed (and will be taken) to that next step with some of the information we will get from this AI.”

She further shared that those elements will prove vital in the establishment of future strategic action plans.

According to the most recent census data, the city of Pelham is home to 25,412 people, which has increased at a rate of 4.8 percent since 2020.

“The projection is that between 2025 and 2030, we will see an additional 3 percent increase in population,” DiFante said. “So, Pelham is growing at a slight but steady rate.”

As part of the city’s new initiative, Pelham is also kicking off Pelham University in 2025, which is a training initiative for city employees that will see half of the city’s staff attend 18 hours of intensive customer service training.

Those interested in viewing the city of Pelham’s proposed budget for 2025 can do so by visiting Pelhamalabama.gov/178/Finance-Department.