Jefferson County Commission

Hey Bidder Bidder: JeffCo Commission Decides $550K in Allotments From Surplus

Jefferson County Commissioner Sheila Tyson (Photo by Solomon Crenshaw Jr.)

Joe Knight appeared to add auctioneer to his resume as he led his fellow Jefferson County commissioners in assigning money for disbursement that was left over from the fiscal 2023 budget.

When the hour-long discussion was done at the end of Tuesday’s commission committee meeting, $550,000 of the $1.4 million had been allotted to entities that had sought county support. Final approval will come during Thursday’s commission meeting.

The leftover money, which was placed in the county’s contingency fund, had been $1.9 million before the commission syphoned $500,000 from it to the Birmingham Business Resource Center during its last meeting.

Requests for help totaled $2.576 million. Knight, chairman of the commission’s finance committee, directed the commission through the list, soliciting motions of the allotment for each. The list of requests grew from 14 to 15 as Commissioner Sheila Tyson made an appeal to help Lawson State Community College when a request from Jefferson State was read.

Three entities are set to get their original requests, with Vulcan Foundation allotted $150,000, Northeast YMCA $50,000 and UAB Basketball $25,000. The money for UAB Basketball is the first of a requested 10 contributions of that amount. Commission President Jimmie Stephens said a different source will be sought for the remaining annual request.

Lawson State and Jefferson State each were allotted $50,000. Three entities – Consumer Financial Education Foundation of America Inc., Junior Achievement and Penny Foundation – each are in line to get $75,000. Consumer Financial had sought $350,000.

The scheduled appropriations would leave $850,000 in the contingency fund for unanticipated emergencies, “which is not a bad thing to have,” Knight said. “Who knows where this economy’s going? With what’s going on in the Middle East now, everything’s gonna start to really be shaky. The stock market’s gonna probably plunge because of the unrest. The oil situation. We don’t know.”

Tyson after the meeting said that she really wanted to get money for the Center for Negro League Baseball Research, which was seeking $200,000. She said she will continue to seek funding for the entities for which she lobbied.

“I’m gonna keep fighting for the items that I feel like need to be approved,” she said. “Hopefully I can get at least a partial payment on the different items.”

Sewer Debt

In other business, the commission moved to Thursday’s agenda a public hearing about efforts to refinance the county’s sewer debt. Lashunda Scales asked that the hearing be delayed. She and Tyson voted against the motion to schedule the hearing this week.

“We have to have the public hearing, which by law is a formality to where we have to have a public hearing on it,” Knight said. “We had to advertise it. We’ve done that; you advertise it in the largest circulation paper of the county, which is the Alabama Messenger. All legal notices go there. Basically, they’re the only countywide newspaper left.

“If we adopt the rate resolution, then we can do the other things that we’re getting ready to do in order to go to the market to refund/refinance that sewer debt,” he continued. “We can’t wait. Well, we could but we shouldn’t continue under the current indenture because our payments are gonna go way up.”