City Council - Regular Meeting

I'm City Council and we'll have our invocation led by Dr. Greg Stanley. I'll give you that title. Greg Stanley, our District 9 Chief of Staff. Will you all please stand?

Good afternoon, Council. We bow our heads in honor of the Lord. We ask that you would reign over this divine meeting on today that Lord these council members that steward the business of this city that you would give them gravity of heart and resolution in their spirit to do what is needed for this city We ask, O God, for your divine providence and that, Lord, you would watch over us as, Lord, we do the business of the city of Birmingham. Now, God, we thank you and we invite you, your presence here. And, God, now we ask for your divine guidance. In Jesus' name we pray. Thank God and amen.

Amen. Thank you so much. Good evening, Mr. Clerk. Would you call the roll?

Council Member Gunn. Council Member Gunn. Council Member O'Quinn.

Council Member Smith.

We have some kind of feedback or something.

Go ahead. Council Member Smitherman. Council Member Vassa. Council Member Williams. Councilmember Woods. Good afternoon. Council President Pro Tem Tate. Council President Alexander.

Here. Thank you very much. At this time, we will have our public hearing on proposed 2026-2027 fiscal year city budget. I'm going to turn it over to our chair of budget and finance, Councilwoods.

Thank you, Madam President. Let's see. At the regular meeting of the City Council of Birmingham held on the 19th day of May 2026, the Council adopted a resolution stating that the Council of the City of Birmingham would meet. and the council chambers of City Hall at 5.30 p.m. on the third day of June 2026, at which time a public hearing will be held on the proposed general fund budget and capital budget as submitted by the mayor for the city of Birmingham for the fiscal year ending June 30th, 2027. And notice of the adoption of said resolution was given a publication in Alabama messenger, a newspaper of general circulation and said city, uh, doing city printing on May 27th, 2026. At this time, the council will receive any written or oral comments and suggestions with respect to the expenditure of said general fund and proposed capital budgets. At this time, we do have some individuals that have signed up to speak, and we'll call you up and ask that you keep your comments to three minutes. At this time, Oneyemi Williams.

Good evening, counsel. Wait a minute. I'M HERE ON BEHALF OF THE WEST SIDE LEGACY PROTECTION FUND. MY NAME IS ONOYEMI WILLIAMS AND I'M PART OF THE WEST SIDE UNITED AND LEGACY HOMEOWNERS OF GRAYMOND, EDEN RIDGE AND EAST THOMAS. WE ARE HERE BECAUSE THE COUNCIL IS PREPARING TO VOTE ON A $650 MILLION CITY BUDGET THAT LEADS THE GLORING SYSTEMATIC HOLE RIGHT IN THE HEART OF THE HISTORIC WEST SIDE. while the city celebrates the $50 million HUD Choice Neighborhood Grant. Federal rules have marooned the surrounding blocks. Graymont is being exploited. Planners drew Legion Field into a grant to win the federal points, but barred our resident blocks from receiving a single dollar for home repairs. Enum Ridge and East Thomas have been made completely invisible. While our blocks get zero, look who is cashing in on our historic footprint. The private developers of our community are legally positioned to capture up to $38 million in pure corporate development fees off of this project. UAB is treating our community as an open classroom for academic and health tracking metrics, happily collecting data from our doorsteps while ignoring our leaking roofs. Almost a half a billion dollars is slated to be invested on the west side of Birmingham and our residents are basically gonna be pushed out. Worse, we're dealing with political shell games right here at City Hall. On May 22nd, an article regarding funding under Councilor Smitherman's piece listed Smithfield communities to generate positive headlines, but when we traced down the actual dollars, the funding for the rehab of our homes were given to a district we're not living in. That's a textbook bait and switch. Our historic name is repetitively used in order to bring in dollars and the legacy of our community. This is all happening while the US Coast Guard has executed a $126.5 million purchase of the Birmingham Southern Campus, bringing thousands of personnel into our radius. Out of state corporate speculators have already started circling us, leaving these type of documents on our doorsteps, attempting to buy and purchase the homes of the residents that are living there. We're asking that the council make a line item of a $7.5 million redevelopment for their legacy homeowners of Graymont, Eden Ridge, and East State Thomas so that we can remain in our homes despite the taxation that's going to come to our community as a result of the developments being made in the community. This is classic gentrification, and it's in the modern day language. And we're the ones who are facing losing our homes and the legacy of our community. So again, we're asking that a line item of parallel funding be placed into the city budget. $5 million of a loan that was loaned to Birmingham Southern has been returned to the city. We're asking for $2.5 million of CBD flexible grant dollars be made available to residents, not based off of being at the poverty line, but being legacy homeowners of the community. Thank you.

Thank you, Ms. Williams, for your comments. I will add that request to our list, specifically for adding a line item. I know it's 7.5 for legacy homeowners, but we'll Ensure that's on the list and make sure we circulate feedback as well. Thank you. Thank you. Rob Burton.

How are we all doing this evening? Good. I'm glad to hear it. Again, my name is Rob Burton. I live at 1907 Fifth Street South in Glen Iris. I am the Southside Community President. And amongst other hats, I am also currently serving as a committee member on the CAB's budget committee. I also want to thank, I know there's a lot of neighborhood officers here amongst other residents. I'd love to see that. Glad everybody came out. And I also want to thank the council for giving myself and Mr. Smith an opportunity to speak with y'all two weeks ago to present the CAB resolution that was passed a few weeks ago. As we've already spoken about that, I don't want to go too in-depth into that today. But I also wanted to thank the council. I got an email about this public hearing on Monday that was sent out with your weekly, like, here are the meetings of the week. And I appreciate you all sending that out.

Mr. Bursar, to interrupt, I do want to make sure you're aware that you are on a time limit. Yes, sir.

So I want to recognize, though, that despite that email that you all sent out, I am also in a state, a lack of concern about the publicity that was sent out about this meeting as a whole from this city. That includes the fact that as neighborhood officers, we received emails from this city, both from the Community Resource Service Department and from other divisions of the city over the last two weeks. Many included information about the budget, and none of those emails included information about this public hearing. Those are obviously not in your purview. Those are not your employees. But I do have a concern about the fact that that information was not sent out. It makes it hard for residents to give public input. I also recognize that y'all's job as counselors are very difficult when it comes to the budget. That includes the fact that a few years ago, the Mayor Council Act stripped y'all of your ability to make line item changes to the budget. And it also means that currently y'all are not receiving information about the budget request packets, which is a annual problem I hear, and I know is one that the counselors have brought up over the last couple weeks. As such, I just want to say that I believe that the council and the CAB and neighborhood officers can work together to create a really positive and close relationship to advocate for the information that both the council and residents need in order to review the budget and to ensure that the council has the information that y'all need to do the job that I know you need to do and want to do. And I believe that the CAB would be a good entity to play that go-between, because as I mentioned two weeks ago, the CPP, the Citizens Participation Plan, explicitly mentions that part of the CAB's job is to give advice on financial documents, including the city annual budget. I will end this by simply saying that I would love to talk with counselors either individually or as a body as a whole more. I believe if so, that would probably be best done with the full CAB budget committee as well as other members of the CAB leadership. And so I would love to hear from you all to include continuing those conversations. Thank you very much.

Thank you, Mr. Burton. Tremaine McIntosh.

Good evening, Council. So I'm here to speak about, as the neighborhood president of Weiland and human rights commissioner for District 9, we have got great support from our councilwoman on all the projects that we do in our neighborhood. And I'm here to address y'all about going from the $2,000 to the $10,000 budget. As our neighborhood is we making players for our future and we plan on making great progress in our neighborhood, we need more funds to be able to do some of the projects we're doing. As we talk about our parking parks, our benches, our kids, we donate funds every year to our schools, to our football team, and stuff like that. But with $2,000, you know, that don't go far. We donated $1,000 to the school one year. We donated $1,000 to the football team. That money is gone. Then we have NUSA, which is $4,500. Then we have these other projects going on that we don't have the money to go beyond the things that we want to do. And the city of Birmingham being one of the only cities in the state that actually has a neighborhood fund where the people is in charge of their own funds and able to do things for their neighborhood. I think it's in our best interest to go back to the 10,000 so we can move forward and give the residents the power they need without always having to come to the council. So I'm here in front of you today to ask you all to vote. to amend our stuff back to the $10,000 that it used to be because we need it. We got different projects like we need benches at our parks. We shouldn't have to go through the park board and all these other things if we already have neighborhood funds. We do do our fun days and other community events, and we want to be able to continue doing this in the future, seeing that it's not as many young people in here. I thought it was my duty as one of the young officers to be able to come in Represent the youth because we are the future and we got to make sure this future is being passed to the people below us so I'm thinking I'm Hoping that we can get this thing admitted back to what it was So that we can move forward for a better future for our city and that's all Thank You mr. McIntosh we have your request for $10,000 for neighborhood funding added to the list miss Doris Sims

Um, Mr. Chair, may I, um, just address briefly. So, um, I want to thank you for your service, especially as a former neighborhood president. Um, I know what you all do is a thankless job and it's a volunteer job. So you guys are what helps make the neighborhoods thrive, especially when the job is done. Right. But about a year or two ago, we actually asked for the balance of every neighborhood in Birmingham. And we have neighborhoods who have close to almost $50,000 in their bank accounts that is not being used. So that's part of the reason why you saw a decrease, because even though you guys are doing your due diligence and using your money, you know, we have other neighborhoods who are sitting on the funding. Now, maybe that's something we can help you all. Maybe you would like our state representatives, et cetera. Maybe they can give to your fund to give you more money, and then you guys can do it that way. But there are other avenues. I don't mind talking with you. But that's part of the reason why you saw, I don't think this before, a lot of us were on the council, why they decreased it.

All right, it's Ms. Simms. Good afternoon.

Doris Sims with Upper West Community in the Bush Hills neighborhood. And of course, today, I'm wearing a hat here to speak on behalf of the biggest thing we've always talked about, Neighborhoods USA, Noosa. Now, Noosa is really one of the best things that ever really, in my opinion, came to be where it fosters neighborhood networking together, bringing ideas and sharing ideas and things we can do to bring back to our neighborhoods to make a difference. And I know Birmingham has done a lot of things with that because I know I've been involved in it since 1995 when they came here the first time. And so I've been engaged with it since then. And then nine years ago, well, almost nine, I ran for the board because I wanted to get more involved with NUSA. And of course, we are still working on a lot of things with NUSA. And so I just wanted to speak about the fact that I know a few years ago, the CP plan before the death of Ellen. Ellen was sort of chairing that. And we had done some line items in that CP plan. But somehow it ended up, I think, in the law department. And I'm glad to see now that from what the CAB has done through, I think, what Rob presented, they put it in there again as a land item. Because what's happening, those of us who represent the 99 neighborhoods in Newsom, at one time we were supportive of our neighborhoods. But neighborhoods' funding has sort of gotten low. So what happened for me during the last six, seven years being on the board, I basically had to sort of network and pay my own expenses to be able to be there to represent the city in those 99 neighborhoods. Because it is very important that we do have a representative at the table. Now, we should have two. But when Ellen passed, we really have not... brought another person from Birmingham on board. I was sort of working diligent to get Ellen on there when at that time I think Dr. Jones was on there and then he did not remain. I saw the potential in making sure that we had those two board person on board. But when Ellen passed, we just have not gone back to . And hopefully we'll get someone else on there, because I only have another couple of years on that board, and I'm going to have to roll off. Once you have that nine consecutive years, you've got to roll off. But we need to have someone ready to step in my place to continue this on for the sake of Birmingham, because Birmingham is the one city that provides the biggest number of delegates there that supports it. We just this year had the virtual at Memphis. Those of us who were on the board were required to come to Memphis and it was where we had the podcast and it is running on YouTube so if you guys get a chance to check it out on YouTube. I saw it came in on the outreach and everything, because I was sort of working behind the scenes. But when I got there and saw the necessity of it, I sort of chimed in with the lady out of the Bahamas and everything with that. It's a great organization. I hope that you all will consider making it a land item so the neighborhoods don't have to, well, let's say I'm in Bush Hill. So if Bush Hill was the only one supporting me, Whereas I represent this 9 and 9 neighborhood, so it should not be just for Bush Hill. It should be for all the neighborhood. So I would love to ask you guys if you all would seriously think about that, because everybody may not be as committed as I am. So when I roll up, I don't know if anyone will be able to go in their pockets and do what I've done and network to get those funding. But it's important that we have someone at the table. It is one of the best organizations around. I know you all heard a lot of negative things about it, but it is great. It's great networking with the various cities. And that's what I was just here tonight to just talk about in support of having Neighborhood USA representation and a land item to pay for the expenses of those who are on that board. Thank you.

Thank you, Ms. Sims. To our public information team, did we have anyone sign up online to speak?

Hands raised right now. No, we do not.

Is there anyone here that did not sign up that wants to speak? If you didn't sign up, come up. We will give you two minutes for each of you.

Thank you, thank you, council. I did not sign up, but I wanted to address what Ms. Smitherman said about the part of the reason that they lowered our neighborhood funds to $2,000 because others had $50,000, and I agree with you. about they shouldn't have 50,000.

I'm sorry. Could you say your name? I'm sorry.

I'm sorry. Donald Smith, Senator Pratt, President, and the community of Pratt. Donald Smith. I just wanted to address that. I agree that some neighborhoods have abundance of funds, but I don't agree that all of us that utilize our funds for the betterment of our neighborhood to buy benches that I did because we had all kinds of broke up benches sticking to our neighbor's legs. So I produced those. I was new, and I didn't know I might could have got it from somewhere else, but I just did what I saw needed. Now, the people that's got 50 and 80 or whatever the amount of money, those people need to utilize those funds. And I don't know how you do that, but they need to be encouraged to utilize their funds because it's for the neighborhood, right? So that's what I think needs to be done as far as that is concerned. But I don't think that those of us that's trying to do for our neighborhoods, we have fun days. We do give to the library. We get to the high school. That $2,000 is gone. So in my opinion, we should try to encourage those that's not utilizing their funds Because that's what it's for, right? But I don't think that we, that has utilized our own funds for the good of our neighbors and elders and children.

We need more funding.

Whatever that number is, you know, I don't know, but that's my opinion about that. So please consider that.

Yes, sir. We've got it on, but I'm going to add that as well. Additional funding for neighborhoods. Yes, sir. Thank you, sir. Thank you. President Hardin.

Good afternoon, Council. Council Woods, thank you for the opportunity to speak. I want to briefly talk to that. The meeting's at 5.30, and the speaker's list was taken up prior to 5.30 arrival. So getting the opportunity, myself coming from work, it's very difficult to get from work to City Hall, get parked, get in the building, and get on the speaker's list prior to 5.30. So if you could take that into consideration. But I'm going to speak to you on behalf of the CAB. As you all may know, I represent the CAB as the CAB vice president. I'm also a community president for the East Pinson Valley community and the neighborhood president for Echo Highlands Neighborhood. And with that being said, I've attended multiple of these budget hearings over the course of a number of years, both in the capacity of a neighborhood officer as well as a citizen with no title. So I understand the position you all are in as it relates to the changes and what you can and cannot do as you hear the requests that are presented to you today. What I would ask is, I think Councilor Smitherman has some suggestions that you all, and I will offer the opportunity to just come speak to the CAB and let's have that discussion and talk about it. I know I submitted the resolution that the CAB collectively as a whole decided as it relates to the allocation of neighborhood funding, and I know that's a concern, but there are some very valid points, and there was actually a very good discussion idea that came up in the course of that discussion as we were debating what we were going to present to you all in the form of a resolution from the CAB. So I would simply ask that you come to us or allow us the opportunity to come to you all, whether that be collectively or in small groups with the committee and myself as vice president of the CAB. I'm the only executive officer, as you all know, of the CAB. So some of my committee members have come and spoke as it relates to the budget. But I'll just talk to you really quickly about some of the concerns I have. I've attended recently here the park survey meetings. I didn't get a chance to attend in my own neighborhood due to a scheduling conflict. But there are line items as it relates to the park. I'm going to speak to railroad parks specifically. It's a great park, but they have a line item in the budget specifically dedicated to that park. Over the course of about 8 to 12 years, it has consistently increased. Now, in East Pennsylvania, we have a rec center that could use $250,000. I'm sure there are other rec centers across the city that could use a portion of that allocation and get some actual capital projects done. With that being said, I was attempting to also look at the capital projects budget because there were some projects that relate to Lawson Road that have still not been completed yet that are tied to ARPA funding. And that capital... Projects budget is not available on the website that you all have for the budget as a whole and I say you all but I mean the city as a whole but I welcome the opportunity for you all to come to the CAB and speak to us or give us the opportunity to speak to you to kind of talk about some of the Concerns or questions you may have because I think there's a happy medium in there If you give us the opportunity to have this sit down have that conversation with you and I do appreciate your time today So you all have a good day. Thank you Thank you, sir

All right, so I know we have at least one person on one, so if y'all could patch them through. Could you introduce yourself, please?

So, which is wonderful. or changes on the actual budget. I also see that there have been increases in the budget to the unhoused services and community-bound reduction services We may even get out of the country or out of the state. That serves our purpose as opposed to some of the unhoused and violent prevention services. uh uh we may see the Graceland Park food opening, but when I got the mention of food opening, the mention of park was not on there. So I would like to see about getting either Graceland Park food open or Fifth Avenue, one of the others. And again, I'd like to, Thank you, Ms. West.

Just a minute, Mr. Gunn. I think we've got one more online. Good evening. If you could please introduce yourself. I've got Mayberry, Jerrica Mayberry.

Yes.

All right. Go ahead. I'm sorry.

Thank you.

Okay. Okay.

All right, thank you, Ms. Mabry. We have recorded your request. All right, thank you. President Gunn.

Just like to say good evening to the council. I'm Johnny Gunn. W. Heights Neighborhood Association, also president of the Five Points West community. Appreciate you all letting me come up and say a few words. I'd just like to say that I agree with most of everything that has been said in person and on the call. Also, I'd just like to, you know, put special emphasis on the western side of Birmingham, especially the West End, Five Points West area. As everyone knows that the western part of the city of Birmingham is lacking. It's been lacking for a long time. There is also part of the CAB We adopted a resolution at the last CAB meeting, and it was presented to the council and the mayor. So I'm pretty sure that you all have that. And that was primarily for the allocation for the neighborhoods. put in a line item for the Noosa delegates or Noosa board, basically what it was all about. So I'm sure you all have that. But we were talking about the increase in the funding for the neighborhoods and putting in some funding for the Noosa. We had a reduction in the funding. Since then, we all know that things have escalated. Prices of everything has gone up. So that's one of the reasons why we feel like that, you know, we need a little bit more increase in our funding to somewhat compensate for the economy. You know, everything's going up, more expensive and what have you. So I just want to just... reiterate some of the things that had already been said, speaking on behalf of the western part of Birmingham.

Thank you. Thank you, sir, and I appreciate everyone being here today. If anyone listening or anyone here has additional thoughts, you can email those in. I definitely encourage you to share them with me, clinton.woods at birminghamal.gov. Getting this feedback is important. Like I said, the budget is key, but we boil down to trying to solve the problems of the community and what people want to see. And so always consistently feel free to share your feedback until we got one more online person. All right, please introduce yourself. Say it again, please.

All right, go ahead, Ms. May. of East Coast. And East Coast is very much in need of hearing from the

Okay. Yes, ma'am. We've been definitely have some funding for street pavement. We can look into those specific streets you're mentioning. All right.

Thank you.

Thank you, Ms. May. Oh, yeah, definitely. encourage anyone to feel free to email in additional thoughts if you have them. And we do appreciate you participating in the public hearing. If you brought a concern today, send me an email and we'll make sure we'll send you some feedback on that. Yeah, we didn't have you on the sign-up list, but we are allowing an additional two minutes.

So feel free to come forth Madeline green Osmo Valley. I wasn't gonna speak I just primarily came to just listen because I've never been to a budget hearing and so but I wanted to make a statement in terms of when people talk about some of the neighborhoods have like fifty thousand dollars or huge budgets, a lot of times they don't have any presidents. They don't have any officers. So who's gonna help them spend that money? Now that's not the case for every neighborhood, but in some of the neighborhoods, I looked over all the 99 neighborhoods today, and I was able to see who had officers, especially a president. And so a lot of times when you don't have that, the secretary doesn't know what to do with the money. So they need the guidance of the CRRs. So I would make that recommendation in terms of that part, looking into the ones that have excessive money. That probably at one point, I think it was some time ago, back in the day when Councilor Abbott was here, and I think she used to ask the city, ask some of the councilors if they had some money that could probably, and I don't know how she put it, could be used in her neighborhood. And so some kind of way, that was back when they had the monitor. I used to watch City Council with my mom, had the monitor on top of the television. And so she was able to get funds to help with her neighborhood. Maybe that's something that we can do also because Oxmoor Valley, we have $11,000 We can't do anything with that being that we want to do. So therefore, the $11,000 is going to sit in there until the little $2,000 keep creeping up. So I also suggest that you look into it in terms of giving the neighborhoods a little bit more money. I don't know how much you would consider, but I think those neighborhoods that are really doing things with the money, you can look into that, possibly talking with those and see what type of projects that we want to do, and maybe you can assist with it. Thank you.

Thank you, Ms. Gray.

My name is Tori Brown. I work in the Winona and Oxmoor Valley neighborhood, and this is also my first budget meeting. I just came to listen. But as I was listening, the ideas that came to the front of my mind were the transparency in the project approval process and the priority list, project accountability assessments for stewardship of the funds that are being allocated to each of these neighborhoods, and having quarterly budget reviews so that if they're not using them, you can actually put it to where it's actually being exercised and actually encouraging those that are seeing the money work for their neighborhoods so that if they're not doing anything with it, they're like, well, if we don't spend this money by the end of first quarter, we're going to lose it to the next neighborhood and they're doing better over there so that they come ready and motivated to be good stewards of the funds that are being provided to them and not just sitting there and wasting. Also, when you have investors that come in, Like in the West End area over at Legion Field, if they're going to get that much money from the government to support them to do that, they should at least have some type of responsibility to give money back with no negotiation. It's like, no, if you're going to come in here, you're going to spend $50 billion, you need to give us at least something back for the people that are there just for being there because they're going to benefit from that. And then the quarterly task priority list. So once you get people motivated and they start spending the money and they start doing what they're supposed to do with the money, now you have a priority list where you can actually keep the funding coming and then you can justify it every year for those federal funds and state funds that are coming in. And as far as potholes and repair, that's just an ongoing. So we can all go out and find potholes and roads that need to be repaired in every neighborhood. But that is across the board for all neighborhoods. And that's all I have for my thoughts.

Thank you.

Thank you, Miss Brown. Come on. Yes, come on. You'll be our last speaker.

Good evening. My name is Cynthia Morton and I work with the rising West Princeton neighborhood. Our neighborhood is on the move. We have lots of senior citizens in our neighborhood, but we only have $11,000 in our budget. We want to do some things, but we can't because we don't have the funding. And when I look up here and it says the people are the city, we are the people. We are the people. And I don't think we should have to get on our knees and beg for funding for our neighborhoods. We need the funding. We're one of the few neighborhoods who own their own community center. We have the Rising West Princeton Community Center. We have a corporation. We don't have any money. We need to have our floors done. We need to have fencing done. We need to have quite a few things, but we don't have the funding. We can't do very much with $11,000 in our budget. I know that Rob asked for 10, but y'all can meet us some kind of way. But we are the city, the people. Don't just have that up there. and don't help us out, you're the city. So we need some help getting some things done. I work quite a bit during the day trying to get things done. I'm on the computer all day trying to talk to this department, that department. We need some curves, some sidewalks in some of our areas. I live in the Rickwood area, Rickwood ballpark. That's a historical community. Our community should look better. We ought to be able to get some funding. So on behalf of Rising West Princeton, I would like for you all to take a look at your budget. And we need funding. But thank you for the opportunity.

Thank you, Ms. Morton. One more speaker. Come on, Mr. Rucker.

Good evening, council, clerk, all the staff. My name is Robert Walker. I'm the president of Wahoma neighborhood, also president of Eastlake community. And I'd like to go along with what the Western president was talking about. Our neighborhood, Wahoma neighborhood, is a very small neighborhood. It's not as large as a lot of these other ones, but we still have a lot of plans that we want for our neighborhood. One of the things that we want, we don't have a school that we can support. We have very few churches that we can deal with. But what we do have is our neighborhood park. And that's what we've been wanting to do. We want to create, take down our playgrounds. and bring a playground back together that's accessible for handicapped children. That's one of the things that we want to make ourselves known for, that we have a playground exclusively for handicapped children and children that's not handicapped. But you can't do that with $2,000 every year. We have a little bit of money. We do. But when you go to these different people, we're talking about the state of Alabama. We're talking about the county and all of that. Even with the city, the first thing that they'll say is, how much money you got? Now, my counsel is Darryl Quinn, and he's a pretty generous fellow. When we talking about redoing the playground, he's not going to finance that by himself. So we got to have some money to do that. Had we been getting $10,000 a year for the last five years or so, that project would have been over with by now. And a lot of other things would have been done, like the speed bumps that we want to buy and put out there. A lot of my neighborhood people I want to talk about cameras because we have a bad situation with dumping and prostitution and all of that sort of thing. We can't even have a good discussion about that until we have money to discuss that. So the $10,000 is not just sitting there in the bank because trust me, if we had $10,000, And we had to sit and let it sit someplace. It wouldn't be sitting in a city hall. It would be sitting someplace else where we can make a little bit more money. But that is what I wanted to tell you. And just be mindful of the fact that we do have projects that we want to... that we want to do, but it's going to take money to do it. And you've got to save your money. You've got to have money in order to go to these different people to get these projects done. Don't think we're just letting it sit there. That's not what we're doing. We just need enough money to do what we need done. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Walker. And again, thank you everybody for participating and sharing their feedback. If you have a question or need a copy of the budget or something, feel free to email me. Again, that is clinton.woods at birminghamal.gov. And at this time, I will hand it back over to President Alexander.

THANK YOU, COUNCILOR WOODS. I WANT TO THANK THE RESIDENTS AND CITIZENS THAT HAVE COME BEFORE US THIS EVENING AND GIVEN US YOUR COMMENTS AND REQUESTS AS IT RELATES TO THE 2027 PROPOSED BUDGET. AS HAS ALREADY BEEN STATED BY OUR BUDGET AND FINANCE CHAIR, THE INFORMATION HAS BEEN RECORDED. WE WILL UTILIZE THIS AS WAYS OF COMMUNICATING BACK TO the administration and utilize this information on our own as we go through the budget and review the budget. We still have an opportunity for anyone who was not here today or if you were here and decided not to give any information or had an opportunity to share your views, you can go to the website and offer that information to us. So I appreciate you again for being here today and thank you for your participation. So at this time, I call for a motion and a second to approve.