Tuscaloosa Mayor Walt Maddox's proposed budget for the next fiscal year would marginally increase the cost of city services and give a raise to all municipal employees, he told the city council Tuesday.

The mayor's shorter budget presentation can be read in full on the city's website, streamed in video below, or reviewed in extreme depth in the 230-page Budget Book.

One key takeaway for Tuscaloosa's 110,000 residents is that if his recommendations are adopted next month, the average household will spend about $12 more each month on city services.

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Rates and Fees to Increase

The lion's share of that hike comes from a proposed increase in water & sewer rates, which Maddox said would raise the average customer's bill by $10.59 but the impact will vary by use.

He said the recommended hike is impossible to avoid - Maddox said as a public utility, the city's water and sewer service must pay for themselves or risk blowing holes into other parts of municipal budgets.

Maddox said the increase is part of a plan to invest more than $240 million in Tuscaloosa's water & sewer infrastructure in the next 10 years.

"These investments will ensure clean drinking water, provide reinvestment in the infrastructure for businesses and industries, and expand opportunities for home and commercial growth in Tuscaloosa," Maddox said in the budget book.

Maddox is also calling to increase the environmental service fees added to utility bills for the third straight year, this time from $7.75 per month for your first residential garbage cart to $9.

Fees for any additional cart or any cart that is not residential will climb from $33.35 to $34.60 per month.

Though the fee is expected to increase, Maddox reminded the council that the Environmental Service Fees are still significantly smaller than they could be thanks to a subsidy from the Elevate Tuscaloosa tax plan.

When Maddox and the council were pushing to adopt the new 1-cent sales tax back in 2019, they wanted to make the medicine go down with a spoonful of sugar - some way to offset the increased cost of living in Tuscaloosa.

Ultimately that manifested as the city slashing most Environmental Service Fees for your first residential garbage cart almost completely off the bill - dropping from more than $20 to just $3.25 per month in Fiscal Year 2020.

"As part of Elevate Tuscaloosa, we initially wanted to do a sales tax exemption on groceries but we were unable to be successful with that in the Alabama Legislature," Maddox said during a Tuesday presentation. "The IRS tax tables told us that amount would have been around $200 a year so, because of that, we try to maintain around a $200 subsidy coming out of Elevate on our garbage, trash and recycling bills."

All Employees to Get 6 Percent Raise - With a Catch

The mayor's proposed budget would also give an overall 6 percent raise to all employees working for the city, both inside and outside the public safety sphere, although workers may not feel it fully thanks to hikes in their health insurance costs.

Maddox said the city's public safety employees in the police and fire departments would get a 2.5 percent "step" raise and an additional 3.5 percent Cost of Living Adjustment, or COLA, for an overall 6 percent raise.

The mayor's recommendation calls for all other employees to see a 1.5 percent "step"
raise and a 4.5 COLA, although the end result is the same - a six percent raise.

"I think we can say without a shadow of a doubt that this city and city council have invested in our employees and we should have no shame in doing so," Maddox said. "We can have the best equipment, the best vehicles and the best technology but it's all for naught without the best employees."

Those workers shouldn't start planning their next big purchases though - Maddox warned that although all employee paychecks will see some increase, the raises are partially offset by a 12 percent spike in their health insurance costs.

"We had a very difficult year claims-wise. We had a couple of cases that were extremely costly in our health insurance costs portfolio this year, and we are self-insured so we must pay those costs," Maddox said. "Here's the thing, though - all employees, even our lowest-paid employees, will still see a pay increase despite the 12 percent increase in health insurance."

The mayor's budget recommendations also propose creating the state's first-ever drone response team - read more about that project here. 

The full Tuscaloosa City Council has the next five weeks or so to review, discuss, debate and edit the mayor's recommendations before adopting them before Fiscal Year '25 begins on October 1st.

Stay connected to the Tuscaloosa Thread for more coverage of that process as it unfolds and one more standalone piece about Maddox's budget proposal and the risks that Internet sales pose to the city's future finances.