Proposed $5.5 million Montevallo budget raises city salaries

Published 3:31 pm Tuesday, September 11, 2018

By Staff Reports

By NANCY WILSTACH / Special to the Reporter
 
MONTEVALLO – Ah! Fall is in the air, and city budgets are just around the corner.
Montevallo is preparing to fine tune an estimated $5.5 million general fund, the biggest chunk of the city’s income and expenditures.
Drafts of the 2018-2019 budget were distributed to the City Council Monday, Sept. 10, by City Clerk Herman Lehman who reminded members that what they received is just a draft, stressing the council can make changes before adoption.
Mayor Hollie Cost set a work session and a public hearing before a special council meeting she is calling for Sept. 27.  
The council is to meet in a budget work session at 5:30 p.m. Monday, Sept. 17.  That event is open to the public, but the council does not receive public comments during a work session.
Those comments can come during the budget hearing that Cost set for 6 p.m. Monday, Sept. 24.
Lehman said he anticipated changes to the proposed budget during the work session and the hearing, as the council gets feedback from its constituents. 
Cost has called a 6 p.m. special meeting Thursday, Sept. 27, to adopt the finalized budget which takes effect Oct. 1, the start of the 2018-2019 fiscal year.
A major feature of the new budget should come as no surprise after the recent inaugural Tinglewood Festival.  It sets aside $10,000 seed money to support the wood-carving extravaganza’s 2019 edition.
The Sept. 8 event probably drew as many as 6,000 people, according to Chamber of Commerce Director Steve Gilbert,  Earlier crowd estimates, based on “clickers” at the main bridge across Shoal Creek, he said, did not include a lot of vendors, food trucks, musicians, workers and visitors who entered from Alabama 25 on Orr Park’s south side.
Another change to the draft budget adds $8,000 to the city’s support for the Chamber of Commerce “to make their director full-time.”  This probably  surprises Montevallo residents who assumed the ubiquitous Gilbert already was working full-time.
The proposed budget also includes a 3 percent step raise for eligible employees, as well as an expected 6 percent health insurance hike.
Montevallo plans to keep the banners waving as part of its lively new “streetscape” downtown, with $15,000 for more banners and decorations and $3,000 for city-wide tree replacement, in keeping with Montevallo’s long-standing designation as a “Tree City USA.”
On the revenue side, the city lives and dies by the sales and use tax, with 5 cents of a total 10 cents tax per retail purchase going to the city.  One cent is divided with the Montevallo Development Community District (MDCD), a consortium of the University of Montevallo, Shelby County and the city.
A penny in sales tax under current economic conditions produces about $600,000.  That indicates that Montevallo depends on 4.1 cents per retail dollar, or roughly $2.4 million sales tax income, for more than half of its anticipated expenditures. 
The city receives other revenue from property taxes, alcohol excise taxes, gasoline tax and rentals of city facilities, the city cemetery and court fines and costs.
The current budget planned $5.2 million in income and expenditures, and the previous year, $4.7 million. 
The city received its audit for last year, although Lehman declined to make it public after Council Members Jason Peterson and Tiffany Bunt asked that they have time to study it before the next council meeting on Sept. 23.  Lehman said the audit becomes public only after the City Council has formally adopted it.

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