SPANISH FORT – The Spanish Fort City Council approved a budget that includes major increases for spending in public safety.
The council voted Monday, Oct. 4, to approve a budget with revenue estimates of about $13.1 million.
Mayor Mike McMillan said that after a 10-percent reserve fund and “pass-through” items, state funding for specific projects, are deducted, the city has about $9 million for municipal expenses.
“When you’re talking about real dollars, you’ve got less than $9 million to play with, of which, I’m very proud of this, our public safety eats up over 50 percent of our total budget,” McMillan said. “That’s limits the pie down that we have to work from for the projects that we want to accomplish. Would I love to do every stormwater project in this city, absolutely, we would. Repave every street in this city, absolutely would, but you’ve got to be fiscally conservative, responsible and that’s the way this council has approached it and I do appreciate that.”
He said the city will be spending more on public safety to meet the needs being created as Spanish Fort grows.
“You’ve got police next year and their demands are almost $900,000 higher than the last year. You’ve got fire that went up $600,000,” McMillan said. “So, the costs continue to go up.”
The city also spent more for police and fire protection in the budget for the 2020-21 fiscal year that ended Sept. 30.
“We had tremendous police upgrades going into last year’s budget,” McMillan said. “We had purposefully budgeted a deficit because we had been saving in our surpluses. We knew we had some technology upgrades we needed to do. We a bunch of cars we needed to get, servers. There’s a lot of things that we had to do with police. Also, the fire had a lot of needs, so we took care of that to the tune of $1 million.”
The city budgeted $1 million for the Volunteer Fire Department in the 2020-21 fiscal year. The new budget sets spending for the department at $1.6 million.
He said that even with Hurricane Sally hitting the area in 2020, the city did not have to transfer as much money out of its reserves as officials expected.
“I’m very proud of the fact, the way this council has approached our finances,” McMillan said. “We’re very frugal. We don’t spend money we don’t have. The deficit spending, I was speaking of, that’s money we had planned to spend somewhere by saving it. We just spent more than we brought in last year, but that to be expected. We expected to transfer out of our reserves $3.1 million. We actually ended up transferring $2.2 million, which was good. That’s a good way to do it.”
McMillan said city officials expect revenue to increase but are being conservative on predicting how much money Spanish Fort will receive in the upcoming year.
“Hopefully, our revenues go up, which I feel very confident in our revenues going up a little bit,” McMillan said. “Some things we didn’t consider on the revenue side that will be a factor this year. Your internet sales tax has always been a good number this year.”
Under state law, cities receive a share of sales taxes on items bought over the internet. Each city’s revenue share is based on its census population. Spanish Fort’s population increased from about 6,000 in the 2010 census to 10,000 in 2020, McMillan said. He said that growth should also increase Spanish Fort’s share of internet sales taxes.
McMillan said drainage projects will also be a priority in the new budget.
“We’ll be spending over $1 million in stormwater projects this year, which is outstanding to have that,” McMillan said. “I’m glad to see this council decide to use those funds that way. That’s the most pressing item that we have in our city is stormwater management and this is a good spend for that money.”
He said the budget also includes a 2.5 percent annual raise for employees and a 1.3 percent cost of living adjustment.
The city will provide 120,000 in direct funding for schools that serve Spanish Fort students. McMillan said that money is in addition to funds the schools will receive through the 3-mill property tax passed for Spanish Fort schools.
The city is also paying to complete construction of the girls’ field house at Spanish Fort High School at a cost this year of about $650,000, McMillan said.
