The Tuscaloosa Finance Committee met on September 23, 2025, to consider a series of fiscal year 2026 budget items, including adoption of the general fund and elevate budgets, as well as routine approvals and a donation from New Core Steel. Notable discussions included decisions on pay plan adjustments, an increase in solid waste fees, and the tabling of a proposed vape tax for further review.
No public comments were recorded during this meeting.
Second. All in favor say aye. Aye. Aye. Okay. Minutes are adopted. Okay. Rolling agenda slide. Item number one under new business. Chief Dell. Welcome. Good afternoon, Council. Good afternoon. Glad to be here today. Today we're talking about new core steel. New core steel about a month ago came to us. They were doing a lot of safety training and some new stuff involved with their safety department. They've got a safety director, Billy Payne, who works really good with the guys at Station 4 right there in Alberta. They always have a really good working relationship. We go out there and train at least every couple months, just going through seeing what they do out there and the processes that they do. They saw a need though, they had a contractor on site that actually had some heavy equipment, uh, had an issue with some heavy equipment that needed extricating from that. Um they saw a need that hey, we need the the closest unit there to have the capabilities to do these extrications. And we've got some of this extrication equipment on on our truck companies and things like that, but we normally don't staff that on an engine that close. So new core said, hey, you know what, instead of us buying this, let's buy this for that local fire department. And so not only can it benefit new core, but it can benefit the community. And so to me, that's that was an unsolicited uh offer, and to me that takes volumes to what they do and and what they do for our community. So uh the plan tonight is to have kind of a kind of a thank you for them at the beginning of council to thank them for what they've done. Uh they're gonna have two representatives here. We've got the guys from station four gonna be here with that equipment so you all can see what they've donated. It was a 50 $51,000 um donation. So we've got everything from you know a lot of times you hear it called the jaws of life, the spreaders, the cutters, uh a RAM, things like that for all the heavy equipment uh so we can do those extrications, airbags, uh all that stuff that we've got within the city that's coming, but this puts it on another apparatus that allows us to respond quicker right there to that heavy industrial site. Okay, any questions or comments? Uh I just take it for granted. Y'all could use that as needed somewhere. Uh huh. They've they have asked that we keep it at the first responding unit to them. And that's what we're gonna do with motion. We move that. Uh we made that accommodation. I say accommodation. We it wasn't an accommodation. We we made it work. So we're very thankful for that. All in favor say aye. Aye. Okay, item is approved. Item number two, Mr. Holmes, resolution authorizing renewal of the city's engineers professional liability insurance coverage for 26. Yes, sir. This is the renewal of our engineers' professional liability coverage.