Birmingham residents who attended a budget hearing Monday night expressed concerns about many of the issues they said they bring up every year, including street paving, blight and the neglect of less prosperous communities.

They weren’t debating line-items in a budget proposal for fiscal 2025 because there isn’t one. As Birmingham Council President Darrell O’Quinn explained, for the time being, the spending plan for next year is identical to this year’s budget. City officials are using the $554 million 2024 budget as a stand-in for the coming year to allow staff to catch up on work lost due to what the city called a computer network disruption, which several news organizations have reported as a ransomware attack.

The city’s budget year begins July 1.

“I’ve been waiting for 16 years (to see Cleburn Avenue paved),” Dorothy Delemes, the owner of Wee Willies Child Development Center on Cleburn said during the hearing at City Hall. City staff told her the road is on the city’s 2024 paving list.

Teresa Dickerson, who lives in District 4, said she’s seen some progress in her community, but the city doesn’t seem to finish the work. For example, she said, crews repaved some of Lawson Road, but portions of the thoroughfare that haven’t seen work have large potholes that motorists have to swerve to avoid.

“The city is not doing their part,” Dickerson said.

Several speakers asked the council for more investment in the West end.

“Please, whatever you do, please include that community in your budget. Whatever needs to be done so that we can bring families back,” said a woman who declined to give her name.

Monday’s speakers also included several members from People’s Budget Birmingham, a group that advocates for more public participation in the city’s budget process. According to its website, the organization demands an end to “the near total control the Mayor has over the city budget” and urges that “city councilors regain the power to make changes to the city budget that best meet the needs of the people they represent.”

The mayor holds the budget power thanks to Alabama’s 2016 Mayor-Council Act, which critics have said shifted that balance of power too heavily toward the executive.

One member of People’s Budget, Mandy Wong-Davis, told the council Monday that the city should provide much more for education and youth programs. Wong-Davis also said the city should release its budget in a spreadsheet format.

“It would make it a lot more accessible,” she said.

Gabriel Cubero, executive director for People’s Budget Birmingham, commended the council and mayor for holding a budget town hall in March and for providing copies of the budget as well as brochures highlighting the major spending and revenue sources for the city.

Cubero, however, pointed out Mayor Randall Woodfin’s absence from Monday’s meeting.

“We stand here for three minutes to tell all of you, ‘I need better roads, I need better parks, I need better security, I need better transportation,” all the while the person, people or department with the power to change the budget is unable to attend,” Cubero said to the council, referring to the three-minute time limit for speakers.

Asked for comment on the mayor’s absence from the meeting, a city public information officer provided a statement that said in part, “the council budget hearing is the council’s meeting.”

Asked when the city would release the amended 2025 budget, that same statement said, “Any amendment to the budget is presented to the council and appears on the council agenda. It’s premature to identify when any amendments would be introduced.”

 

Correction: A complaint about conditions at Ensley’s community center has been removed from this story. Councilor LaTonya Tate said the flooring there is new.