Vote set for Huntsville's $360.6M budget
Add Axios as your preferred source to
see more of our stories on Google.
The Huntsville City Council considers its 2027 budget Thursday. Photo: Derek Lacey/Axios
Huntsville's $360.6 million budget is up for a vote Thursday night.
By the numbers: The budget, which primarily covers operations and not major capital expenditures like road construction, is set to increase by about 4%, from the current $346.5 million to $360.6 million.
What they're saying: "Over those 23 years, we started off with budgets of about $35 million, and today we are at about a third of a billion dollars," Mayor Tommy Battle said last week at a budget workshop, referring to the budgets he's helped manage during his tenure.
Driving the news: The city would add 46 positions to bring its total authorized workforce to 3,379, and personnel expenditures overall would rise a little more than 10% to just under $265 million, per the budget.
- That would be led by 13 new police positions, 12 sworn officers and one digital forensic lab technician, Penny Smith, finance director, said last week.
- Parks and Recreation would get 12 new positions, including eight for the new Sandra Moon Community Complex.
- The budget includes a 2% cost-of-living increase, and projects average gross pay for a full-time city employee at $74,438.
Zoom in: By department, police is the city's most expensive, budgeted for $88.8 million next year, a year-over-year increase of almost $7.6 million, accounting for nearly one quarter of the city's budget.
- Fire and Rescue is earmarked for $71.4 million, a $6.5 million increase.
Zoom out: It would be a balanced budget, with spending matched by an expected $360.6 million in revenues, about half of which will come from $187 million in locally levied taxes.
- Most of that will come from a projected $145 million in local sales tax, a $4.26 million increase year over year.
- State-shared taxes will bring in about $33 million, property taxes about $41 million, and payment in lieu of taxes (PILOT) budgeted at about $32.8 million.
Yes, but: Alabama's Simplified Sellers Use Tax, a flat 8% sales tax paid for online purchases that goes to the state to be redistributed among counties and cities, will represent a loss of roughly $44.3 million in revenue for the city in fiscal year 2026, per Smith.
- If those items, purchased by Huntsville residents online, were subject to Huntsville's local sales tax, the city would collect that revenue.
Context: The city also budgets its 1990 and 2014 Capital Improvement Funds, presented during last week's session, which account for the city's capital spending.
- In announcing the budget, the city highlighted $17.5 million in new road projects, $15 million in multimodal transportation projects, $22.3 million in road resurfacing, and $18 million in reinvestment corridors like Research Park, Mill Creek and downtown.
The bottom line: If approved, the budget takes effect with the new fiscal year Oct. 1.