City Council - Regular Meeting

We're going to begin the meeting in 30 seconds if everyone would just get their seats and get settled. Good evening, everyone. We welcome you to this meeting of the Huntsville City Council. It is Thursday, September 10th, 2026, 530, and we are met in the council chambers in Huntsville, Alabama. We welcome all those who have joined us in person and those who are joining us virtually. We will begin tonight, as is our practice, with an indication. Oh, I should establish our quorum here. Council members Meredith, Kling, Little, and Robinson are present, and we do have a quorum. We will begin our meetings, as is our practice, with an indication given from one of our Huntsville, Alabama, public safety chaplains. Tonight we have chaplain. Lori McCauley joining us. And normally we would have the Pledge of Allegiance, but tonight, since this is Music Month, we are going to actually have a special presentation of the Star-Spangled Banner performed by the Huntsville City Schools and Maitland Conservatory students, Kennedy Anderson, Kennedy Freeman, and Giselle Patterson. So please remain standing for the National Anthem. And we will preserve in that order. We'll begin with an invocation from Ms. McCauley.

And we'll let y'all... Our Father, who art in heaven, we thank you right now for the favor of life. Father, please forgive each one of us, Father, if we have said anything, thought anything, or acted upon anything that goes against your creation for us. Father, we are inviting you right now to this room, Father, so that all deliberations, discussions will stay in line in a way that's in decency and order. Father, they have done their research. Now allow them to wait for your revelation. They have done their study. Now allow them... Father, to experience your spirit. As we go from this place, Father, let us go in one. In Huntsville, we say we are one Huntsville, Father. So let that spirit of one dwell upon this place so that every action they do will build up the lives of the citizens that they have been in charge of. In the name of Jesus, I pray. Amen.

Oh, say can you see by the dawn's early light What so proudly we hailed at the twilight's last gleaming? Whose broad stripes and bright stars through the perilous fight O'er the ramparts we watched were so gallantly streaming? And the rocket's red glare The bombs bursting in air Gave proof through the night That our flag was still there O say does that star-spangled banner yet wave O'er the land of the free and the home of the grave. The grave.

Thank you very much, ladies. And thank you as well, Dr. McCauley. Let the record show that Ms. Watkins has joined us on the dais. We will move on to approval of the agenda. Item 20B will be taken out of order for action after resolutions and before presentation. We have also had a request for unanimous consent to consider item 21G, and we will take that up when we get to that item. Are there any other changes or additions to the agenda that anyone is aware of? Is there a motion to approve the agenda as stated?

Second.

A motion from Mr. Kling, second by Mr. Little. All in favor, please indicate.

Aye.

Opposed? The motion carries. We now have approval of the minutes of previous meetings. For A is minutes of the regular meeting of the City Council held on August 27, 2026. Are there any changes or additions to those minutes? Hearing none, those minutes will be accepted as presented. For B, minutes of the special session of the City Council held on September 1, 2026. Are there changes or additions to those minutes? Seeing none, the minutes will be accepted as presented. The mayor has two recognitions. 5A is a recognition of Huntsville City Schools and Maitland Conservatory students Cedric Warren, Kennedy Anderson, Kennedy Freeman, and Giselle Patterson for their contribution to Music Month. Mayor Bell.

And if I could ask Matt Maitland, Matt Maitland, Matt Mandrella, to come up, who is our City of Huntsville's music officer, and introduce some of these young people to us and tell us about the achievements and what we're doing for Music Month.

Great. Thank you, Mayor. Thank you, everybody, for being here. Let's bring up our Lee High School students. If you have the privilege to be coming in through the front door, too, we had an amazing performer on the piano. That's Cedric Warren. And so we're going to be recognizing Cedric, Kennedy, Kennedy, and Giselle. And what school do y'all go to, and what grade are you in?

I go to Lee High School, and I'm in 12th grade. I go to Lee High School, and I'm in 12th grade. Hi, I'm Giselle Patterson, and I'm in 12th grade.

Hello, I'm Cedric Warren, and I'm in the 9th grade.

And as part of Music Month, we incorporate music into city council meetings and all other places throughout the city. And this year for these meetings, we teamed up with Mario Maland at the Maland Conservatory, one of the most dynamic music educators in the region. actually the country in my opinion. And so he helped us identify, we wanted to really like kind of get recognition to Huntsville City school kids this year. And so he's helped us identify some amazing talent within our school system. And they're singing amazingly and playing amazingly, not only here, but out in the community. And we just want to thank you so much for being here.

And more than just being here, thank you for your beautiful music to start us off with. Music calms the beast, and maybe you calmed the beast of city council tonight. Thank you for coming.

And thank you all again for opening our meeting in such a wonderful way. The next item, 5B, is a proclamation to declare the month of September as Childhood Cancer Awareness Month. And we have asked to combine that with item 6A, which is a resolution recognizing St. Jude Clinic at Huntsville Hospital for Women and Children during Childhood Cancer Awareness Month. Is there a motion to approve the resolution? Motion to approve. Second. Motion from Mr. Lill, second from Mr. Kling. All in favor, please indicate. Aye. Opposed? The motion carries. So we will have these presentations together with folks from St. Jude and the Cancer Awareness Office.

You're multiplying. Look here. They're good. Thank you all for coming tonight.

We have room over here, too.

And I'll start with mine first. Whereas childhood cancer remains one of the leading causes of disease-related death among children in the United States, and whereas children diagnosed with cancer demonstrate extraordinary courage, resilience, and determination as they face treatment, recovery, and many challenges associated with their illnesses, whereas the families of the children with cancer often experience significant and emotional, physical, and financial challenges, And whereas health care professionals, researchers, caregivers, volunteers, and charitable organizations work tirelessly to improve outcomes, advance research, and provide hope and support to children and families affected by cancer. And whereas increasing awareness of childhood cancer encourages early detection, supports research efforts, promotes community involvement, honors childhood cancer survivors, and remembers those whose lives have been lost by this devastating disease. Whereas Patricia Haley Charity, Inc. serves children and families impacted by childhood cancer by providing assistance, encouragement, educational support, resources, and programs designed to help families navigate difficult times. And whereas the City of Huntsville recognizes the strength and bravery of children battling cancer, honors survivors, and remembers those who we have lost. and recognizes the dedication of health care professionals, caregivers, charitable organizations, and community advocates who support these families. Now, therefore, I, Tommy Battle, mayor of the city of Huntsville, do hereby proclaim the month of September as Childhood Cancer Awareness Month. And I present this to you saying thank you so much for all the efforts that you do. There's no way that we can say enough. for the work that y'all do to make this community a better place and to help those who are in need. Thank you.

So now that we are celebrating, recognizing this month those who care for children with cancer, it's appropriate that we also recognize St. Jude's locally for the work that they do. Whereas the city council and the mayor of the city of Huntsville, Alabama wished to recognize St. Jude Clinic at Huntsville Hospital for Women and Children during Childhood Cancer Awareness Month for their dedication to ensuring children in Alabama have access to St. Jude resources without leaving the comfort of their homes. Whereas founded in 1962 in Memphis, Tennessee by Danny Thomas, St. Jude Research Hospital began its mission to care for children affected by fatal diseases, particularly cancer and leukemia. Whereas four years after St. Jude opened its doors, a significant milestone was reached. Its first group of patients demonstrated sustained cancer remission, marking the first cases of acute lymphoblastic leukemia to be successfully taken off treatment. And whereas since its opening, St. Jude Research Hospital has become a global leader in pediatric cancer, reporting an astounding 94% survival rate for patients with ALL, using therapy that does not expose patients to toxins and radiation. Whereas over its 64 years of operation, St. Jude has helped push the childhood cancer survival rate in the United States from 20% in 1962 to more than 80% today. Whereas in 2007, St. Jude opened a clinic in Huntsville in collaboration with Huntsville Hospital Health Systems that cares for children with cancer and blood disorders, serving as one of eight St. Jude affiliate clinics in the United States. Whereas through the diligent work of the clinic, children in Alabama who are affected by cancer and blood disorders can receive quality care close to home. Now, therefore, be it resolved that the City Council and the Mayor of the City of Huntsville, Alabama do hereby commend the St. Jude Clinic at Huntsville Hospital for Women and Children for furthering the mission of St. Jude Research Hospital, ensuring local children have full access to successful cancer and blood disease treatment, bringing researchers one step closer to finding a permanent cure for childhood cancer.

Hi, I'm Dr. Marla Daves, medical director at the St. Jude Clinic here in Huntsville, and I'm just so grateful that you are taking the time to recognize this cause that's so important to us and means So much to us and the people in front of you have dedicated our lives to fighting this disease. In front of you, you have nurses, social workers, pharmacists, administrative staff, dietician, and survivors. So we are so very grateful to you for recognizing that. There's 400,000 children diagnosed a year in the world, and around 30 to 40 of those kids are from North Alabama, and we get to serve those kids, keep them at home, and then follow them. And I just am so grateful that the community supports us and our mission.

Thank you. Thank you.

All right.

Squeeze in. Squeeze in, squeeze in, squeeze in. Act like you like it. I know. I know. All right.

Thank you. Thank you so much.

It's going to be a whole lot of up and downing. 6B is a resolution recognizing the week of September 14 to 18, 2026 as Constitution Week in Huntsville. Is there a motion to approve?

Move to approve.

Motion from Mr. Little, second by the chair. All in favor, please indicate. Aye. Opposed? Motion carries. And I will ask our friends from the Daughters of the American Revolution to come forward. Thank you for joining us, ladies. Whereas the City Council and Mayor of the City of Huntsville, Alabama wish to recognize the week of September 14 to 18, 2026 as Constitution Week in Huntsville and recognize the Twickenham Town Chapter of the National Society Daughters of the American Revolution for hosting a Constitution Day celebration September 17th. Whereas for over 70 years, Constitution Week has been nationally recognized to remember the meaning of the United States Constitution, America's most important document, which stands as a testament of the diligence of Americans to maintain their liberties, freedoms, and rights. And whereas in 1955, the National Society of Daughters of the American Revolution petitioned the United States Congress to annually set aside September 17 to 23 to be observed as Constitution Week. Whereas throughout Constitution Week, the National Society of Daughters of the American Revolution has striven to reinforce the responsibility of Americans to protect and defend the Constitution and emphasize that the Constitution is the basis for America's heritage. Whereas Constitution Week provides Americans with opportunities to learn more about this significant document and celebrate the freedoms it grants. Whereas to formally commemorate the signing of the United States Constitution, the National Society of the Daughters of the American Revolution encourages every chapter to host Bells Across America, a celebration where participants gather to ring bells, much like the church bells rang across Philadelphia when the Constitution was first signed at 4 p.m. on September 7th. 1787. Whereas the Twickenham town chapter of the National Society of the Daughters of the American Revolution will be hosting their Constitution Day celebration on September 17 at the Signals Museum. Now therefore be it resolved that the City Council and Mayor of Huntsville, Alabama do hereby recognize the week of September 14 to 18 as Constitution Week in Huntsville and encourage all citizens to study the Constitution and reflect upon the privilege of being an American with the rights and responsibilities that privilege entails.

Thank you so much. Thank you so much. We are so excited about this week coming up. In fact, we're just going to keep going to the 23rd of September. It's going to be a great thing. Our chapters are going into the schools and teaching about the Constitution. And we're going to have a wonderful group activity. Five-chapter, Madison County chapter activity, Constitution Day event celebration with Ben Franklin and the Rocket City Chorus and games and all kinds of fun things. And there will be cake. So it's going to be a lot of fun. And Mayor Battle, I hope you'll be attending. Anyway, thank you so much for this honor. We really appreciate our community. And thank you so much for the board for allowing us to come here today. Thank you. Thank you for giving us this opportunity. Thank you, ladies. We'll see you on the 17th.

Now we have the item that we are going to be taking out of order, which is item 20B. is a resolution authorizing the acceptance of donations. Is there a motion to approve?

Move to approve.

Second. Motion from Mr. Little, second from Mr. Meredith. All in favor, please indicate. Aye. Any opposed? The motion carries. We have here with us tonight Representative Laura Hall. Representative Hall, welcome. And I believe you have a presentation to make.

Well, we don't have any whereases or now-therefore-be-it resolves for you tonight, but we do want to say thank you for the recognition of the $10,000 you have given year in and year out to help aquatics here in the city of Huntsville, more specifically at the Shower Center. How many years have you been doing this?

No, it's been at least, I think, 2010, maybe.

15 years she has been giving money faithfully to the city of Huntsville to be applied at the Richard Schauer Center, the aquatics program. And tell us a little bit about that.

Thank you, Mayor and members. The purpose of the funding is really to make sure those children who do not know how to swim have an opportunity to learn how to swim. And I must say the staff at the Shower Center is certainly an amazing staff in terms of their patience and their love for their job and also making sure that our children have an opportunity to be able to swim, because we find that if you look at the statistics, especially in the African-American community, we always have this challenge of a child dying because they drown. I had a cousin when I was 12 that that happened to. So I learned to swim at age 30. So if I can learn to swim at age 30, the child should have a much better time. So thank you for the opportunity, and we look forward. I think the number that we have reached at this point is like 146 for this year.

That is great. And let us say, now therefore be it resolved, thank you so much for your contribution.

Thank you, Representative Hall, for your generosity. We will move on to announcements and presentations. For the audience and council members, we are entering September, which in addition to being all the recognized months and weeks that we've just gone through, is also the month when we consider our budget. The budget will be read into introduction tonight. We will have a work session on September 18th at 11 a.m., where the budget and other attached projects items will be presented to the council and council members will have an opportunity to ask questions, also share any amendments that they plan to make at the final session which will be September 24th when we will have the regular council meeting when we will approve the budget. So for everyone's attention, council members and public, be aware that that's how we're going to be handling things. Now we will move on to a presentation. 7A is a presentation on the Sound Diplomacy Music Impact Study. As I stated earlier, among other things, September is Music Month. So we felt that this would be an appropriate time to have a presentation on the music audit. With us tonight is Matt Mandrella. And Mr. Mandrella, time is yours.

All righty. Good evening and it's a very exciting time for music in Huntsville and really appreciate the opportunity to share a quick update on where we are and what the latest data tells us about our music sector's growth and its future. Back in 2018, launching Huntsville's first music audit was a bit of a leap of faith. We were the first city in the United States to take this kind of comprehensive, data-driven approach to intentionally growing our music ecosystem. We wanted to better understand Huntsville's own creative identity and how music could strengthen our quality of life, diversify our economy, attract talent, and help shape the city we were becoming. The first audit identified strengths that were already here, but it also revealed opportunities that we had not fully tapped into. It gave us a roadmap of actionable recommendations that the city and our community partners have steadily worked on advancing. And that work helped lead to the creation of my role, the Huntsville Music Office, major investments like the Orion Amphitheater, and a much more intentional approach to growing our ecosystem. And so eight years later, we went back to Sound Diplomacy to ask how far we'd come, and the data tells a pretty remarkable story. Let's see here. Let's start with the big picture. In 2018, Huntsville's music ecosystem generated approximately 191.2 million in total economic output, and that's adjusted to inflation. Today, that number has grown to 278.2 million. That's an increase of roughly 45%. And when we talk about the music economy, we're talking about much more than concerts. It includes artists, venues, festivals, music education, retail, radio, studios, and all the businesses that support music activity. The simplest takeaway from this is that music is now definitely a significant and measurable part of Huntsville's overall economy. To talk about jobs, I think one of the most exciting indicators about this is the employment growth. The original audit identified 986 direct music-related jobs. Today, Huntsville's music ecosystem supports 3,047 jobs across the broader regional economy, and that's 2,424 jobs directly within the music sector. That direct workforce is nearly two and a half times the size it was when our work began. And so that's an increase of about 145% in the employment sector. And so that means real employment opportunities, not only for artists and performers, but also venue and production professionals, educators, technicians, promoters, and many others. So the ecosystem hasn't simply just gotten busier. We've grown it larger, deeper, and increasingly professionalized. Another way that economists measure the strength of an industry is through gross value added or GVA. So essentially, that's the value the sector itself contributes to the economy. Today, Huntsville's music ecosystem contributes approximately 162 million in gross value added. And this chart shows us where that value is being generated. Creation is the artists and the songwriters making the music. Production is the studios, producers, and services that turn that creativity into a finished product. Distribution is how music reaches audiences and markets. Exhibition is the live side of the industry, such as festivals, venues, concerts, and promoters. And transversal is the support system around it all, such as music education, management, equipment, nonprofits, and other professional services. As you can see, exhibition and support services account for the vast majority of the economic value currently being generated. And so that also reflects something we already know. Huntsville has become very good at presenting and supporting live music, but it also highlights one of our clearest opportunities for future growth, and that's the creation and production aspects of things. And so the next phase of our work is not just going to be about bringing more music to Huntsville, it's going to be helping more music get created here, recorded here, developed here, and ultimately commercialized from here. We can also physically see the growth of the ecosystem across the city since the initial audit. In 2018, we had 163 music-related assets mapped throughout the city. Today, we've grown that number to 215, so that's a 32% increase. Those assets include venues, recording and rehearsal spaces, music education spots, retail, production companies, and other businesses and organizations that make the music ecosystem function. So this isn't simply just a story about having more concerts, it's infrastructure underneath Huntsville's music industry that has grown significantly too. Here's one I'm especially proud of. Huntsville now hosts more than 2,200 music events every year. That's everything from major nights at the Orion and the Von Braun Center to local venues, festivals, neighborhood events, songwriter nights, and grassroots community performances. And that variety is important and it matters. A strong music city isn't really defined by one venue, one artist, or one festival. It's defined by the depth and diversity of opportunities happening throughout our entire community. And as part of the sound diplomacy work, they did some specific case studies into our partner venues and events. The Von Braun Center, as we all know, has been the centerpiece of Huntsville's music and entertainment landscape for now more than 50 years, and its economic impact continues to be extraordinary. In 2025 alone, VBC concerts generated approximately $37.5 million in economic impact and an estimated $5.3 million in local tax revenue. And that activity stands well beyond the walls of the VBC. It brings people downtown, it fills hotels, restaurants, and supports businesses throughout our community. The VBC remains one of the clearest examples of how music and entertainment infrastructure can generate real economic value for Huntsville. The Orion Amphitheater has expanded that impact even further. In its first 18 months, the Orion welcomed approximately 315,000 attendees and generated $85.2 million in economic output. Nearly 150,000 of those tickets were sold to non-local residents and attendees. So that's significant because those people are choosing to come to Huntsville because of music. and also spending money throughout our community while they're here outside of the amphitheater. And so that's a very tangible form of cultural tourism that we're able to prove. The South Star Music Festival demonstrated Huntsville's potential on another scale. The festival, even though we lost the second day due to the hurricane, it generated an estimated $24.1 million in economic impact in that single day, while the national attention surrounding its launch generated approximately $218 million in earned media value. Those are remarkable numbers, and when we put that together with the VBC and the Orion, they tell a pretty clear story that Huntsville isn't simply hosting more shows. Music is creating jobs, it's driving tourism, and generating real economic and cultural value for our city. Industry partnerships. Building a sustainable city can only be about bringing great artists and events to Huntsville. We also have to create pathways for Huntsville artists and music professionals to build careers here. That's why relationships and partnerships we've established with organizations like the Recording Academy, Universal Music Group and East Iris Studios in Nashville are so important. They help connect our local creative community to industry expertise, professional networks, and opportunities that frankly they don't have here in Huntsville currently. And they help us build and strengthen the business side infrastructure around our ecosystem needed for that long-term sustainable growth to keep this moving upward. Because ultimately we want Huntsville to be more than just a great place to play and experience music. We want it to be a great place to build a career in music. And so, what is next? That brings us to that very important question. The updated audit gives us another roadmap that we'll be focusing on. We need to continue investing in the things that have led to our success to get us here, like the art of support, music education, the festival and the venue infrastructure, but we also need to really focus and continue expanding the business side of the industry. We need more studios, more managers, and more agents, and just more overall licensing support and other professional services that are needed to help artists sustain those careers here in Huntsville to where they don't feel like they need to move to Nashville. Huntsville has become very, very good at bringing music here, and our next opportunity is helping more music careers and businesses grow from here. That doesn't mean moving away from live music by any means. It just means building on the success we already have so that more of the talent, intellectual property, businesses, and economic value surrounding music can be created, developed, and retained here in Huntsville. We've built the live music economy, and now we need to build more of the industry around it. One final piece of our story that I'm especially proud of, Huntsville is now helping lead this work nationally. The Huntsville Music Office is a proud founding member of the Association of Music Offices. That's a recently launched new national network bringing public music offices and industry partners together from across the country to share best practices, strengthen connections between cities and states, and work on advancing the role that music can play in economic development, quality of life, and community building. For Huntsville, it's another sign that the work we've started here eight years ago is now part of a much broader national conversation. And we're at the table alongside music offices and partners from across the country, and industry partners like the Recording Academy, who produces the Grammy Awards. That matters because cities and states are increasingly looking at music now, not just as entertainment, but as part of their broader economic and community development strategy. And it's exciting because Huntsville isn't just participating in that conversation. We're actively helping shaping it, and we're actively helping lead it. And I think that says a lot about how far we've come. Eight years ago, we were looking around the country for models, and today Huntsville is a model that other cities and communities are looking at. Huntsville is a very special place. We all love it here. That's why we're here. And while the work we're doing is about economic output, jobs, tourism, venues, and businesses and investment and all that exciting stuff, it's also about building a city where people can live, create, perform, and grow. One of the most meaningful things we consistently hear from artists is that Huntsville doesn't just show up as an audience, we show up as a community. And artists feel welcomed here, they feel supported, and they see Huntsville as a place where they can not only go on stage, but they can build a life and not just play a show. So eight years ago, Huntsville made a deliberate decision to treat music as more than just entertainment. Just want to say thank you to Mayor Battle, the support of our city council for that process, all our partners and our local music community, and we've made tremendous progress. And this audit gives us data to show how far we've come and a roadmap on where we're going next. And so we've built the stage, and now it's our opportunity to build even more careers, businesses, and create a value around it. So thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Mandrell, and thank you to you and your mighty team of two for everything that you have accomplished together. Council members, do you have any comments or questions? Mr. Little.

Good job, Matt, and thanks for that great presentation. I'm just curious how the grant programs are going.

It's going great. It's going really great. We haven't maxed out our annual 50K yet. We weren't expecting to, but I think we got close to 40 this year. It's interesting because we're hearing a lot of stories and testimonials about people that are moving here specifically to take advantage of that program, and so it's really exciting. Good. Great. Thank you. Keep up the good work.

Any other comments? Thank you again for the presentation, for the work you're doing, and for demonstrating impact in our community. Thank you. We have no matters with outside legal representative. We will move on to public hearings to be held. 9A is a public hearing authorizing community development to assess the cost of cutting overgrown grass and weeds against certain properties and consideration of a resolution pertaining to the same. Mr. Irwin.

This is a public hearing on a resolution authorizing community development to assess the cost for cutting overgrown grass and weeds at certain properties. The resolution before you authorizes assessments in the amount of $10,937.59. The resolution covers 36 total properties, 21 head owners inside the sea limits of Huntsville, six were out of the sea limits of Huntsville, with nine out-of-state owners.

Thank you. The public hearing is now open. Is there anyone who wishes to comment on this item? Please come to the microphone here, sir. If you will give us your name and address for the record.

Yes, ma'am. Hello. My name is Mohammad Arenijad. I'm the owner of property at 1330 Chickamauga Trail. I received a notice from the Department of Community Development It said I had something like three weeks to get my property shaped up because tenant had moved out. And usually those of you who own a rental property, you know, when they leave, they leave everything behind. So the condition property did not look that good. So when I saw the notice, we reacted. We got everything shaped up. and clean, we have a nice picture of it, but not knowing somewhere in the notice is that they had to cut the grass by a certain date. So the date was missed, but the property was clean. So when we got the notice of $242 to pay for the area which is 10 by 25 yards, to cut for 242. We called the office. We said, well, if you cut it, 242 is not reasonable anyway. And plus, it was really negligence on my part not reading the whole citation. So at this point, I really feel that if I pay 242.66, it's not going to really destroy my economic condition. But I really feel that it's not really fair that the situation that everything written embedded together. So I'm glad to have this opportunity to show up and tell you about my case. Thank you.

Thank you, sir, for your comments. Is there anyone else who wishes to comment? Seeing none, the public hearing is closed. Is there a motion to approve the resolution? Second. Second from Mr. Kling. Second from Mr. Little. Council members, do we have any questions for Mr. Irwin?

If I understood correctly, it sounds like he's gotten his grass cut in the intervening time. So if y'all get out there and it's all good?

Correct. So we have a 14-day notice, and the property remains in violation upon the re-inspection. We issue a work order and go cut. So at any point up to the time we arrive on the site with the equipment to remove the grass, then the owner has the opportunity to do it themselves.

Any other questions? All in favor, please indicate. Aye. Any opposed? Motion carries.

Thank you, Council Member.

Mr. Renijot, if you want to have further conversation with Mr. Irwin, you could do that. Mr. Irwin, would you like to take Mr. Renijot outside? Thank you. 9B. 9B is a public hearing on the proposed creation of a tax increment financing district tentatively named TIF D-8 pursuant to Alabama Code Section 11-99-1. uh... and this is a public hearing only council members there will be no action taken tonight this is simply another step in the process of approving a tiff mister davis is here to make a presentation and then we will open the hearing thank you madam president shane davis director of urban economic development good evening council members you may recall last city council meeting uh... you passed a resolution uh... directing the ministration to

come back and present you a proposed TIF project plan. This project plan would be in Limestone County portion of Annex Huntsville. So we've been working for about three weeks to put this draft plan together and tonight we're proud to present it to you and the general public. So much like the recent TIF for downtown, I do want, especially for the public's sake, to just quickly give a little bit of background on TIF increment financing. Since 2000, the city of Huntsville has been very successful in establishing tax increment financing districts as permitted by Alabama law to finance public infrastructure projects. The principle is very simple. You take future property tax revenues in a defined district. So think of property that is not currently developed, but as it develops, it creates a new tax base. That new tax base would fund public infrastructure. That public infrastructure is put in ahead of time to induce or to entice that private investment. We get routinely asked with the general public, is this a tax increase? It is absolutely not a tax increase. The millage rate that you pay in Huntsville stays the same. That actually has to go by vote of the people to change property taxes. So this is just the way we would use those future property taxes. to fund public infrastructure. Lastly, the existing tax base within that district continues to go to the tax recipients as they do today. So we're not taking any existing revenue away from our general fund, in this case the Limestone County General Fund, or any of the school systems within this tax district. So they'll continue to get whatever they got last year. It will be any future revenues that would be created as a result of this infrastructure. I do want to point out this proposed TIF 8 district is different than some of the others. This would be our third district under the major 21st Century Manufacturing Act. TIF 6 and 7, TIF 6 has closed, was the first 21st century manufacturing zone TIF district. The Mazda Toyota manufacturing project brought before you in the Limestone County Commission, TIF 7, that is active and really moved the needle out there. with public infrastructure and roads and utilities and the things. And through those two TIF districts, what we have created out in that area is over $3 billion of private investment that's now on the tax rolls and over 14,000 new jobs. So the proposed TIF 8 district would be created under the major 21st Century Manufacturing Zone Act. and the TIF 8 district would designate for the future Eli Lilly project that's recently announced and would get under construction sometime next year. That would be our designated manufacturing zone. Under this act with the TIF, you've got to designate a manufacturing zone and we'll get into that momentarily. So let's get into the actual project plan. Just want to provide that background, the differences and also the general public. This is nothing about any type of tax increase. to anyone. So the project area you can see kind of dashed in the black dashed area and shaded in the light shading will consist of just over 9,000 acres. This will be very similar in size to TIF 7 that we did that's to the north and actually goes all the way to I-65. The boundary, generally speaking, would be Old Highway 20 to the north, Swancott Road to the south, County Line Road to the east, there at the airport you see on the right-hand side of the screen, and Pryor Road to the west. And Pryor Road is just west of Exit 3 on the south side of I-565. So what would the project plan look like? So as a result of the city's public infrastructure investments, the proposed TIF 8 plan would capture future property tax millages from future new redevelopment properties within that area I just showed you. So what would we capture of that tax base? It'd be 54 mils total, 35 mils of the city of Huntsville, only 5.5 mils of the education portion, 13.5 mils of Limestone County portion of the overall millage. The overall millage of this area for Huntsville is 60.5 mils. So there'd be 6.5 mils that would not be captured in this TIF district. Upon the creation of TIF District 8, the full implementation of the proposed public investments, we certainly anticipate that it would yield significant new private investment in these areas. If I go back to this map, if you look, it's predominantly undeveloped. That is the purpose of a TIF is to induce or entice, especially under the 21st Century Manufacturing Act, is go make those public investments such that you will entice new private investment to add to the tax rolls. That new investment helps our schools, it helps our general fund, it certainly helps Limestone County's general fund in the future. As a result, preliminary modeling suggests that upon completion of these investments that I'll go through momentarily, would produce a new tax base of somewhere between $20 and $25 million annually that certainly would get distributed between the City of Huntsville, our educational partners, where the millage is broken out, and Limestone County Commission. So let's go through the list. I apologize for the font kind of not aligning on this computer, but it's a pretty long list. It's very similar to TIF 7 in that with the Eli Lilly project, there's an opportunity for us to get a lot done in this TIF district. So Greenbrier Parkway and Greenbrier Road improvements at a cost of $8 million. We'll go into a map and show you these locations momentarily. Interstate I-565 exit three improvements at Alabama Highway 20 at $15 million. With the amount of growth that we've had in industrial recruitment out there, we have a need with the way shift work happens in this limestone Greenbrier area, Exit 3 in the mornings backs up as people are coming from Huntsville westbound to go to these 14,000 jobs. And that's what we wanted. We want our community to take advantage of these jobs we created. So this would make improvements to alleviate that congestion at I-565 at Exit 3. Swancott Road widening, this would go from Exit 3 south to Boeing Boulevard to the airport. It's an area we believe will see significant growth, but this project also helps Eli Lilly and others to have a better route to the intermodal facility for the air cargo at our airport. It takes traffic off the interstate, takes truck traffic in that manner. It was one of the commitments for Eli Lilly, is to have a more direct access route or a secondary route. If there's a wreck on the interstate, it's pretty much a single point of failure. So it's, again, it's heavy in transportation. Prior road improvements, we'll get into that. A portion of that is a relocation of prior road, and one is an improvement of prior road, and you'll see it in the map momentarily. In other words, people's road improvements, so that runs east-west off Swancott Road to prior road. and that will be in support of a new K Elementary School. It is number eight at $40 million. County Line Road relocation upgrades that would move County Line Road from its current location from I-565 south to Boeing Boulevard west. Why would we want to do that? One, it abuts the existing west runway and the master plan of the airport and from an industrial recruitment, we have lost significant projects that need access to a runway. The reason we've lost those projects is not due to workforce, not due to great projects and project sites and great utilities. It's been the delay that you would have to relocate County Line Road before someone could make that private investment. So we think it's the opportunity under this TIF to go ahead and move it to its permanent home. Our long-term transportation plan is to move County Line Road west. It is the long-term plan of Huntsville International Airport, too. So we're following a plan that's been in place. We now believe through this process we have the funds, should this get approved, to go ahead and complete that infrastructure improvement. So I just mentioned a new K-8 elementary school in partnership with Huntsville City Schools at $40 million. Upgrades to Fire Station 18. This would expand the fire station there on Greenbrier Road and Greenbrier Parkway that's supplying not only residential response, but industrial response. And it would allow our fire department to add a ladder truck, which is very much needed in this industrial corridor. And then multiple sanitary sewer improvements throughout that district to, again, to entice new private investment. And then the last is the 21st century manufacturing zone land. council members we purchased the eli lilly site several years ago but before council approved that purchase you passed a resolution that was a reimbursement resolution so should we land on the right industrial project that the taxpayer the city of huntsville would be recouped the amount of money we paid for that property this would do that reimbursement to the city So the total cost of all 11 projects is $230 million. I do want to remind you by state law, under no circumstance without an amendment, both by this body and the Limestone County Commission, shall we exceed $230 million. It's not that you can't, but it would be a very public process to amend the TIF district. We feel confident in these numbers moving forward. So let's kind of zoom in on these so you can kind of see more in general what we are talking about. So again, the Greenbrier Parkway, Greenbrier Road, shown in bullet number one, that is to make intersection improvements to help both Polaris and be one of the main entrances to Eli Lilly. So again, we want to make sure traffic moves smoothly, that people can get to and from work and back to their homes. A lot of truck traffic in Greenbrier Parkway area, and we've just seen with the growth that this is a much needed project. Number two, as I showed you, you can see all the turning movements that we'll be working on at exit three of I-565. And Alabama 20 signalized intersection is just on the north side of the interstate, and that is the bottleneck. So we want to make major improvements there. As you come off the interstate and want to go north, you come upon a light that's Alabama 20 that causes the congestion. Swancock Road widening, bullet number 3, as you can see, goes from that exit 3 due south and then turns east and west and would terminate there at the current county line road and Boeing Boulevard intersection. Prior road improvements is number four that you can see. The square orange box you see is the location of the new K-8 school. So prior road is a very under-designed from a road standard road right now. So what we want to do is there's a small section to the west of the school site that would be removed and be relocated where you see the bullet number four run east and west to tie back into the existing prior road. As you see further south, the other number four nomenclature that runs east and west or left and right on your screen would be the improvement to the existing prior road. So part of it is a relocation and then improving the remainder portion of prior road. People's Road, as you can see, is on the north side of the school that comes off the new Swancott Road design that would go to be the primary access point for the new KH school. There's a new road that would connect, that you see as number six, that would connect from Peoples Road down to the relocated or the improved prior road that runs north and south, essentially parallel to Swancott Road. This does two things. It allows circulation and safety around the new school, but it will also induce, which what is a TIF district supposed to do? A lot of new development, both commercial and residential and the like in that area that you see is 99% undeveloped. Number seven would be the relocation of County Line Road and upgrades. When I speak to upgrades, that would be intersection upgrades near the interstate exit to the north of the airport runway. Move that the road would parallel in a westbound direction on the south side of the interstate and then go due south and connect into the new Wadens-Wancott Road. And then lastly for this slide is a new K-8 school. This school, I do want to remind you, is we have been able to work to donate, have the land donated to the school system at no cost to the schools. And this TIF will actually produce the school for the school system. This school, I do want to remind you that as part of the Huntsville City Schools $600 million ongoing capital plan, this school was in that plan. So it will allow them to take and go further to some of our existing schools. So we see it as a win-win for everybody involved. The last three, number nine, fire station 18 improvements. As I've mentioned, it would fund expansion of the existing fire station to make way for a new ladder truck service for the western corridor. And then 10 would be just general sewer improvements in this undeveloped area so we can prepare for new private investments. And lastly, as you can see, is the Eli Lilly site. would be the reimbursement to the city of the $22 million that was spent on this. So one of the things we always want to show to you and the general public is, you know, this is a lot of investment. This is a lot of projects. It's creating a district. And so what is that return? Where are the areas that we see private investment occurring? You know, I just told you somewhere between $20 and $25 million annually of new taxes to be paid once these investments are. So again, this TIF district is in predominantly undeveloped areas of City of Huntsville, Limestone County. So this shows you eight areas that we've identified. Should we make these road improvements, put these utilities in, certainly with a new school, brings new rooftops, and these would be the pocket areas, certainly the Eli Lilly site. There's about a 300-acre industrial site just north or adjacent to that, and then the south side of 20, and then you come back on the south side of the interstate. So what are the next steps? So here we are tonight, September 10th. We're holding the public hearing by Alabama law and we'll present this to you. You do have the opportunity to make comments and changes as we move forward. That's what this public process is about. So towards the end of this month, we will have meetings or a meeting with designated representatives for the tax recipients, the deferred tax recipients. There's only two of those. the City of Huntsville and Limestone County Commission. So just as we did with the Madison County Commission recently, they will represent one designate. Most likely will be Chairman Daley of the Limestone County Commission. And we'll meet after this meeting, we will actually send them this drought project plan just as you've been presenting it. And then we will meet to go through the plan in detail, see if there's any concerns or changes. And then the 1st of October, the council president would mail out to the deferred tax recipients, that would be each city council member would get a final copy of what this TIF plan would be and also the Limestone County Commission of what we would refer to as the final project plan, the one that would to be voted on for adoption of a TIF 8 district. Tentatively, we're looking at October 5th, the Limestone County Commission would vote to approve their confirmation of the TIF district. And then on October 8th, at a regular city council meeting, it would be the first meeting in October, this body would determine, take a vote to adopt TIF 8 district in Limestone County. Should both Limestone County and this body approve those? October 12th, the finance director would make application to the Limestone County tax assessor, there's a typo there, that would take the legal description that's in this project plan along with the resolutions by this body and the Limestone County to designate and capture those property tax pens of vacant land so that they create the district and the collection going forward. And after that, it would be to move forward in starting to the design and getting these projects built. Council members, I answer any questions you may have.

If we could hold off on that until after we've held the public hearing. So the public hearing is now open. Is there anyone here who wishes... to comment on this plan. Please come forward, give us your name and address for the record.

Yes, Jerry Cox, Greensbury Drive, Huntsville. Hard to believe, I believe that Mr. Davis said that TIP 1 was in 2000. I was sitting in the audience of the council meeting at that meeting. and was quite concerned about this new tool that the city was adopting. General Fanning, he was in charge of implementing the thing, and as I asked some questions, he was somewhat dismissive, which a general would do to an E-5, okay? But it was a lack of understanding of this new tool that the state was providing to the cities. Once I went to the library, the law library, and read the state law and looked at the implementation, the general was not quite so dismissive of my question. Of course, anyone would have a concern when a governing body adopts a two and the first two words are tax increment. So we knew we needed to hang on to our pocketbooks or something. But now we are aware of what tax increment is. And the other one was the area. In those days, I believe we called it a manufacturing something. I guess it's a change to what those initial districts were for. And so it was not covering an area like Mr. Davis has described here in this district. But also, as I read the law, I had some concern about the area of that first till. But in the end, The city was in good hands with General Fanning's implementation of that first TIF and several TIFs thereafter, and I know for sure that the city will be in good hands with Mr. Davis implementing TIF District 8. One thing, I was thinking, well, I'm going to leave it at that. Thank you very much. Thank you, Mr. Cox. I did want to say, Mayor, it's good that you are still using these tools because they are in the best interest of the city.

Thank you, Mr. Cox. Is there anyone else who wishes to comment?

I'm James Endholm, Olivia Avenue, Huntsville. A couple of questions. The land shown inside that map is all within the city of Huntsville right now, is that correct?

This is an opportunity for comments. So we can write down the questions and then we will ask them.

Okay. If the land is all within the city of Huntsville, is it possible to let us know what the current tax take is from all of that land right now so that we can see down the line what the improvement was? We should have a baseline. And also I'm wondering, you didn't mention that the city school board has to give approval. And I know that in the past they have had to because the deferred taxes, or the increases over the course of the TIF that don't go to the schools while you use that money to pay off the TIF, are then deductions from what the city schools would otherwise be getting. So I was just curious whether or not that was... something that had changed under this TIF. And you don't need to answer now if you're not allowed to answer now, but we can talk after.

Thank you, Mr. Linderholm. Is there anyone else who wishes to comment? Just want to say I'm... Name and address for the record.

My name is Darren. I live off of Thames Avenue in Huntsville.

Last name, Darren?

Verhage.

Verhage.

Thank you.

I just want to say I'm very excited about this. I'm very interested and excited about the development and growth that will be happening in this new TIF. It's crazy how far Huntsville is going. And I hope that we can also take this opportunity Since we are expanding and building new roads is someone that's lived off of County line and seeing the crazy traffic. That's there More lanes won't won't be the option be the only option forever. I hope we can explore new avenues such as like bus lanes or greenways or other things like that especially if that area explodes like how the surrounding madison area has been because there's a ton of people have moved in in just the past three years um that's all thank you mr hug is there anyone else who wishes to comment council members before oh

Good afternoon. My name is Sasha Irby, and thank you for your presentation, Mr. Davis. Your address, Ms. Irby. Pardon? Address, Ms. Irby. Your address. Oh, 205 McDonald Avenue, Northwest, Huntsville. Thank you. I just had one quick question. I wanted to know what was the projected time frame for the proposed items?

And again, if you'll address those questions to us, we'll ask them for you. Yeah, absolutely. So projected time frame for the proposed items. Thank you. Okay. Very good. Anyone else wishing to comment? Council members, before we close the hearing, what comments do you have? Any comments or questions? Okay, Mr. Klink.

I believe some of this, I'll give it to Mr. Davis.

For Mr. Davis, or possibly this would go to the finance director, and again, you kind of touched on the concept of tips and confusion. Not a tax increase, right? Yes, sir. Correct. Just one more time, not a tax increase. Historically, on these tips, and this deals with what we're talking about, but historically, have any of the tips that we've had in the past been late in paying back on the schedule that they're supposed to?

Not that I'm aware of. They have typically, as Ms. Smith, our finance director, gives you a TIF update about once a quarter. They're always tracking ahead. I believe, if I'm correct, we only have two active now. I guess with a new one downtown, three. But with TIF, nine will be our third, but really only two that's taken on any debt, per se. But they're all tracking very well.

Okay. I don't want to cross over too much, but I'm just trying to get clarified. A gentleman had asked me a question beforehand. I'm just trying to get some information. The school system is not being penalized whenever we do a TIF. Is that correct? Like this TIF? That's correct.

So... I do want, if I can take a moment, Council President, your question is related to the question the gentleman asked. So the two that have to vote are deferred tax recipients. So those are people who assess taxes and collect them. So our educational partners, both in the county and the city, do not assess. They do not place a millage on property. Both you and a county does that, certainly a state of Alabama. We collect and then we disperse by the millage that we set up that goes to education. So the two bodies that would have to vote on this TIF would be you, this city council, and the Lombstone County Commission. Now, to answer Councilman Cleen's question is, one, the existing tax base that this district is producing today continues to go to everyone that the millage gets cut up. That goes to really four bodies. It goes to City Hall, General Fund. It goes to the Limestone County Commission, the Limestone County Schools, and Huntsville City Schools. Both the Limestone County Commission sends whatever millage that they've got designated to go to their system just as you do. But you and the Limestone County Commission are the two deferred tax recipients. You assess taxes or put before and collect those. So one, it's not a tax increase. Two, we are not taking any existing revenues away from education nor City of Huntsville General Fund or the Limestone County General Fund. It is only the future revenues that would not most likely be seen without these investments. These are very rural two lane roads. I do want to answer the other question. By state law, a TIF district, All the land within that district must be within our sea limits. So yes, you actually see some areas that says the word out. You may not be able to see it at that scale. Those are carved out. So if you look at the exhibit of this plan, you've got a very long legal description that's about four pages. But then it's got what we call less than except where we are carving out those pieces that are not inside the sea limits of Huntsville. So only the land that's within our corporate limits. Did I answer all those, Councilman Kling?

Yeah, and I got one last one. This may be you, this may be the finance director, and this may be a stumper, and I don't mean it to be that way. Do you have a general ballpark estimate from all the TIFFs how much revenue has gone to the school system for capital projects? And again, I know that's a stumper. Plus or minus 10, 20, 50 million, whatever.

I would estimate that we're probably close to $100 million. We can get you that number. I know we have built several schools in a TIF. We have... maybe not fully built, but we've built infrastructure to support a new school or expansion of a school. If you've looked at most of our TIFs, we have tried to put an educational component where it makes sense. We've done some TIFs like the one downtown. We are helping with a new school over on Lowe, the new middle school. but that project was underway. So we're helping with public infrastructure in around that school to make it safer and the congestion. And that's taking away from the school system's budget that they would have had to go do that, right? So if you go look at the history of our TIFs, where we've been able to contribute, if that TIF district has had a school or the school system has in the future said, this is where we want a school, we've tried to help our educational partners always. Thank you, sir. Thank you.

I believe you answered all of the questions, Mr. Davis, except for projected time frame. And I think the question there was, how soon do you think, are you projecting that this TIF will pay off?

So it was a very good question. And there's actually rules around that in the TIF district. so all projects all 11 projects must be started so construction must have commenced within the first five years if that project hasn't commenced that project just goes off the project plan because the goal is to get these projects deployed very very quickly induce private investment so you can pay off the debt for these projects and then see the gains those new property taxes see everybody get that return on investment, the school system, this body, Limestone County Commission. So we'll have five years to get them all under construction. Once they're under construction, they'll run their normal course of completion. So it will happen very quickly.

Thank you. Mr. Meredith, do you have comments or questions?

Yes, I'd like to thank you, Mr. Davis, and your entire team that has been working on this. It's a wonderful product that you've put together, and I look forward to seeing it come to fruition. I would like a copy of this slide deck, if at all possible. And, you know, out west we suffer quite a bit, probably more than any other district, of infrastructure not keeping up with annexation and development. This is a way to totally ensure within this TIF district that infrastructure actually is ahead of the development. That's very well said. the roads that are going to be created and updated around the new school site, perfect example, and of course there isn't fiber there for the most part, so fiber will come in, as will a lot of the residents down Swancott, currently underserved at best when it comes to fiber. They will have access to fiber now. All of those developments along Swancott will benefit from having fiber there now. It will also benefit from a two-lane county road with no shoulder to a five-lane boulevard. But that is necessary so that we can move all of those individuals that live in the residential subdivisions out there to and from um potentially mazda toyota eli lilly eventually uh polaris and others in that area that that housing is generally intended for obviously anybody can move out there but if you're looking to shorten your commute these locations are absolutely the closest that you're going to get yes sir so really appreciate that fact and i hope the citizens of Huntsville understand that even those that may not like the idea of a TIF, that you can't have it both ways. If you want infrastructure to outpace your development, this is the perfect way in this particular case to make it happen. We've got some other developments further out, but we are taking care of their infrastructure ahead of time as well. But this provides the financing base to make sure that it's done in a large scale where development is is really exploding so want to thank you for that also want to on behalf of my constituents that have complained for as long as I've been in office about exit 3 and how tough it is to navigate particularly going south after heading from downtown Huntsville toward Decatur taking that exit and being stuck there for a long time trying to make a left and So I know there'll be some additional movements that have to be made, but that will be taken care of. And on their behalf, thank you. Greatly appreciate it. And I would say that with the relocation of County Line Road, since it's no longer going to be marking the county line, I think Shane Davis Boulevard is a perfect name for that road. Could not happen, no.

I believe this council has a rule, and you better stick to it.

How about that? But that's all, Madam President. Thank you.

I do want to bring up, Council Member, a good point, if I may, Madam President. To the general public for TIF districts, it allows us to advance infrastructure. In this one, it's utilities, and it's roads, and it's an elementary school, and it's going to entice and induce. And it's one of the reasons we've got the largest project in the state's history at $6 billion willing to come into this district. allows it to pay for itself. We are not taking anything away from our multiple capital plans that every part of this community has got needs. We're a growing community. But that new tax base in the future will get spread throughout the city. So this is a short window that we're going to capture some property taxes that's now going to produce 3 to 7x annually that comes back in this general fund that will be spread and used annually throughout every one of your districts. So to me, it's like planting a new orchard. It will bear a lot of fruit that will get spread throughout this community.

Thank you. Any other comments? The public hearing is now closed. Again, there will be no action taken on this. The resolution will come to us with the final plan on October 8th.

Yes, ma'am.

And that's when we will consider it. Thank you, Mr. Davis, for your good work on this.

Thank you, Council Members.

We'll now move on to public hearings to be set. We have several. We ask for your indulgence while we go through these. 10A is a resolution to declare a public nuisance located at 3200 Tucker Drive, Northwest, Huntsville, Alabama, to set a date for when objections will be heard. Is there a motion to set the date for September 24, 2026?

Second.

Motion from Mr. Kling. Second from Mr. Little. All in favor, please indicate. Aye. Opposed? The motion carries. 10B is a resolution to set a public hearing on the zoning of 536.68 acres of land lying on the east of U.S. Highway 72 east and north and south of Little Cove Road to Residence 1 and Residence 2 districts and introduction of an ordinance pertaining to the same. Is there a motion to set the hearing for the October 22, 2026 regular council meeting?

So moved. Second.

Motion from Mr. Kling. Second from Mr. Little. All in favor, please indicate. Aye. Opposed? The motion carries. 10C is a resolution to set a public hearing on the zoning of 3.07 acres of land lying on the west of Dupree-Worthy Road, north and south of U.S. Highway 72 West, Highway Business C4 District, and introduction of an ordinance pertaining to the same. Is there a motion to set a hearing for October 22, 2026, regular council meeting?

Second.

Who made the motion? Mr. Meredith. second by mr little all in favor please indicate aye opposed the motion carries 10d is a resolution to set a public hearing on the zoning of 1.14 acres of land lying on the north of countess road west of jack jim drive to residence one district and the introduction of an ordinance pertaining to the same as their motion to set it for october 22 2026 regular council meeting so move motion from mr little second by the chair all in favor please indicate aye oppose the motion carries 10E is a resolution to set a public hearing on the rezoning of 29.291.30 acres of land lying on the west of County Line Road south of I-565 from Highway Business C4 District to Commercial Industrial Park District and introduction of an ordinance pertaining to the same. Is there a motion to set for the October 22, 2026 regular council meeting?

Second.

Motion from Mr. Meredith, second from Mr. Little. All in favor please indicate. Aye. Opposed? Motion carries. This brings us to agenda related public comments. This portion of the meeting is reserved for persons wishing to address the council on matters relating to the specific content of items on the meeting agenda. Two people have signed up to speak. When your name is called, please approach the microphone, state your name, home address, and city of residence. Each speaker may address the council for three minutes. Speakers shall refrain from entering into dialogue with council members or city staff and from making comments regarding good name and character of any individual. The first person to sign up is Susan Higgins. Ms. Higgins here, who will be followed by Forrest Satterfield.

Good evening. My name is Susan Higgins. I live at 1127 Locust Avenue in Huntsville.

Thank you.

I want to first thank Council Member Meredith for introducing Ordinance 26836 to remove the tax on hearing aids. It's much appreciated, and I hope that all of City Council will support this. I've been wearing hearing aids since I was five years old. I won't tell you my age, but I'd suffice it to say that's decades of experience. For most of our time, I wore two hearing aids, so it was double the cost and double the tax. Hearing loss is incredibly isolating. People with hearing loss rely on hearing aids and other technology to be independent and to participate in their communities, to work, to go to school, and to testify at city council meetings. For most of us, a hearing aid is not a luxury or a want. It is a fundamental necessity for quality of life. Hearing aids last about three to five years on average, so they're not a long-term investment. Many people with hearing loss experience decline over time, so that replacements are needed sooner than that five-year frame. Hearing aids are not covered by Medicare and most insurance companies. It's an out-of-pocket expense, and in this case, it's taxed. They range in price from $99 to over $8,000. I just ordered a new hearing aid on Tuesday. It will cost me $1,950. The tax on that is $78, and that's small in terms of the bigger price, but it's also a big strain, especially these days. I am paying a tax for something I fundamentally need. There's no choice. If I want to be independent and participate in my community, this is the only hearing aid that works with the technology that I need. For many in our community, you are relieving them of a tax burden of between $20 and $40. There's small loss of revenue for the city and a major relief for many of our citizens who are retired or on limited incomes. We'd like each of you to consider that continuing this tax, you are taxing an item that is absolutely necessary and absolutely critical for some of our citizens. It is certainly enough of a budget consideration that next time I'll drive up to Madison City to buy a hearing aid where they have repealed the tax. Many cities across the state are doing this, and I hope that Huntsville would be a leader. Thank you so much.

Thank you. Ms. Higgins, the next person to speak will be Forrest Satterfield. Is Mr. Satterfield here? Forrest Satterfield? He is not here. Then we will, that will, oh.

Hey, y'all.

Your name and address for the record.

Forrest Satterfield, Constellation, so that's 740 Constellation Place Drive, over behind the VBC. Very good. Thank you, sir. I should have gone before Susan. She did a much better job at that. What I will say is that hearing loss is something that is not something that people choose to have. And if we were to tax these people, the total income that I am aware of is between $100,000 and $150,000. That benefit to the city is small, and yet, as Susan so eloquently put, is great to the individuals. And so I would advocate that we take away this tax so that it does not impact people who are, in addition to paying for these hearing aids, paying for the batteries, paying for the procedures, paying for the continued upkeep. You know, as was once again said so well by Susan, these are things that really do add up for the people of Huntsville. Thank you.

Thank you, sir. Now that does conclude our agenda-related comments. We will move on to the mayor's comments.

Thank you, Madam President. Just a reminder to all, tomorrow the 9-11 ceremonies start at 7.46 a.m. at Station 1 on Clinton Avenue, and everybody is invited, all the public is invited to come out. This is the 25th anniversary, and it's very hard for us Very hard to get your head around that it was 25 years ago was when the 9-11 tragedy happened, when people rammed airplanes into buildings in New York City and Washington, D.C., and crashed a plane in Pennsylvania. It's one of those things that our country looks back on and for 25 years we've looked back on this and this ceremony has been taking place for 25 years so that we can remember those and memorialize those who lost their lives in that. We will be there. There will be a good group there, and we would encourage all to come out. And if you can't come out, take a few minutes out, right around between 740 and 750, and just say a little prayer for those who lost their lives again on that tragic day. Going from that news to we have Jazz in the Parks, which is Sunday night. Last Sunday there was a huge crowd down there by mayor's count. We had 45,000 people in Big Spring Park and it was really some great music, great crowds. Even as hot as it was, we still turned out a great crowd and I think everybody enjoyed it. coming out and it's going to be happening for every Sunday through this month. So come out and enjoy. It's at the back of the Art Museum at Big Spring Park. And finally, we want to say congratulations to the to the Hustle Area Chamber of Commerce. They put on the Paracycling World Championship this last weekend. It was hot. And it was very hot out there. I was out there Friday night and had to drink lots of water after I got finished to stay hydrated. And to the crew at the chamber, you showed what troopers you were. You hung in there for the whole Friday, Saturday, Sunday, and Monday. And it was... We showed off our city very well. The people who were here were from all over the world. It was an international crowd, and they couldn't say enough nice things about the city, except where it was hot. But to each of you, and especially to the Chamber, thank you for the work that you did. Thank you for what you did for our community. As I told someone, I said, you know, this really is an exercise of showing that we have a heart and a big, big heart. So thank you.

Thank you, Mayor Battle. We will go on to Councilmember Cummins and hear first from Councilmember Bill Kling.

Thank you, Madam President. One of the concerns I want to express, especially as we start pivoting into a new fiscal year, is it seems to have been a pattern which unfortunately had taken place in numerous streets. I think not just within the district I represent, but I think in other streets that were being resurfaced in other parts. of the city. There's a process where streets, for example, let me use Holiday Drive as an example, is prepped before resurfacing takes place. The contractor and the people come in, they kind of mill the asphalt down, they fix the curb and have everything all prepped up. And then there's a second contractor that comes in who basically takes over and does the fun part, laying out the asphalt with the results that people like to see. There's been a process, it's been a problem rather, where Holiday Drive, for example, spent at least seven months where it was torn up and the residents on it had to live on it, go through the dust, slow down. Occasionally there would be a windshield that would get hit with the pea gravel and they would have to wait and we would still not get a satisfactory response from the public works director about when the asphalt contractor would be coming. I'm using as an example Harwood. Holiday, a similar example, had a long waiting period. Homewood Drive basically went through being milled in the fall and then not being resurfaced until the wintertime came. Eustace, it's still like a work in progress. But I'd like to see if there's some way we can either get with this public works director or whoever takes charge to have something lined up where the contractors know and they are bound by contract and whatever it takes to make it happen, where There's a reasonable period of time where the prepping is done, and then after the prepping is done, shortly thereafter, the asphalting would take place. By contrast, I hate to say this, but in our backyard over here on Church Street, we had something similar where it was milled, it was prepped. And then very shortly after, then the asphalt would come in, and that would minimize the inconvenience that the citizens had to go through. But I think this is a problem. We've got a new fiscal year coming up, and I think that's a good time just to get a process in place, make sure it's going to be followed, make sure that if somebody's going to do business with the city, that they have a certain window of time that they're supposed to do their job, and then the next contractor has a window where he's supposed to do his job and follow through. Because these resurfacings, we like doing them because they're supposed to be a benefit for our neighborhoods and for the people who live on them, but for many of the people, they're very, very unhappy. A lot of inconvenience that took place for those folks. So just something I wanted to throw out for Public Works to do during the upcoming, hopefully, the new fiscal year. That's all, Madam President. Oh, one other thing. No, that's all. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Kling. We'll now hear from Councilmember David Little.

Thank you, Madam President. I'd like to thank our engineering, public works, traffic department, and HPD on being responsive to some citizen concerns these last few weeks. And then also, again, most everybody knows next month is National Community Planning Month. And accordingly, we're going to be doing a meeting out in the Hampton Cove area mid to late October to talk about the good things we're working on out there. That's all I've got. Thank you.

It was a pleasure to have the opportunity to go to the Brown and be involved in the groundbreaking ceremony at Westmore Landing, which is a $2.2 billion investment in Western Huntsville. And it's going to bring retail, restaurants, gathering spaces, and most importantly, a variety of housing options that support residents in that area at every stage of their life. I also had the opportunity to participate in the medal award ceremony during the UCI Para Cycling World Championships last weekend. It was a unique opportunity that I am grateful to the Chamber and the Research Park Board for inviting me to serve in that function, which was an opportunity to not only meet, but interact with some truly wonderful athletes from all over the world. I will be hosting a community forum on flock cameras here in the council chambers next Wednesday, September 16th at 4 p.m. The guests will be HPD Chief Kurt Giles and North Alabama Multi-Agency Crime Center, or NAMAC, Director Kurt Warsick. And the public, as always, when it comes to the forums I host, is invited to be here, hear from the issue or subject matter experts, and ask any questions that they might have of those experts. So I look forward to a very entertaining and informative forum next week and I certainly hope that the myriad of people that have been pounding me and I'm sure my colleagues on Flock cameras actually show up and on the record have their questions answered by those experts. I'd also like to announce the District 5 Town Hall next Thursday, September 17th. That will be at 6 p.m. at the New Hope Cumberland Presbyterian Church on Wall Street in Madison, Alabama. Technically, it's Madison, Alabama. That's a mailing address, but it's definitely the city of Huntsville. And we will... delve a little bit deeper into some of the development that will be happening in their neighborhoods. Finally, brings me to something I had been pondering for quite a while. And it's a difficult decision that I've had to make because I know that certain people are going to paint me as being difficult. They're going to classify me or call me a bomb thrower. But after much prayer, I think it's important to hold this council to following the rules that we are supposed to be operating under. A special session of the council was called by President Robinson for September 18th, and it was published on the council agenda page of the City of Huntsville's website for a presentation of the FY27 annual budget by the administration. I was prepared to hear that presentation and at that time offer any amendments I or my colleagues might have. However, I was informed by President Robinson in an email to the entire council that after meeting with the administration to review the reorganization chart and the fire and police pay raise, she believed it would not be appropriate to hold a special session to review the budget and other matters. And as a result, the council would hold a work session on September 18th to provide an opportunity to review the budget and the impact of the reorganization and raises on the budget. She mentioned later in that email that she did not think we would rush through action or should rush through action on the budget or the new staff structure. This explanation left me not being able to understand the full extent of what was to be presented at this work session. She had evidently just decided to switch from a special session. Indeed, what the? This was not according to state law in Alabama. There was no mention in the email I received concerning that this council needed to make sure that we were fully transparent with the public and the need for a careful review of public transparency. I believe all my constituents know that I am certainly an advocate for transparency for public matters, all public matters. as well as anyone who knows me is well aware that I play by the rules, and I insist that others play by the rules. Perhaps transparency that she has talked about should begin with this council, or at least myself, because I cannot speak for my other colleagues here because I'm not privy to what conversations they had with the president. From my understanding of the proper rules for conducting business and the Alabama law, I do not believe the President of the Council has the authority to arbitrarily change a called and published special session of the Council to a work session with absolutely no input from Council members, and as far as I am aware, and certainly not the opportunity to vote on the matter. If this was done from some sense of personal power or authority, which I don't believe a council president has, and without following the rules or caring about my rights or the rights of other council members, it is a despicable action that must be called out. As a result, I am formally requesting that the City's Legal Department issue a written legal opinion regarding whether the Council President possesses the unilateral authority under Alabama Code Section 11-43-50 in the Huntsville City Council rules to change a properly called and published special session into a non-voting work session over the formal objection of a Councilmember. and whether doing so complies with the public notice requirements of the Alabama Open Meetings Act. And I'd like that by close of business on September 17th. And while I know it cannot be had by next week, I would also request an inquiry of the Attorney General's opinion on this matter. Thank you.

Mr. Riley, will you please comply with that? You will comply with that? Thank you, sir. And we can have that by September 17th? Thank you, sir. We will now hear from Ms. Watkins.

Good evening, everyone. Last Thursday, I had the pleasure of going to Harris Home for Children. The Leo family, Vulcan Corporation, and other community members and volunteers came out for ribbon cutting. The Leo family remodeled the gym, and Vulcan went in and painted and bought furniture and decorated. And when I tell you, it was so... overwhelming to see the community come together to refurbish this facility to make it look like a home for the residents. So I want to especially thank the Leo family and I want to thank Vulcan as well and the other community members that attended. Andy Warhol exhibit, I had the pleasure of going and seeing it last Friday. If you have not went to see it, you need to. My favorite painting is the one of Marilyn Monroe, and I was just excited to go there and see it. Today, I had the pleasure of attending a meeting at Happy Health, and the administrator of the Health Resources and Services Administration, Mr. Tom Ingalls, was in town to award them a $650,000 grant that they applied for. Representative Hall was there, Commissioner Edwards, as well as Congressman Dale Strong. It was a really big deal for Happy Health who are investing in our community and individuals who do not have insurance. So I was very excited about that. Thank you, Susan Higgins, for sharing your story. And I truly appreciate you being brave enough to come to the microphone and talk about your hearing aids. And I definitely support this. I support the effort to eliminate the tax. Some people cannot afford this, and I think this is something that we should support, but I'm going on record saying I support it. Also today, I had the pleasure this morning of wishing our best girlfriend, Toni Terrell, fond farewell on her last day on her radio show. And it was so nice to see all the people that came out. She has so many flowers. I don't know how she's going to get them in her car. And she had all kinds of treats. And it was just great to see Tony. We had her here a couple of weeks ago to recognize her for 20 years of service in the community. We had no idea that her time was coming to an end. But I didn't tell Tony goodbye. I told her until what's next, because Tony has a lot to offer this community. I want to thank Ms. Kathy Miller. And your staff, I want to thank the Madison County Commission, MPO, as well as anyone in the city of Huntsville that had anything to do with getting the approval for the safety measures at Salty Bottom. Thank you so much. And David and I were on an email with you immediately after the meeting, and you jumped on top of it. So thank you so much for that. My town hall is going to be on the 14th at 530 at the Sherney Center. Please come out if you have any questions, comments, or if you just want to know what's going on in the community. The mayor talked about 9-11 and 25 years ago at 9-03 a.m., I think all of us were watching from the first one to the second. The second tower was hit at 9.03 AM, and my cousin was in that tower. And unfortunately, we never got to see her again. What was so crazy about it, she lived in New York, so we would go there in the summers, or they would come here. She was here the whole month of July.

We got to spend some time with her. We got to connect with her. But the memories are still there, and it's hard. She had one child. And he's really been struggling with losing his mother. He never got to say goodbye. He was 13. So don't ever forget 9-11 because somebody somewhere is still struggling with that grief. Thank you.

Thank you, Ms. Watkins. We're sorry for your loss. Thank you for that memory. We have a long-awaited ribbon cutting coming up next week on Tuesday, September 15th. We will cut the ribbon for the Sandra Moon Center. We have been working with Sandra Moon's family to make sure that they could be present. And we finally have found that date. And we look forward to welcoming them to celebrate Sandra Moon's life and to open this facility. The ribbon cutting will take place at 10 o'clock. It will be immediately followed by tours until 12. And then we will also have tours from 4 to 7 in the afternoon. This is just an exceptional facility, and we look forward to opening it to the public. We will also have a day of celebration on Saturday, September 26th. Arts Huntsville has scheduled an entire day of performances on the Moon stage, and then the first performance is actually scheduled for October 1st, and it will be the brass band of Huntsville. So lots of good things will be happening there. That concludes Council Comments. We will move on to the Finance Committee Report. 14A is a resolution authorizing expenditures for payment. Mr. Meredith, would you like to make that motion?

I move for authorization and approval of expenditures in the amount of $42,341,723.17. Second by the Chair. All in favor, please indicate. Aye. Opposed? Motion carries. Before we move on, Finance Director Penny Smith wanted me to make a couple of announcements. One, that the budget books were made available to the Council yesterday or at the DS, if you didn't pick them up yesterday, and they will be available next Friday at the budget meeting and it was decided to divide back out the agency appropriations and they are now in a separate book that has been provided and both the documents will be placed on the city website this evening and to let her or her office know if there are any questions concern about those documents The budget meeting for next Friday at 11 a.m. and the second reading and the budget will be voted on at the regular council meeting on the 24th. And it is that meeting where the 1990 and 2014 capital plans will be presented. We'll get documentation on that at that time. Thank you, Madam President.

14B is an ordinance approving appropriations goods or services for District 2 council improvement funds.

Move to approve.

Second. Motion from Mr. Little, second. From Ms. Watkins, Mr. Little, would you like to share with us what we're doing here?

Yes, ma'am. Thank you. This is a $10,000 appropriation for the 8th Street community, formerly known as 305 8th Street. It's a group home for adults that don't really either have family or don't qualify for government services. It's a wonderful organization, and they had a big water leak and need some help. So that's what this is going to do.

Thank you. Any questions for Mr. Little? All in favor, please indicate. Aye. Opposed? Motion carries. 14E is an ordinance approving appropriations, goods, or services for the district for council improvement funds. Is there a motion? So moved. Second. Second from Mr. Kling. Second from Mr. Little. Mr. Kling.

Madam President, this would be used for helping to relieve suffering for dogs that are owned by homeless individuals. This includes primarily food and also medical care.

Thank you. Any questions or comments? All in favor, please indicate aye. Opposed? Motion carries. 14D. 14D is an ordinance approving appropriations, goods, or services for District 5 council improvement funds. Is there a motion to approve?

Motion to approve.

Second. Second from Ms. Watkins. Mr. Meredith.

Yes, ma'am. This is a $5,000 allocation to No More Dirty Incorporated, which is a Christian-based organization to fund youth scholarships, mentorship initiatives, and educational enrichment programs within the city of Huntsville.

Any comments or questions? All in favor, please indicate. Aye. Opposed? Motion carries. We have no board appointments to be voted on, but we have... a lot of board appointment nominations, and our bylaws require us that they be read. These are for nomination only. They will be considered at the September 24 regular council meeting. 16A is a nomination to reappoint Geraldine Tibbs to the Beautification Board, place 13, her current seat, for a three-year term to expire September 30, 2029. 16B is a nomination to reappoint Jane Tippett to the Beautification Board, Place 14, her current seat for a three-year term to expire September 30, 2029. 16C is a nomination to reappoint Ginger Young to the Beautification Board, Place 16, her current seat for a three-year term to expire September 30, 2029. 16D is a nomination to reappoint Amanda Burns to the Beautification Board, Place 17, her current seat for a three-year term to expire September 30, 2029. 16E is a nomination to reappoint Loretta Wenninger to the Beautification Board, place 18, her current seat, for a three-year term to expire September 30, 2029. 16F is a nomination to reappoint Sarah Smith to the Burrett Memorial Committee, place 1, her current seat, for a three-year term to expire October 1, 2029. 16G is a nomination to reappoint Teresa Durbro to the Burrett Memorial Committee, place 4, her current seat, for a three-year term to expire October 1, 2029. 16H is a nomination to reappoint Brian Daniels to the Burrett Memorial Committee, Place 7, his current seat for a three-year term to expire October 1, 2029. 16I is a nomination to appoint Helen Lean to the Burrett Memorial Committee, Place 10, to fill a vacancy due to the resignation of Cindy Greiner for the remainder of a vacant three-year term to expire October 1, 2028. 16J is a nomination to appoint Linda Foulkes to the Burrett Memorial Committee, place 11 to the seat previously held by Don Pompele for a three-year term to expire October 1, 2029. 16K is a nomination to appoint Cody Hogwood to the City Tree Commission to the seat previously held by Lisa Gardner for a two-year term to expire October 8, 2028. 16L is a nomination to reappoint Janice Vaughn to the Human Relations Commission, place three, her current seat for a four-year term to expire September 30, 2030. 16M is a nomination to reappoint Barbara Hughes to the Human Relations Commission, place four, her current seat for a four-year term to expire September 30, 2030. 16N is a nomination to reappoint Tammy Hammond's figures to the Human Relations Commission, place five, her current seat for a four-year term to expire September 30, 2030. Are there any nominations from the floor? Hearing none, we'll move on. 17, Huntsville utility items. 17A is a resolution authorizing, and just so everybody knows what we're doing here, the city is required to approve the Huntsville utility budgets. There are separate budgets for electric, water, and gas. So that's what you're going to be hearing here. 17A is a resolution authorizing the Mayor to approve budget work orders and project work orders for new construction for system improvements, capital projects including material purchasing, outside services, labor, transportation, and other expenses as outlined in the budget for the Water Department for the fiscal year 2027 at a total estimated cost of $17,051,785. Is there a motion to approve?

Move to approve.

Motion from Mr. Whittle, a second from Mr. Kling. And with us tonight, we have Mr. Wes Kelly to make this presentation. Welcome, Mr. Kelly.

Thank you, Madam President. And yes, you have important items in front of you, and you have moved on the water. I'm also going, if it's okay, present on electric and gas all at the same time.

Madam President. Well, you know what, we just... Council members, would you have any objection if we were to have the presentation on all these items and then we will consider each one separately?

I think the motion needs to be to suspend the rules. Am I not correct, Mr. Riley?

I would ask which rule you're citing.

The one that precludes cross-discussion of items, not being able to discuss item 17B when we're talking about 17A.

Okay. Is this a local rule, or is this a Roberts Rules of Order? Roberts. I'm unaware of a local rule that requires the one for our council.

So if it isn't specified in our bylaws, doesn't it defer to Robert's Rules?

Well, if it's not covered by that, correct. And that's still an interpretation.

Well, if you can't identify a bylaw rule that supersedes Roberts, then Roberts is the rule in charge, correct?

Well, actually, you could argue it several different ways. The way our rule is written is our rules abide by us. And if our rules don't provide any guidance, then you look to Robert's Rules of Order. Isn't that what I just said? Well, I think we're looking at things in a different way.

Madam, I could present just the water, if that's satisfying.

To simplify things, if you would not mind doing that,

Absolutely. And at the end, I can cover any broader topics. Thank you. Well, very good. So for the water capital items, and it is true the City Council has, state law provides statutory requirements that City Council approve new construction improvements and equipment related to your municipal utilities. Just a reminder of the water system, we have three surface water treatment plants and one groundwater plant. The three surface water plants are aligned along the Tennessee River. The groundwater plant is at the Lincoln-Dallas facility in the middle of Huntsville and you see we've got about 1,500 miles of water main and almost 40 reservoirs and storage tanks scattered throughout the service area. Now, this just shows, in general, the customer growth. And you see customer growth in water has been quite slow in 2025. Part of that is because the water meters do not, as we've set more and more apartments in this community, there's usually one water meter per complex rather than one water meter per unit. And so you see the water growth has been quite slow, actually, over this last year. It's been trending down for a few years. Water sales revenue, you see the big jump in 2024 related to the rate increase that the council authorized at that time. And otherwise, water sales are pretty constant. No big changes there. You have the resolutions in front of you. I wanted to highlight three in particular. One is the eastern connector. This is a large water transmission main, which is going to help us get water from the southeast water treatment plant, which currently pushes water up a course into the Hampton Cove area, and then also across into South Huntsville. This will allow us to branch that yet another direction, go up through Hampton Cove, through the McMillan Cove area, hitting Highway 72, and then ultimately not only helping support development on the east side, but to tie into an existing large transmission main along Highway 72 that pushes water north into the Chase-Winchester area, where there's been a significant amount of growth and impact, specifically the Chase Industrial Park. So this is helping support growth activities both on the east side of the system and the north side of the system. So this is a very expensive project for water transmission main, but our crews are ready to get started on it. And we will have to cross the Flint River at a couple of points, and that's one of the reasons for the cost. The Southeast Water Treatment Plan upgrades, this is the same plan I was talking about, the one that's down in Grand, Alabama. This is to add large water pumps that will increase both the redundancy and in total pumpage capacity available out of that pump to ensure that we can get 24 million gallons a day production resiliently. Right now, if we have a pump failure, then that plan is compromised. We want to be able to operate that plan in a more resilient manner. And then finally the one that I wanted to highlight with you is Water AMI. This is a fairly modest project. It is providing for automated meter reading within the Limestone County portion of our water system. Helps us reduce windshield time quite a bit. and also gets us going with the new software and technology associated with this so that once this is done, we can move into the Madison County portion of our area, starting with the largest water meters and then eventually working our way down. I would love to install Water AMI across the board because I think it has significant benefits for leak detections for our customers. If that meter's been spinning for 24 consecutive hours, it could send a notification telling the customer, hey, you probably have a water leak. I would love to be able to do that. Unfortunately, it's fairly expensive, and we have a lot of major projects we need to accomplish in the water system. And to be quite blunt, we just don't have the funds to accommodate a full AMI deployment right now. But we're going to dip our toe in the water and get started with this Limestone County implementation. where I think we're going to get the most value. Your resolutions are a little bit less than this because you approve both budget work orders, which are items which are spent within the fiscal year, and you also approve project work orders, which span multiple fiscal years. But obviously, we have to get authorization to build the whole project, even though it's going to take multiple years. This gives you an idea. This is our five-year capital plan in water. Now, obviously, FY27 is the one that matters. Some of these items have been approved on previous project work orders. FY28, 29, 30, and 31 are planning purposes, but it's just to give you an idea of how things are laying out and where we see things going in the future on the water system related to its infrastructure needs. This is recurring capital, meaning this is items we spend every year. Transportation is a big hit on this. Operation and maintenance materials is what you would imagine, pipes and valves and fittings. And then general development and extension is also what you might imagine. That's what we need to invest just to connect new customers and make magic happen. It also helps with road relocation projects and whatnot. So, and then down below you see where the money comes from. Pay as you go is meaning that's cash that we're spending. Transfers, we don't have any this year. Reimbursements is where we're getting money from the state related to state highway projects where on the water system they do pay for that. And then you see system development fees is money coming from developers that are helping offset the cost of new construction for their development projects. Then you see state revolving loan fund. We anticipate getting a little bit more out of state revolving loan fund and then stopping. And then you see other borrowing proceeds. We have some previously approved bond issuance that we're going to finish in 2027. But we do anticipate probably coming back and talking to you about additional borrowings necessary in the water system in future years. Again, the water system is probably the one that is the most budget challenged. Y'all were... Very understanding on the rate increase approved, but as you know, that was to approve the 20-year capital plan. That 20-year capital plan we are advancing on. We are making that happen. But we've also seen significant inflation in material and equipment during that period of time, so we're having to make that work. But we'll come back and talk about future borrowings when that's necessary, and that's for future fiscal years. So just to give you an idea, we keep up with this every month at Huntsville Utilities. I wanted to share it with you. This is average residential consumption of 4,100 gallons at residential rates compared to nearby water systems. You see Huntsville Utilities is second lowest. I can tell you I expect when I come back here next year, I think we will be the lowest.

Questions or comments regarding the water budget for Mr. Kelly? Any questions? Mr. Kling.

I'm not sure what comes from you and what comes from Public Works, but we're having a problem with rusted groundwater in some of the older neighborhoods such as Low Mill, Merrimack. Is that your ballpark or does that go to Public Works?

Yes, sir. No, that's us. Yeah, so we need to be advancing out on our cast iron replacement. That's the older pipes that are in the older parts of town. And so, you know, we've been identifying areas, and we have money set aside in this year's budget to continue that project, I think about a million bucks. We need to get that up to a bigger number, actually maybe a little less this year. We need to, that's one of those items that as we finish these major capital projects, like the Eastern Connector and others, that money will then shift back on these pipe replacements. But if people are getting brown water, we need to address that, we need to get those pipes replaced.

Okay, it's pretty vocal over in the Low Mill neighborhood, if Okay.

Very good. Thank you. We'll tend to that quickly.

Mr. Meredith. Yes, sir. Ma'am, thank you. Sir, if you could address, I guess we're sticking to the budget here, but are there any budgetary outlays to... to correct or accelerate some of the downfalls, not the best word, with water quality reports that were recently sent out to folks.

Not quite sure. There was no deficiencies in the water quality report.

Certain elements were not necessarily tested at the frequency that some of my constituents have expressed concern with to me. I believe lead was one of them and chlorine was another. That the frequency that was tested by wasn't what was normal nationally with other water providers.

Well, we'll need to We follow all of the Alabama Department of Environmental Management's requirements. Matter of fact, we receive the Surface Water Plan of the Year Award, the Groundwater Plan of the Year Award, and the Distribution System of the Year Award from our regional area in Mississippi and Alabama. So I would need to know specifically what items they're citing because ADEM has not made us aware that we're deficient in any category that I'm aware of.

I would caution you, we need to restrict this to discussions about the budget.

Well, I asked if there were any budgetary, if they were going to spend money to do those things. That was the way I put it.

We are straying into an area outside of the budget. Well, brown water is outside the budget too, okay?

But he tied it to the budget. I tied it to the budget. I asked specifically if there was money going to be spent in order to increase the testing. The answer was no, because we— I'm not aware that that's a problem. H.U. follows exactly what the state law is, and you have been a recipient of multiple awards. Yes, sir. Answers that question perfectly. I will follow up with the folks that have reached out to me with those concerns. But from what you have described, there is no need for money to be spent to do things in excess of what you are required to by the state of which you are an award-winning Yes, sir.

And I believe we have a meeting coming up where our Director of Water Operations and our Manager of Water Supply, we're working to schedule a meeting with you and your constituents to talk about that very issue.

Yes, sir. Thank you.

So we'll look forward to having that meeting.

And on behalf of my constituents, thank you for addressing that.

Yes, sir.

Are there any other questions regarding the water budget? All in favor, please indicate. Aye. Opposed? The motion carries. 17B is a resolution authorizing the mayor to approve budget work orders and project work orders for new construction for system improvements, capital projects including material purchasing, outside services, labor, transportation, and other expenses outlined in the budget for the gas department for the fiscal year 2027 at a total estimated cost of $15,867,500. Is there a motion to approve? Move to approve. Motion from Mr. Little, second from Mr. Kling. And again, this is specific to the gas budget.

All right, well, our gas system, you see the map there. It's a little more of an inkblot when you look at the map in terms of how it's been developed over the years. We receive flow of natural gas through two major pipelines, the Southern Natural Pipeline and the Alla 10 Pipeline. And we've got five gate stations where we interconnect with those regional pipelines. You see about 1,681 miles of distribution, and you see the flows there. We also do have gas storage in Louisiana. About a third of our winter capacity we have in salt dome storage in Louisiana. So we've got a pretty complex arrangement for risk mitigation on gas. You see the gas customer counts are growing at about a 2% clip. The revenue has increased as industrial activity has increased in the Greenbrier area a bit, and then otherwise it's been weather dependent. So the three major capital projects I wanted to highlight on your list for you in this budget is first Providence, Maine. There's an 18-inch welded steel gas main located currently under Providence, Maine. We would like to relocate that to an area that is less densely populated. And we're working now to find that route so that we can do that. You see that's a $5 million project. We've been talking about this one for a while. Happy to move out and get this taken care of. Honestly, it's perfectly fine where it is, but it just feels better to get it into a less populated area as Providence has continued to develop the way that it has. Furthermore, we're looking at building out a high-pressure gas system into the Greenbrier area. This is for the Eli Lilly side and really the area you were just describing for your TIF district. This is to extend natural gas services into that area of satisfactory to meet that growing space. And then also we have a series of projects identified to help on the north end of the system. If you remember that inkblot map, there were several tentacles to the north. We want to, over time, connect those, loop those, and build that into a looped, more resilient system. So we've been working on this for a number of years. We're going to continue to work on this for a number of years to build that system out. This is the five-year plan on gas. It's much smaller, much more modest in terms of the five-year vision on gas. It's a smaller utility, more straightforward. So this has both the non-recurring, the reoccurring, and the funding sources, which are all rates. They're all cash. There's no additional funding sources envisioned on the gas system for the next five years.

Questions for Mr.

Yeah, I'm sorry. I forgot the slide. So this is our rate comparison on gas. And you see we're generally on that bottom end of the equation. Gas does tend to bounce around more. Our rates are, we have a very traditional rate structure. Several of our peer utilities have gas rates that change monthly based on gas fuel costs. We've not adopted that yet. That's something that we could and perhaps should adopt in the future. But right now, we just have a traditional fixed rate.

Any questions or comments from Mr. Kelly regarding the gas budget?

Or I should say volumetric rate.

Thank you, Mr. Kelly. All in favor, please indicate. Aye. Motion carries. And then finally, 17C is a resolution authorizing the mayor to approve budget work orders and project work orders for new construction for system improvements, capital projects, including material purchasing, outside services, labor, transportation, other expenses as outlined in the budget electric department for the fiscal year 2027 at a total estimated cost of $56,232,200. Is there a motion to approve? Move to approve. Motion from Mr. Little, second from the chair. Mr. Kelly.

Yeah, so the water system is basically Madison County, and you see it dip down into Marshall County as well. We're tied into five TVA transmission lines. We receive that power at 15 places around Madison County. Quite a bit more. You see 5,000 miles of distribution scattered throughout that service area, 108 substations sprinkled all the way throughout the county. And we draw your attention to the bottom where renewable energy, I'm going to have separate slides on this, but we are moving out in that space and that has turned out to be a good space for Huntsville Utilities to be in. Related to the electric department is the fiber department. So the fiber infrastructure is part of the electric assets. Since 2016, we've now built out over 1,300 miles of fiber. That's a lot. You see the service area there. Of course, its primary purpose is to meet Huntsville utilities and city of Huntsville needs. We also lease that fiber to Huntsville City Schools, G-Fiber, and a dozen or so other entities that utilize that resource. It generates about $11 million a year annually. that feeds back into the electric budget. So I talked about renewables. We have two major solar projects. One is finished and one is underway. The one that is finished is the Toyota site. And since April of 2024, That has produced savings of $8.1 million. And that's not a, we think it produced savings of. That is comparing it to how much we would have paid TVA each month for that power based on the current rates compared to what we pay Toyota to Shusho, the solar developer, for the same kilowatt hours. So you see, $2.7 million of that was through the actual kilowatt hour energy sales. The large majority of it, $5.4 million, was peak reduction, meaning the solar panels were producing when we set our peak demand from TVA. And without getting too much in the weeds, about half of our power bill to TVA is assessed on the amount of energy we use one hour per month. Whatever that peak hour is of the month establishes the peak demand, and that is about half of our power bill to TVA. So if we can shove that peak demand down, and in this case by 30 megawatts, that generates over this last, since April of 2024, $5.4 million. So the one that's underway, as you know, is the Triana project that we're working on. Roads are under construction, development's underway, but really we're waiting on TVA to sign off on the solar interconnect requirements and other approvals that TVA has to give so that that project can move forward. So we're hopeful to get those back in the next few months and that project can get significantly underway. We do have a new program called Solar Connect. This is a rooftop solar program. As you see right now, if you can read that writing, we have a whopping three customers on it. It's going to get bigger. I believe we have nine customers in the pipeline. This is because TVA used to have a rooftop solar program and they've been phasing it out. This is Huntsville Utilities stepping up with our own program to replace that program. We've actually got a nice video on our website and good material out there. So if any customers are interested in a small-scale rooftop solar program, we do have something available to them now. These are the overall numbers. You see we're just a hair under 230,000 electric meters, which that number's been growing quite a bit. As you see, in 2021, it was just over 200,000. Now it's almost to 230,000, so that number's been growing very rapidly. And then you see the sales revenue. Sales revenue is highly dependent on weather. The three major projects I wanted to point out to you here, the first one is a twofer. The Elkton section and Northwest substations are major substations where we tie into TVA transmission systems. You see both of those are quite expensive, $13.6 million and $12.7 million. This is to provide additional capacity on the north end of Madison County, where if anyone's driven north into Madison County, you see subdivisions are going in like crazy. So we need to make sure that we can keep up with that load that's necessary to support that customer base. The downtown switchgear revitalization is a project I'm very excited about. Thanks to the fact that we have our fiber network in place, thanks to the fact we have our new system operations center and our new SCADA system in place and the technology associated with that, and thanks to the fact that we have a lot of smart and innovative people at Huntsville Utilities, we're ready to install much more sophisticated electronic intelligence out into the distribution system. We're going to start that in the downtown. So there's a number of switches, manual switches, which are down in vaults under the ground today. We actually have to send people down into those very constrained areas with high voltage electricity and ask them to do amazing things to get the power back on if there's a problem. This will allow that to happen remotely or certainly above the vault and allow that to happen electronically in real time tied into our SCADA system. So we see this starting in the downtown and not stopping in the downtown. There's other areas that we will continue to move out as we continue to deploy this advanced switch technology throughout our distribution network. And then finally, I mentioned Project Gemini, which is the Triana solar site. Assuming that TVA gives its approvals, which I don't expect they won't, it just takes a little time to go through that process, then we need to build a substation and a circuit to connect that back into the Huntsville utility system. We expect to make money on that project, just like we made money on this project. quite as much money because solar panel prices have increased. So I think we're going to end up paying more for the solar for this project than we did the first project, but still there's significant savings there versus buying the power under our current wholesale rate structure with TVA. So those are the three projects I wanted to highlight. But this is a very long list. This is a five-year plan. This is page one of the non-reoccurring list for electric for page one. I realize it's a bit of an eye chart. Of course, you have your resolutions in front of you for what is specific for FY27 or new project work orders. And then this is page two of the non-recurring capital. You see at the end of that, that's $121 million, almost $122 million over the next five years in capital improvements going into your electric system. Non-recurring capital is, you know, same thing. Vehicles, look at that vehicle number. $14.3 million in trucks. We're in the pipe and wire and truck business. It's amazing. You know, we have hundreds of vehicles on the road, and a number of them, especially the electric bucket trucks, are very expensive. They're maybe a little less than a fire truck, but they're in fire truck territory. And you can see all the other items there that are honestly fairly routine items that we do every year. And then you see there is the thought that we may need to do some electric debt in the out years in 2029, 2030. Of course, we have lots of time to come back and do more analysis and talk about that. But our debt level on the electric side is quite low. We can certainly manage that. But in order to get these projects done in a timely manner, that may be the right way to go. So in future years, we'll come back and talk about that. Here's the electric rates that you see here. Green is for about 90% of the Huntsville Utility residential customers that have services less than 200 amps. The sort of shaded pinkish, salmony color is those services, about the 10% of customers that have a larger residential service, over 200 amps in size. And you see how we compare residential rates with our peers in the area. If I can, I will go back to a summary slide I have up here at the beginning. This is the total Huntsville utility budget. This council is involved down there in the capital expenditures, but you see the total water, electric, and gas budget for the year is almost $982 million. We pay an awful lot of that, about $550 million goes to TVA, $38 million goes to buy natural gas produced through our system. But the remainder of that money stays here as part of Huntsville Utilities' responsibility. And you see, in general, we spend usually about a third of our money that we keep here at Huntsville goes back into new capital construction. That's usually our rule of thumb, is about a third of the money goes back into system improvements and new capital construction. There is information here on factors influencing the budget, and this is the case with all of them. But you have this presentation. You can read it at your convenience. But we are seeing about 20%, 25% cost increase in materials and contracting. That's been the case for a while. We're continuing to see that at a pretty steady pace. Vehicle pricing is up about 10% to 15% this year compared to prior years. Fuel is 22% higher. That certainly adds up a little bit as time goes on, no doubt about it. Again, when you have hundreds of vehicles on the road every day.

Questions for Mr. Kelly regarding the electric budget. Mr. Kling?

How does your maintenance budget that deals with things like old power stations that have to be replaced compared with the current year that we have now?

Yeah, that's a good question. And I'll point out in this eye chart, Excuse me, I'm fighting summer allergies. They seem to be getting the better of me at the moment. You will see a number of transformer replacements on this list, and that is to go back and upgrade and improve existing substations. So I guess it's really on the second page. You see there's a number of these substations that we're going back and upgrading and improving as we go.

Okay, I'm talking about power outages, of course. Oh, okay, I'm sorry.

Yeah, so we have a team that is meeting regularly now because we have our new outage management system in place. It provides much more granular data. That team meets monthly and goes through the areas where we're seeing high frequency of outages, and we're going through and putting in specific work plans to address areas where we're seeing high frequency outages.

Mr. Meredith.

Yes. Based on a couple of things that you mentioned, the rooftop solar, in a very small sample, could you give the general public a little bit more information on how that is going to work?

Yeah, happy to. Yes, and information's on our website, and like I said, we've got a little promotional video out there as well. Essentially, it's quite simple. I could either pay TVA for that power, or I could pay our customers for that power, and I'd rather pay the customer. And so the rate that the customer gets paid is based on our current TVA rates. And so no customer is being subsidized. No customer has to worry that certain solar customers are getting a deal that other customers aren't. It's the same energy. I would just rather pay our customers for it than pay TVA for it.

I know in some parts of the country, I think it's called plug-in solar, where they can just get it, plug it in, and somehow, miraculously, what they're pulling down goes into your system. Is that going to happen, or is that a different program?

We're still talking about that. So this rooftop solar program has an inspected interconnection. So the electrical inspector checks and makes sure that everything is wired upright and the disconnects are safe. We have a little anxiety with just plug-in solar. A lot of electric utilities do because we had an electric employee a number of years ago who was badly hurt and burned in electrocution because we thought the circuit was off. The customer had a generator running. It was providing power back through the power line, and our employee burned his arm very badly. And so we're very sensitive to that. We want to make sure that there's proper safety protocols associated with that. With this rooftop solar program, we have that in place. We need to think carefully about how we implement a more diverse program.

It sounds great. Thank you. And I understand your concerns regarding the plug-in makes perfect sense. You had mentioned fiber. Again, I've got very educated constituents. Yes, sir. And they have reached out and told me that Google and HU's partnership on fiber, that Google is walking away from that partnership. Is there any truth to that?

No, we're actually about halfway through the contract. It was a 20-year contract. It was signed in 2016. What has happened is that Google Fiber is no longer Google Fiber. It is now G Fiber. You probably noticed that's not just a marketing change. They've actually changed the company. So Alphabet is no longer the sole owner of what was Google Fiber. Alphabet is now a partial owner, along with other partners, in G Fiber. And they merged with another company. So they've been going through a transfer. I understand that transfer is going to be completed by the end of this calendar year, and the alphabet side will be kind of pulled out. But G-Fiber remains, and we've got about 10 years left in that contract.

Awesome. Glad to hear that. Thank you, sir.

Any other? Ms. Watkins. Did I overlook the salaries of the employees in the budget?

No, ma'am, you didn't. What the city council approves by state statute is new construction and equipment. The regular operating expenses of the utility are approved by the utility boards. Okay. And that's what's laid out in the state statute.

Okay. Thank you.

And the utility boards have approved that budget.

One last request. On your barge that you gave us that showed the different rates for water, gas, and electric, can you add Birmingham, Mobile, Montgomery to them just for comparison? I know you had Alabama. That's a great idea. But we talked about how we do in North Alabama, but it'd be interesting to see how we compare it with those three cities.

Yeah, we can certainly do it. On electric, of course, Alabama power tells the tale. And you see it's quite a dramatic difference, usually about a 40% increase for those customers compared to Huntsville customers.

But it would still be just that and water and gas.

But yeah, we absolutely can do that. And I think it will look also quite good for Huntsville.

Other questions? All in favor, please indicate. Any opposed? Motion carries. BRINGS US TO LEGAL DEPARTMENT ITEMS AND TRANSACTIONS. 18A IS AN ORDINANCE AUTHORIZING THE VACATION OF A 15-FOOT UTILITY DRAINAGE EASEMENT BETWEEN LOTS 4 AND 5, BEL AIR SUBDIVISIONS 7901 AND 7903. MARTHA DRIVE, IS THERE A MOTION TO APPROVE? Motion from Mr. Little, second by the Chair. All in favor, please indicate. Aye. Opposed? Motion carries. 18B is an ordinance authorizing the vacation of a portion of utility drainage easement. Lot 1 posits subdivision 415 Lowe Avenue. Is there a motion? So moved. Motion from Mr. Little. Second. Second by Ms. Watkins. All in favor, please indicate. Aye. Opposed? Motion carries. 18C is an ordinance authorizing the vacation of utility drainage easement. Lot 2, Barnett Commercial Park, Phase 2. Is there a motion? So moved. Motion from Mr. Little, second from Ms. Watkins. All in favor, please indicate. Aye. Thank you. Any opposed? Motion carries. 18D is a resolution authorizing acceptance of 1.425 acre and .861 acre tracts of land for drainage easements. Is there a motion to approve?

So moved.

Motion from Mr. Little, second from Ms. Watkins. All in favor, please indicate. Aye. Opposed? Motion carries. We have no unfinished business items for action. That brings us to new business items for consideration or action. These items will be approved in one motion unless any member of the council wishes to remove an item for discussion. The reading of each item will be waived unless a council member requests otherwise. Are there any items that anyone wishes to hold for separate consideration? Ms. Watkins.

E-G-H-I-J-K-L-M-P. No, just stop at K. Okay.

E-G-H-I-J-K. Any other items?

Mr. Meredith. O and Q and A-H. Any other items?

Chair moves for consolidation of items 20A to D, 20F, 20L to N, 20P, 20R to AG. Second. Second for Mr. Little. All in favor please indicate. Aye. Opposed? The motion carries. I would suggest that we let the staff, that's a lot of things to hold, we'll let the staff kind of wrap themselves around that and prepare to address them. Could we please take a five-minute break? Ten. Ten-minute break, Mr. Little has proposed, so that will bring us back here at 8.05. So we are taking a break until 8.05. Mr. Little, can you join us up here? And Becca, tell me... There he goes. Okay. Okay. Ms. Watkins, can you join us, please?

Mr. Kling?

It's 8.05, and we will call this meeting back to order. Present are Council Members Little, Watkins, and Kling. We will begin with, so these are items that have been held for separate consideration. 20E, 20E is a resolution authorizing the mayor a portion of the proceeds of a certain future borrowings to reimburse the 1990 capital projects fund of the city for expenditures incurred prior to borrowing issuance. Is there a motion to approve?

Move to approve.

Motion from Mr. Lewis. Second. Second from Ms. Watkins. Ms. Smith.

Yes, Penny Smith, Director of Finance. This evening, this item before you is very similar to some other items that you have passed out ahead of your debt. So anytime that we look to issue debt, we want to right-size the debt is what I call it. so that we don't borrow too much or too little for the different projects at hand. This tool allows us to actually go in and start the projects. And so this specific one is for 21.5 million is approximately amount that we will borrow. It is designed for three fire station properties and then for the HVAC renovations that are being done right now at our Municipal Justice Public Safety Center.

Before we enter into discussion, let the record show that Mr. Meredith has now joined us. Are there any comments or questions?

What are the Fire Department properties that you were talking about.

So the properties, so we are looking to, and I may... Council Member John Hamilton, City Administrator.

So I think we've talked about a couple times here that we're beginning a process of replacing several fire stations that need significant renovations, but they're now, based on the way the city has grown, they're really in the wrong place. And so what you'll see in the capital plan that will come to you here and over the next couple weeks is funding to begin replacement of those stations. Some of them need to be located on land the city already owns, but some also is land that we need to acquire. In fact, you've already approved one of the purchase agreements. We've not yet closed on that property, but we've got a couple more that we'll bring to you over the next few months, and it's all in support of the capital plan.

Is Station 3 one of those?

It is.

Can we hold that and give me a chance to have some neighborhood meetings concerning that? Because I think that impacts a large area adjacent to it.

So it's absolutely one of, we will bring the entire plan to you and do that publicly and we can also go to town halls and things.

I just didn't want us to get financially committed and then, you know, pull the rug out.

What's before you tonight is allows us, once you've approved certain expenditures, once we do the borrower to reimburse our capital plan. So like with many projects, we will go ahead and begin the project. We'll cash flow it out of out of funds available in the capital plan. And then when we go borrow for the full funding, we reimburse the capital plan. That's all that's before you tonight.

Any other comments or questions? All in favor, please indicate. Aye. Opposed? The motion carries. 20G is a resolution to authorize the mayor to accept price quote from Election Systems and Software, Inc. for all ballots and supplies, provisional kits, express vote cards, programming, coding of one ballot style, data conversion fees, LNA testing, testing of poll books, and on-site support for the September 22, 2026 municipal runoff election. Is there a motion to approve?

So moved.

Motion from Mr. Little. Second. Second from Ms. Watkins. Anybody have questions for... For Ms. Edwards?

If you can just briefly explain what this is. A lot of constituents don't know that this is for the runoff election, correct? If you can just briefly explain that.

Sure. Thank you so much. Good evening, Council, Mayor Battle, Shandricka Edwards, City Clerk. This resolution authorized the mayor to accept election systems and software, quote, for the upcoming runoff to supply all of the ballots, the supplies necessary for the runoff election.

And Madison County is supplying the machines, correct?

Yes, and you have already adopted that agreement. We did not have to bring that a second time.

No, I'm just repeating it for the public.

Yes.

So they won't think we got machines.

Oh, no. No, the agreement with Madison County will always have the runoff language in it, so we don't have to come back to you a second time. Thank you.

You're welcome. Any other questions or comments? All in favor, please indicate. Aye. Any opposed? Motion carries. 20H is a resolution authorizing the mayor to enter into agreement between the City of Huntsville and Alabama Department of Transportation for installation of drainage structures on Highway Right-of-Way for Alabama Highway 255, Bob Boyd Lane and Alabama Highway 1, U.S. Highway 431. Is there a motion to approve? Move to approve. Second. Second from Ms. Watkins. Ms. Martin?

Yes, Kathy Martin, Director of City Engineering. So this item is an agreement with Aldot. It's really a permit for the city to do some improvements within the state right-of-way associated with the development at the southwest corner of SR 255 and Memorial Parkway. So this is the North Village improvements, or North Village development. So you'll notice it's finally taking shape, and we're at this point in time where we need to make some roadway improvements within the state right-of-way. for access to that development. And so these are agreements to allow us to do such. So this one in particular is for drainage improvements along the parkway and the SRT 55.

Questions? Comments? All in favor, please indicate. Aye. Any opposed? The motion carries. 20-I is a resolution authorizing the Mayor to enter an agreement between the City of Huntsville and Alabama Department of Transportation for a permit to construct a turnout to provide access to a state highway for Alabama Highway 255, Bob Wade Lane, and Alabama Highway 1, U.S. Highway 431. Is there a motion?

Move to approve.

Motion for Mr. Little, second for Ms. Watkins. Are there questions specific to this?

No, I pulled all these items so the public would know exactly what's going on because we have a lot of questions about the northern bypass. And this is all... Just briefly say what's going on with this.

Yes, ma'am. It's very similar to the last item where we are seeking permission from ALDOT to do improvements on their right-of-way. So this one specifically is for turn lanes along the parkway and the northern bypass for access to North Village.

Thank you, Ms. Martin.

And the cost is?

There is no cost to the city. It's just a permit to do the work within their right-of-way, sir. Be sure to tell that up front. Yes.

All in favor, please indicate. Aye. Opposed? Motion carried. 20J is a resolution authorized by Mayor to enter into agreement between the City of Huntsville and Alabama Department of Transportation for grading and or landscaping on right-of-way for Alabama Highway 255, Bob Wade Lane, and Alabama Highway, U.S. Highway 431.

Motion to approve.

Motion for Ms. Watkins.

Second. Second for Mr. Little. Very similar to the last one, this allows us to do the grading and landscaping associated with the improvements to the state right-of-way.

Any comments or questions?

Thank you, Ms. Martin. Okay.

All in favor, please indicate. Aye. The motion carries. 20K is a resolution authorizing the mayor to enter into agreement between the City of Huntsville and Alabama Department of Transportation for a permit to construct a median crossover for Alabama Highway 255, Bobway Lane, and Alabama Highway 1, U.S. Highway 431.

Move to approve.

Motion from Ms. Watkins, second from Ms. Little. One more time, Ms. Martin.

Yes, ma'am. This is for the intersection improvements. So we'll have two signalized intersections as part of that development. One will be on SR 255 and the other one on North Parkway. So with the approval of these agreements, we can proceed to advertise for bids on that project. Comments or questions?

All in favor, please indicate. Aye. Opposed? Motion carries.

20-0 is a resolution authorizing the Mayor to execute modification number 7 to the original agreement between the City of Huntsville and VSP for the purpose of renewing the City's group vision benefits. Is there a motion for Mr. Little? Second. Second from Ms. Watkins. Mr. Thomas.

Yes, ma'am. Byron Thomas, Director of Human Resources. What you have before you is our annual renewal with VSP. They provide our voluntary vision benefits for our employees.

Any questions? Mr. Merida.

And how much do we spend on that?

Well, it is a voluntary plan, so it's all paid for by our employees. So it's not a necessary city sponsor. Thank you, sir.

Other questions or comments? All in favor, please indicate. Aye. Motion carries. 20Q is a resolution authorizing the mayor to execute an amendment to the enrollment agreement between the City of Huntsville and Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Alabama for third-party administrative services on the city's group health plan. Is there a motion? Move to approve. Motion from Mr. Little. Second. Second from Ms. Watkins.

Yes, ma'am.

Mr. Thomas.

Yes, ma'am. Byron Thomas, HR Director again. What you have before you is our annual renewal of Blue Cross Blue Shield for our group health insurance plan. This is a plan that provides medical benefits to our employees and our retirees and COBRA participants.

Any questions, Mr. President?

Yes. How much do we pay for this?

Annually, we spend close to $40 million, a little bit over $40 million a year for group health insurance. But we do provide appropriate premiums to our employees, retirees, and COVID participants.

Now, I just wanted the general public to know where their money is going. Yes, sir. Thank you. Other questions?

All in favor, please indicate. Aye. Opposed? The motion carries. And finally, 20AH. AH is a resolution authorizing the mayor to enter into a purchase and sale agreement between the city of Huntsville and County Line 2.0 LLC for the purchase of approximately 30 acres of real property located near County Line Road and Old Highway 20 in Limestone County. Motion to approve. Second. Second from Ms. Watkins. Mr. Davis.

Thank you, Madam President. Shane Davis, Director, Urban Economic Development. So council members, this is a purchase and sell agreement option that shows a partnership for this community. So as we continue to grow west, both SWATA, solid waste disposal, authority has been working with our office now for a couple years not just for the west side but also in the Hampton Cove and North Huntsville area and east side of the city for waste transfer stations which would greatly help our sanitation department from having to pick up residential household waste and bring it all the way down into the southern part of the city. These transfer stations would allow us and people like the city of Madison, people that are using solid waste to turn their household garbage into energy for solid waste, from traveling so far back and forth. And it's very common as most cities get very dense, right? It makes sense. So this location would be one of the first. Here, it's located in the northwest quadrant of County Line Road and Highway 20. So if you really think about it, it allows really for our sanitation department from Research Park Boulevard West to use that. It allows the city of Madison to use that in Madison County. So there's really no cost to the city so what we agreed to help SWATA do is they identified areas for us to try to work with property owners to Commensurate a sale. So what you're doing is allowing us to enter into this option on behalf of SWATA There's a section that allows us to transfer this option. So it allows us to assign it to SWATA. We've done this before. It's very rare. We've done it with Huntsville Utilities and some other governmental agencies. But because we dealt with a landowner and there was trust in dealing with the city, we agreed to bring this purchase option before you to approve. But ultimately, we would transfer this to Solid Waste Disposal Authority to actually close and make payment. should they decide to move forward. They'll start some geotech and really make sure the soil and the ground is suitable for their future use. We fully expect it to be. And then at some point, we would have you assign this to SWATA to actually close on the property. I will tell you going forward, the 30 acres is much more than what SWATA needs, and that was by design in collaboration with Huntsville Utilities. You saw a lot of their growth. The west side, they have interest maybe putting an annex to help respond to residents, both in Madison and Huntsville and the portions of Limestone County they serve. And then there's been some really light talk, no funding, no future plans, but went ahead and grabbed enough to where if we needed to have a small annex for, say, public work to get better services or sanitation. So really, SWATA is prepared to hold property, and as we grow and as utilities grow, have the opportunity to provide services in a much more efficient manner to our residents in the future. But ultimately, Solid Waste Supposed Authority would be the purchaser of this property down the road.

Thank you. Questions for Mr. Davis? Mr. Meredith?

You did a great job explaining it. Now I'm getting greedy. Is there a way or a potential where in wintry, inclement weather, we could stage some public works trucks there that could move out to do something?

I would think so. Once SWATA made that investment, it would be very well suited for something like that. Certainly, they're going to have a campus there in that partnership. Yes, sir.

Mr. Hamilton.

Mr. Mayor, when you see the capital plan here in a week or so, you can see I have a plug in one of the out years for development of some capability out there. It's not necessarily specific to winter weather or anything. It's right now. It's just kind of figuring out exactly what the need is. But I do think there is a point in the future where We have both Public Works and Landscape Management in particular, maybe some others, but those two departments in particular may actually have one of their zone teams actually work out of that site potentially. So we're studying it. It's very similar to the North Lock. So right now, the teams that cover the north of the city and portions of the West Lake and the CRP actually work out of an annex we have up north. This would be similar to that potentially.

Great. Thank you, sir.

Any other comments or questions? All in favor, please indicate. Aye. Any opposed? Motion carries. That concludes the items for consideration. We'll move now to new business items for introduction. These are for introduction only. Items 21A to 21D are all specific to budget items. In the interest of full public transparency and to give the council and the public opportunity to consider them, a work session will be held on September 18th at 11 o'clock. And then they will be considered for approval at the regular council meeting on September 24. 21A is the introduction of an ordinance to adopt the City of Huntsville annual budget for fiscal year 2027 beginning October 1, 2026. 21B is the introduction of an ordinance amending ordinance number 89-79 to provide all eligible employees of the City of Huntsville a cost of living adjustment, a COLA, as reflected in the first pay period in the fiscal year 2027 budget. effective October 12, 2026. 21C is the introduction of an ordinance amending of Chapter 2 administration, Article 7, departments, department heads, and other appointed officers of the Code of Ordinances of the City of Huntsville, Alabama. 21D is the introduction of an ordinance amending ordinance number 89-79 classification and salary plan ordinance for the addition of a public safety salary schedule to provide pay rates for certified law enforcement and fire suppression positions. 21E is the introduction of an ordinance to amend section 8.2 appointment rate of ordinance 04-315, Personnel Policies and Procedures Manual. 21F is the introduction of an ordinance to amend ordinance number 89-79, Classification and Salary Plan Ordinance. 21G is the introduction of an ordinance to exempt hearing aids from city sales and use taxes. This has been properly introduced. We have had a request from Mr. Meredith that unanimous consent of the council would be... asked for in order to consider this tonight. Mr. Merrith, would you please state the reason for that request?

The reason is because this council is at the opportunity to enact relief from the hearing aid sales tax since 2024. And I know I have been blissfully ignorant of the fact that we could do that And now that it has been brought to my attention and, frankly, all our attentions from the very good work that the advocacy community has done, I think it would be a great thing for this council to show the public that we actually do listen to them, we hear what they're saying, and we want to take action on this as soon as possible so that they know that this council is firmly committed to listening to them and pushing forward on policies that are important to them.

Are you going to make a motion for unanimous consent?

Well, you're the president. I mean, I thought you would do that.

I will not make that motion.

Okay, well, I'll make the motion for it. I move.

Second. Ask a question. Yes, sir.

So do we do the motion, the first and the second, then the question?

We can discuss it. So I make the motion. Second. Thank you.

So the motion for unanimous consent of the council to consider this item has been made by Mr. Meredith, seconded by Ms. Watkins. All in favor of what we will do this by? It needs to be a roll call vote. We will do this as a roll call vote. Mr. Meredith, how do you vote?

Aye.

Mr. Kling?

I vote no, and I want to come back and explain my answer when we get done. Mr. Little?

No.

Yes. And the chair votes no. We do not have unanimous consent to consider this item.

No, he doesn't need to make a comment.

We have dealt with it. You know what? I'm going to recognize Mr. Kling. Mr. Kling, go ahead. What comment would you like to make?

I had asked before. Mr. Meredith, other people are in time.

Turn your microphone on instead of screaming.

I don't think I need the microphone, do I?

I think you should, for recording purposes.

Well, thank you. If they need my help, I'll be glad to provide it. Mr. Klinger, do you have a comment? I do. We're getting ready to take up the budget. And to do something like this, Mr. Meredith brings us out. That's great. I've had a lot of positive discussions with good people in the community. I understand the difference between Huntsville and Madison and the disadvantage. And so I'm very... I'm very positive toward this concept, but at the same time, we've got a budget that we're going to present. Has Mr. Meredith got any budget offsets he's going to show? Has he got anything that he's going to show about how this would go? Are we doing something wrong by doing this before the budget actually comes up on the table? So I think it needs to be simultaneously instead of one before the other. Thank you, Mr. Kling. We will go on then.

I would like to also make a comment. I believe you made a comment at the beginning. If you had bothered to read this, you would know that there is significantly zero budget impact. And this is not actually part of the budget. I cannot take this and make a budget amendment on it. It has to be its own separate thing. We're talking about $100,000 according to Ms. Robinson's comment at a public forum during the campaign. You're talking about $126,000. It's nothing, Mr. Kling, compared to the budget that we are going to pass. So your indignation is wasted because this is zero impact. The only time it kicks in if it's passed tonight is in September of next year. Right. For one month. So why are you so indignant and demanding that this be offset? There are no offsets required for this.

Well, we are going to have this conversation at the work session. I'm sorry, on the 24th when this item is considered. So please save your comments until then, and we will move on. 21H is an introduction of an ordinance amending Chapter 8 business. Mr. Kling? Mr. Kling? 21H is the introduction of an ordinance amending Chapter 8 business. Article 4, vehicle for hire. Division 2, livery vehicles of the Code of Ordinances of the City of Huntsville, Alabama to amend the taxi vehicle for hire rate. 20I is the introduction of an ordinance annexing 236.58 acres of land lying on the south of Huntsville-Browns Ferry Road, west of Greenbrier Parkway. 21J is the introduction of an ordinance declaring... certain real property as surplus and authorizing the mayor to enter into a purchase and sale agreement between the City of Huntsville and Lehman Ferry LLC. That concludes our business there. The mayor would like to have an opportunity to share nominations with the public.

Thank you, Madam President and Council, and I'm sorry I missed this in my comments. I would like to announce the appointment of George Nowlin to the City Tree Commission, effective October 9th, 2026, to expire October 8th, 2028. The reappointment of Mimi Potthoff to the City Tree Commission, effective October 10th, 2026, to expire October 9th, 2028. And the reappointment of Jesse Horton to the City Tree Commission, effective October 10th, 2026, to expire October 9th, 2028. Thank you all for letting me put that in.

Thank you, President. Let's just get that on the record. We will now take up second roster public comments. This portion of the meeting is reserved for persons wishing to address the Council on matters relating to the City business, whether or not such items are on the meeting agenda. I have here a list of persons who have signed up to speak. When called, approach the microphone, state your name, home address, and city of residence. Each speaker may address the council for three minutes. Speakers shall refrain from entering into a dialogue with council members or city staff and from making comments regarding the good name and character of any individual. I will call each person and the person who will be succeeding them so you can be ready to come up. The first person to sign up is someone who is not a stranger at all to us. Our former council member, Frances Akeridge, has joined us tonight. We will start with Ms. Akeridge. She will be followed by Omri Davis. Welcome, Ms. Akeridge.

Good evening, council members. I'm Frances Akeridge. The address on the sign-in sheet is correct. And city of? City of Huntsville. Thank you. So when I first moved here, it's been 20 years now, I looked for some information about the budget. It was on the website. It was three years old. And I had to run it down and find the current budget. And I'm starting my few minutes to say thank you, Penny Smith, for evidence of continuous improvement in the presentation of it and the legibility and the ability to learn from it. That kind of professionalism is something that I looked for because of not only my business background, but also because I grew up in a military family. My comments are now about etiquette. A good way to make a first impression for all of our new city residents is if they call here, that the person answering the phone speaks legibly, clearly and does something on the order of what I was taught to do as a child. Good afternoon. My name is Frances Akeridge. I wouldn't say afternoon. Hello, this is Frances Akeridge, Lieutenant Colonel Wint's residence. It was clear somebody knew where they had reached, and I recommend, Mr. Byron, that we do the same thing throughout the city, because when I call, sometimes I have to, and it's not a hearing problem, I can't understand somebody. We all have one chance to make a good impression. In the leadership training and other training that you do, it is imperative that somebody who's answering that phone sees themselves as an ambassador to the people who are calling. Thank you very much.

Thank you. We will now hear from Omri Davis, who will be followed by David Snyder. Is Omri Davis here? Then David Snyder, who will be followed by Liliana Painter.

Hello. My name is Mix David Snyder. My information is written correctly on the sheet. I live in Huntsville, Alabama.

Thank you, sir.

I wanted to talk a little bit. about racism, racism in Huntsville, and I wanted to show a little bit of support for a black history museum to be installed in Huntsville. I know that several people from Omega Psi Phi have advocated for that for some time now. You know, I remember a while back when there was racist graffiti that was put on the mid-city mural, if anybody here remembers that. I remember, you know, watching them paint over that or hearing about them paint over that. I remember hearing reports about restaurants that had suffered verbal attacks, racist vitriol. Right. I remember covering up. This is I think when I was homeless and I did a lot of walking around in the city and I remember finding racist graffiti myself. and with my own hands covering up racist graffiti in this town. I've watched one of our city council members, John Meredith, make claims about receiving discriminatory practice. I remember when our councilwoman, Michelle Watkins, first came on and was on the receiving end of racist vitriol via email, I believe, or some other communication. And I remember reaching out to our councilwoman Watkins about that. And these are examples of explicit outright in our face racism. We also have there are systemic issues that we had the Smithsonian come through with the bias inside us and kind of showed that value of seeing that there is an implicit bias in all of us. And I have shared There's an article, I believe it's called The Expert Mechanism on Racial Justice. It's a UN expert mechanism. I remember sharing a document that came out of that when they did a visit to the US. And I remember sharing that document with the entire council before. Um, these are, you know, examples of racism in our communities and history is not just something that is represented in the past in museums. It's also represented in the present with our daily actions and our daily perceptions that then shape the future. Right. So it's important. And, um, I wanted to call out a call for accountability and say that I believe that our council member, my council member, Bill Kling, should recant statements that there is no racism in Huntsville, because I don't believe that that was an appropriate comment to make.

Thank you, sir. We will now hear from Liliana Painter, who will be followed by Harold Kemp.

Good evening, Council. My name is Liliana Painter, and my address is correct on the sheet.

City of residence?

A city of residence is Huntsville. Thank you. I've called Madison County my home since 2014. I've experienced Huntsville's growth through several lenses as a homeowner, an educator, a small business owner, and most importantly, a mother raising her children here. I've watched our neighborhoods grow, businesses come in, and more families choose Huntsville. I believe growth is a good thing, but we have to be intentional about who the growth serves. Tonight, we're investing in our workforce, considering hundreds of acres of development and annexation, continuing to invite people and businesses to choose Huntsville, I support investing in our public servants, but if we can find room in our budget to address compensation, we should bring that same urgency to affordability for our residents. Tonight, we're finally considering eliminating the city sales tax on something as essential as hearing aids. So I would highly recommend thinking about that more clearly. We're also considering another 236 acres for annexation, a new tax increment financing district, and more than 800 acres moving through major zoning and rezoning actions. When we annex land to create a TIF district or rezone hundreds of acres, we aren't just moving lines on a map. We're adding people, infrastructure demands, and long-term obligations that outlast any single vote. Residents deserve to see the math before decisions are finalized, not after. And if we're inviting newcomers to the Star of Alabama, we should welcome them as Huntsvillians. but we also cannot forget the people who already built their lives here. Developers benefiting from our growth should be held to their commitments. Growth should not leave residents and taxpayers carrying the consequences because ultimately this comes back to representation. No elected official, no candidate, no institution is above the voters. The polling place belongs to the voters. City Hall belongs to the people. And public office belongs to the people, not the person temporarily entrusted with it. Huntsville has grown tremendously. Now our representation, accountability, and capacity have to grow with it. I'll give you back your time. Thank you.

Thank you. And finally, we will hear from Harold Kemp. Is Mr. Kemp still here? He is not. That was our last speaker. Then do we have a motion to adjourn? Motion for Mr. Little. Thank you. Thank you, council members. We'll see you for the work session on September 18th at 11 o'clock.

To the right is already Highway Business C4 District. We'll prohibit automobile sales, new and used retail and wholesale with attended facilities, automobiles, repair garages, mechanical and body, bus depots, multiple family dwellings, office warehouses.