HUNTSVILLE – The Huntsville City Council will hold its regular meeting Thursday night with a vote on Mayor Tommy Battle’s financial budget for Fiscal Year 2024 leading the agenda. A FY24 budget must be accepted by the end of the month to go into effect Oct. 1.
The $312,814,218 operating budget, which includes $33,053,691 million in special
appropriations for 67 outside agencies, is balanced and expected to pass but not without
proposed concessions.
At last week’s work session, Battle told the council, “We feel like we’re presenting to the
community what is needed to maintain a No. 1 status (as a city to live in nationwide), to be the best we can be, to provide excellent service to enhance the quality of life and to have efficient use of our services.”
Bill Kling, who represents District 4, wants to amend the budget to fund street sweepers to be “used primarily in neighborhoods throughout the city.” The topic of adding street sweepers to the city’s maintenance budget had traction at the work session last week.
“My plan is to fund five street sweepers, one for each council district, this year, and come back and do the same thing next year,” he told 256 Today on Wednesday. “The people of our neighborhoods paid for an amphitheater that most of them will never use. We should do something for them. We provide garbage collection, bagged, leaf collection, recycling collection, and we should be doing regular routes with street sweepers.”
Regarding the mayor’s budget, Kling said, “I like the $19.3 million for Street, Repair and
Resurfacing, tens of millions of dollars of new roads in the outlying areas of the city, and several hundred thousand dollars for sidewalk repair and maintenance.”
District 2 Councilman David Little is working with Kling on the amendment. Little, a newcomer to the council, said with this “being my first rodeo, I’m taking it all in. I think it’s a good budget.”
Little said he expected discussion on the appropriations section of the budget and perhaps
things like affordable housing and other items that were broached at the work session by the other three councilmembers – President John Meredith (District 5), Devyn Keith (District 1) and Jennie Robinson (District 3).
Other items on the agenda include a resolution honoring Judy Ryals, president & CEO of the Huntsville/Madison County Convention & Visitors Bureau, for 45 years of outstanding service to the community.
The meeting will be at the council chambers and begins at 5:30 p.m. Thursday. It can be viewed live here and on TV on Comcast channels 1088 or 16 and on WOW channels 1016 or 42.
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