OPENPUBLICA · PUBLIC MEETING RECORD
Record of Proceedings

Tuscaloosa City Council Budget and Saban Center Work Session – September 2, 2026

City Council Meetings — Wednesday, September 2, 2026
BodyTuscaloosa, Alabama
SessionCity Council Meetings
DateWednesday, September 2, 2026
StatusFILED
Video Record
0:00 / 2:57:10

Transcript — Verbatim
0:02

It's funny how three years.

0:17

Tear it up before we get started on this man and on film review.

0:24

Right.

0:28

You know I am.

0:30

Back up medicine.

0:31

Thank you.

0:38

Okay.

0:40

What you have in front of you.

0:42

Actually, I know that I need to speak into this microphone, correct?

0:45

Okay.

0:46

I was chastised last time about not speaking in the microphone.

0:52

So what you have in front of you is one of the majority of analysis that we will do every fiscal year to be able to project new revenues into the future.

1:07

We will do monthly revenue reviews in this same type of vein.

1:14

And we will produce a revenue report and a revenue email that we send to the mayor.

1:19

I know that the mayor then forwards it on with any additional information to the council at times.

1:26

So you might have seen something like this already.

1:28

But just to be able to walk through it so that you know where we come from when we are trying to project revenues in the general fund and in elevate.

1:38

So the front page is really kind of your summary.

1:43

These are all of our major revenues.

1:45

It totals up to 176 million dollars.

1:48

If you look in your budget book, the total overall revenues for the general fund is 234 million dollars.

1:56

So we're looking at 75% of all general fund revenues with just this picture on the front page.

2:03

And that's purely for from a time standpoint.

2:06

I'm sorry.

2:07

That's purely from a timing standpoint.

2:10

Oh, as in well, now we will do we will project all the other revenues too, but we do the deep dive, the monthly analysis only on these because it's a lot of the other revenues are intergovernmental, so they're grant-based, um, or they are one-time payments, like the for example the bank excise fee, which is over a million dollars, so would meet our threshold for a major revenue source, but we get that one time a year from the from the state.

2:39

There's no need to like think about economic impacts um hitting that type of revenue stream month to month.

2:49

That's just kind of silly.

2:51

Um, so really we do these revenues on a monthly basis, and then I'm about to show you how we project into the future for um for budget determination.

3:04

So I did not print every single one of them because it's a lot of paper.

3:08

But if you want to flip to the next page, the next page is uh the sales is the projection for the sales tax budget alone.

3:17

This is not the elevate portion, although you will see an elevate portion, like a little subset at the bottom.

3:23

This is not the elevate portion, this is just the general portion.

3:27

But you will see that we will look at uh monthly collections and what our revenue division does is every single sales tax payment that we receive, we will accrue it back to its exact month.

3:44

So if we receive a sales tax payment late, which happens quite frequently, and it is for the month of December, our revenue division will go in and take that one check and split it out between the months that it actually applies to.

4:02

So the month-to-month detail that you see on this page on the left-hand side is actual activity happening in the economy reported to us via a sales tax return from sales tax collecting businesses in the community.

4:22

You'll see the increase decrease, which is on the uh very right-hand side of that table, and that just kind of tells us like what our economy is really looking like on the ground.

4:32

Um obviously you can apply situations that are happening in the community um to these types of numbers.

4:41

We know what happens in September, October, November around here, the football games and when they occur can have a big play.

4:49

Um, who we play can have a big um impact on those.

4:53

So if we have a game, uh if we have three games in September versus two games in September, that can skew your months um year to year.

5:04

So you have to take those kind of things into account, but this at least gives us a snapshot to start to work from now.

5:11

Of course, in a whole year, you would think that you would have a full football season.

5:16

October, November in the beginning, September at the end, and then you can combine those into one full football season.

5:22

But again, sometimes there's two games in September, sometimes there's three.

5:26

Sometimes we play um Texas and LSU and Tennessee.

5:31

Sometimes we just play Auburn.

5:32

There's there's a lot of just different things that we factor into that.

5:36

I just that I I mean that is no shaved on up a notch.

5:43

What do we think we're gonna have for revenue when we close out the fiscal?

5:48

Sure.

5:48

So you can see that we will project revenue.

5:50

So if you keep if you take this table on the left-hand side of the page and you work your way down, you will see that we estimate the remaining months of 2026.

6:01

Now, within that little blue box, the 2026 estimated remaining months, there could be growth worked in there, or there could not be.

6:09

It depends on the individual sales tax um or the individual tax uh depiction.

6:16

If you have a question about that, I'm more than happy to dive into which ones have growth and which ones don't and why.

6:22

Now, obviously, within the 2026 sales tax scenario, we had the Morgan Wallen concert, which is extremely unusual.

6:31

We did a sales tax analysis.

6:34

Well, we did tax analysis on a lot of things related to the Morgan Wallen concert, sales tax, lodging tax, liquor tax.

6:40

And so knowing that we probably won't duplicate that in 2027, we we removed that, and so then projected the 2026 without Morgan Wallen to be 48.577 million dollars.

Discussion Breakdown — Share of Meeting
Budget Equity Analysis██████████████████████████████████████████42%
Facility Management████████████12%
Economic Development███████████11%
Procedural███████7%
Personnel Matters███████7%
Public Engagement█████5%
Fiscal Sustainability████4%
Technology and Innovation████4%
Education Funding██2%
Summary of Proceedings

Tuscaloosa City Council Budget and Saban Center Work Session – September 2, 2026

This work session of the Tuscaloosa City Council focused on two major topics: a detailed revenue projection review for fiscal year 2027 led by the finance department, and a comprehensive presentation on the Saban Center's capital and operational funding plans. The meeting highlighted conservative budgeting due to anemic sales tax growth, concerns over the Simplified Sellers Use Tax (SSUT) erosion, and the complex financial structure of the Saban Center involving multiple funding sources and departmental support.

Discussion Items

Revenue Projections for FY2027

  • Finance Director Ms. Standridge presented a monthly revenue analysis covering 75% of general fund revenues ($176 million out of $234 million total). Major revenue streams examined: sales tax, property tax, lodging tax, and SSUT.
  • Sales tax: FY2026 projected at $48.577 million (excluding Morgan Wallen concert), exceeding the original budget of $47.6 million. The $800,000 Morgan Wallen impact was removed from FY2027 baseline due to non-recurrence. No growth factored into FY2027 budget.
  • Property tax: FY2026 projected at $24.5 million (budgeted $23 million), with 9.64% growth over prior year. A 4% growth factor ($982,000) applied for FY2027, yielding a $25.5 million budget. Tax abatements (e.g., Hotel Indigo, Embassy Suites) are falling off, freeing up revenue.
  • Lodging tax: Rebounding after a rough 2024-2025. FY2026 projected at $11.3 million (budgeted $10.5 million). Conservative approach: no growth assumed for FY2027, budget set at $11 million. Monthly volatility noted due to football games and graduations. Short-term rental data (homes) is now being tracked.
  • SSUT (Simplified Sellers Use Tax): Growing at 13% annually, but the mayor noted this line item is $12 million short of what would have been generated locally if the tax were collected at the point of sale. The city is losing significant revenue to the state.
  • General Fund: FY2026 is projected to end with a surplus of approximately $7 million over budget, which will be used for capital projects (not for ongoing expenditures). This surplus helped fund the pay plan, equipment, and offset cuts.
  • Budget philosophy: The administration recommended a 5% across-the-board cut and a reduction of 16 FTEs in the general fund to meet the needs of a growing city with stagnant revenue growth. The mayor emphasized that without solving SSUT by 2030-2032, the city faces real challenges.

Saban Center – Capital and Operational Funding

  • Mayor presented the Saban Center as a fulfillment of the Elevate Tuscaloosa experience venue commitment (originally $60 million). Capital cost to the city is ~$66 million. External contributions: State of Alabama $25 million, community donors $35 million, grants $1.5 million.
  • Operational pro forma (provided by Saban Center Executive Director Audrey Buck) covered FY2027 (pre-opening, partial staffing), FY2028 (half-year of operations), and FY2029 (first full year). Income sources: tenant occupancy contributions, rentals, concessions, fundraising, grants, and city fund transfers from River District and general fund.
  • State STEM Hub: Alabama provides $2.5 million annually to the Saban Center Foundation, which covers teacher salaries, STEM lab supplies, and a portion of tenant occupancy reimbursement to the city (~$500,000). This is an annual appropriation, not guaranteed beyond a year.
  • Tenant structure: The city operates the campus; three tenants (Ignite, Tuscaloosa Children’s Theater, State STEM Hub) have their own budgets and staff but pay a tenant occupancy fee to the city for shared services (maintenance, security, IT, marketing, accounting).
  • Staffing model: Positions are embedded within existing city departments (Strategic Communications, IT, Police, Finance, Facilities) rather than creating a separate Saban Center department. This leverages departmental expertise and allows for backfill. Council member Henry requested a consolidated profit/loss view to simplify understanding of total Saban Center costs.
  • Staffing recommendations:
    • Strategic Communications: 1 communications manager (Grade 26, 3+ years experience).
    • IT: 1 IT director, 1 exhibit technology manager, 1 network analyst, 1 systems analyst. Salary costs ~$1 million in FY28.
    • Police: 7 positions (5 security guards, 2 officers) for municipal security, operating 6 days/week with metal detectors.
    • Facilities: Still under development; expected cost $700,000+ (gray area pending decision on in-house vs. contract).
    • Accounting: 1 accountant added to finance to handle Saban Center reporting.
  • Fund flow: The Saban Center Foundation will raise $1.3 million annually; $416,000 goes back to tenants (Ignite, TCT) for their own fundraising; $750,000 goes to the River District Fund to support Saban Center operations. The River District Fund also receives lodging tax revenue and Elevate O&M funds to cover the ~$3.9 million annual city cost.
  • River District Park: A half-percent lodging tax increase (from 2% to 2.5%) is proposed to fund a $400,000 annual repayment to the general fund for the river district parking project, repaid over 7 years.

Key Outcomes

  • No formal votes were taken; the session was informational for budget planning.
  • The council will continue discussions on the FY2027 budget and Saban Center funding in subsequent meetings.
  • The administration will provide additional detail on the facilities maintenance model and consolidated financial reporting for the Saban Center.
  • The council expressed support for the Saban Center’s mission but emphasized the need for transparent, simplified financial tracking.
  • The mayor reiterated that solving the SSUT issue is a top priority to avoid significant fiscal constraints in the 2030s.

Public Comments & Testimony

  • No public comments were taken during the session.

Consent Calendar

  • None.

Meeting Transcript

It's funny how three years. Tear it up before we get started on this man and on film review. Right. You know I am. Back up medicine. Thank you. Okay. What you have in front of you. Actually, I know that I need to speak into this microphone, correct? Okay. I was chastised last time about not speaking in the microphone. So what you have in front of you is one of the majority of analysis that we will do every fiscal year to be able to project new revenues into the future. We will do monthly revenue reviews in this same type of vein. And we will produce a revenue report and a revenue email that we send to the mayor. I know that the mayor then forwards it on with any additional information to the council at times. So you might have seen something like this already. But just to be able to walk through it so that you know where we come from when we are trying to project revenues in the general fund and in elevate. So the front page is really kind of your summary. These are all of our major revenues. It totals up to 176 million dollars. If you look in your budget book, the total overall revenues for the general fund is 234 million dollars. So we're looking at 75% of all general fund revenues with just this picture on the front page. And that's purely for from a time standpoint. I'm sorry. That's purely from a timing standpoint. Oh, as in well, now we will do we will project all the other revenues too, but we do the deep dive, the monthly analysis only on these because it's a lot of the other revenues are intergovernmental, so they're grant-based, um, or they are one-time payments, like the for example the bank excise fee, which is over a million dollars, so would meet our threshold for a major revenue source, but we get that one time a year from the from the state. There's no need to like think about economic impacts um hitting that type of revenue stream month to month. That's just kind of silly. Um, so really we do these revenues on a monthly basis, and then I'm about to show you how we project into the future for um for budget determination. So I did not print every single one of them because it's a lot of paper. But if you want to flip to the next page, the next page is uh the sales is the projection for the sales tax budget alone. This is not the elevate portion, although you will see an elevate portion, like a little subset at the bottom. This is not the elevate portion, this is just the general portion. But you will see that we will look at uh monthly collections and what our revenue division does is every single sales tax payment that we receive, we will accrue it back to its exact month. So if we receive a sales tax payment late, which happens quite frequently, and it is for the month of December, our revenue division will go in and take that one check and split it out between the months that it actually applies to. So the month-to-month detail that you see on this page on the left-hand side is actual activity happening in the economy reported to us via a sales tax return from sales tax collecting businesses in the community. You'll see the increase decrease, which is on the uh very right-hand side of that table, and that just kind of tells us like what our economy is really looking like on the ground. Um obviously you can apply situations that are happening in the community um to these types of numbers. We know what happens in September, October, November around here, the football games and when they occur can have a big play. Um, who we play can have a big um impact on those. So if we have a game, uh if we have three games in September versus two games in September, that can skew your months um year to year. So you have to take those kind of things into account, but this at least gives us a snapshot to start to work from now. Of course, in a whole year, you would think that you would have a full football season. October, November in the beginning, September at the end, and then you can combine those into one full football season. But again, sometimes there's two games in September, sometimes there's three. Sometimes we play um Texas and LSU and Tennessee. Sometimes we just play Auburn. There's there's a lot of just different things that we factor into that. I just that I I mean that is no shaved on up a notch. What do we think we're gonna have for revenue when we close out the fiscal?

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