Huntsville's budget highlights: Public safety, roads
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Public safety and infrastructure are focuses of the 2026 budget, per Mayor Tommy Battle. Photo: Derek Lacey / Axios
Huntsville's upcoming budget prioritizes public safety and infrastructure as the city continues growing while revenues stay relatively flat.
Why it matters: The City Council will vote on the budget Thursday, solidifying those priorities over the next fiscal year, which starts Oct. 1.
Catch up quick: Mayor Tommy Battle introduced the budget Sept. 11.
- The $343.7 million general fund operating budget is nearly a 4% increase over the current year.
- Police and fire spending accounts for 47.4% of general fund expenditures.
Context: Huntsville operates two capital improvement plans, 1990 and 2014, each using a portion of sales and use taxes levied by the city to fund capital projects.
- The 2014 plan includes $24.5 million toward street construction in the FY26 budget and $13.5 million toward multi-modal and greenway improvements, including $7 million toward the PARC project.
Looking ahead, city leaders are prioritizing road projects, including the Memorial Parkway/I-565 interchange.
- The city funded a $2 million corridor study two years ago to try to accelerate the project, said Shane Davis, urban and economic development director, as both are federal roads.
- The city has $390 million in active transportation projects, Davis said, that are in planning, design or construction.
What's next: The city is focused on improving infrastructure around the Redstone Arsenal, with Battle saying that "that's where a lot of the traffic problems come from."
- The first phase of the city's Restore our Roads initiative has taken more than 15 years to reach completion, he said, and the next one is expected to take just as long.
- The second round of the plan is earmarked for its next allocation in 2030, at $20 million.
- Resolute Way, an interchange on 565 at Madison Boulevard to provide access to Redstone Arsenal, is slated for $5 million in FY26.
Zoom in: The city also has almost a dozen construction projects in the works and another five in design, according to city administrator John Hamilton.
- He said work in FY26 will include determining which Fire & Rescue stations are most in need of replacement and where to build the new ones.
- In FY27, fire station and police station construction are earmarked for $8 million each from the 1990 plan. Fire station construction gets another $8 million in FY28.
What they're saying: "Several of them are in deplorable conditions," council member Michelle Watkins said at a council session last week, of the city's fire stations. "It's really unacceptable, and I'm kind of disappointed that it has gotten to this point."