Huntsville City Council could be getting thousands of dollars in discretionary funds for each district.
Council president John Meredith said with a discretionary fund, council members could better serve their community. If a problem comes up that is not already covered in the city’s annual budget, each district would have $75,000 of unearmarked money to tackle the problem.
Meredith said some cities in Alabama already have discretionary funds, and Huntsville isn’t a complete stranger to the fund either.
“The utilization of discretionary funds is not an unusual occurrence within our state,” said Meredith.
He points to 10 other cities, from Birmingham to Bessemer, that all have discretionary funds of different values.
“In a city whose budget is several hundred million dollars, what we’re talking about is not a huge amount of money,” he said.
It’s also not a completely new idea for Huntsville. “At one point in time there were discretionary funds within the city of Huntsville,” explained Meredith.
The city’s archives are missing a few key points, but he said there are documents from the early 2000’s which show a discretionary fund. It’s unclear when it started or when the fund was taken away.
“I thought we needed it, so again we could better serve our unique constituencies,” said Meredith.
Each district would have $75,000 to better serve their constituents. While not enough money for any major improvement projects, Meredith said it could help smaller organizations.
“Some of those smaller groups don’t get the funding, that $10,000 to them could keep them going for a year to supply much needed services to our citizens,” said Meredith.
Discretionary funds would allow council members to help organizations that might not be included in the annual budget. However, it’s not a free for all for each council member.
“Every dollar that a council person wants to expend through the discretionary fund will be voted on by the full council, just like every other tax payer dollar that we spend,” said Meredith.
He originally wrote the discretionary fund proposal as an ordinance that would have been introduced at Thursday’s city council meeting. However, he said about a week ago he realized it belonged as a resolution to be discussed during the city’s budgeting session. He tried to get it off the agenda, but it was not removed until an hour before the meeting began.
The discretionary improvement fund will be discussed on August 18th at a council work session devoted to the upcoming fiscal year budget.
Find WAAY31’s original story here.
