April 2016
By David Zaslawsky
Photography by Robert Fouts
Montgomery County Commission Chairman Elton N. Dean Sr. and Montgomery Mayor Todd Strange delivered their annual addresses at the Chamber’s State of the City and County.
Bruce Crawford, chairman of the Montgomery Area Chamber of Commerce Board of Directors, said the city, county, Chamber, state delegation and region’s federal delegation “all work together to create jobs and a better quality of life for the citizens in the Capital of Dreams.”
Dean said that the county is joining the city and the Reverend Kyle Searcy, senior pastor of the Fresh Anointing House of Worship for the Youth City initiative. The program is for children/youths 5 to 18 and is expected to be held at One Center, above a city fire station and police precinct at the former Montgomery Mall.
“Middle-schoolers who participate in after-school programs are more likely to graduate and go on to college or the workforce to have hope for lifting themselves and their families out of the cycle of poverty and into a world of possibility,” Dean said. “Youth City and the county’s youth programs will provide that hope.”
Yes, 2015 was a good year for Montgomery – county and city. The county generated a record $43 million-plus in sales taxes and the city topped the $100 million plateau for sales taxes. The previous record for the city was $98 million.
The success from last year is continuing in 2016. The city’s sales tax revenue for January was the second-best month ever at $10.2 million, and just shy of the all-time record of $10.4 million set pre-Great Recession in January 2007.
Meanwhile, the county’s budget was increased $6 million from the previous year to $108 million. The increase included $6.4 million for employee wages and benefits and $1 million for debt service on Montgomery Public Schools projects: building Loveless Academic Magnet Program High and Montgomery Preparatory Academy for Career Technologies at One Center; and adding a wing at Park Crossing High School. The County Commission, which is funding $16 million of the $27 million for the three projects, contributed an additional $28 million to the school district and has given MPS more than $322 million since dedicating a portion of sales tax collections for the school district.
The county completed several projects last year:
> Renovations to the Montgomery County Youth facility - $8.6 million.> New courtroom and administrative offices for probate judge - $1.5 million.
> New district attorney’s offices - $3.5 million.
> New public defender’s office - $525,000.
> New handicapped-accessible restrooms for the probate/revenue west office - $125,000.
> The county also funded 25 new vehicles for the Sheriff’s Office and each unit has $27,000-plus of computer equipment and video cameras.
This year, the county will open its first ever probate/revenue office on the south side of Montgomery. The $1.4 million facility is located at the former Pier One building on McGehee Road.
The City of Montgomery is building a municipal court on Madison Avenue. The city is also working on renovations to the 67-year-old Paterson Field.
For the third straight year, Montgomery has topped the state’s metros in hotel occupancy rate, and Strange said that will result in three new hotels this year, which represent 250 to 300 more rooms.
He talked about projects under way on Dexter Avenue, Fairview Avenue, Cloverdale, One Center and EastChase where “you see millions and millions and millions of dollars that are under construction. Our permit values right now are close to $300 million and that will take us a few months to work through …”
Yet for Strange, one of the most important developments was Uber coming to Montgomery. “The fact that we have Uber sends messages to the world,” Strange said. “It talks about Montgomery (being) a tech-savvy city, and when you have people coming from all over the world to Montgomery and they can use Uber, that speaks volumes about where we are and what we’re doing.”
There is another development that could someday rival or top the $4.8 billion annual economic impact of Hyundai Motor Manufacturing Alabama’s plant in Montgomery. That development is the Montgomery Internet Exchange and Montgomery Cyber Connection. Strange said that places Montgomery “as the epicenter of cyber.” He said that Montgomery will be the Silicon Valley for cyber in two or three years.
