# Montevallo City Council Meeting — Topic-Organized Transcript

**Meeting date:** September 14, 2026  
**Recording length:** 2:06:11  
**Source:** City meeting Zoom recording supplied by the requester

## Editorial note

This is an edited working transcript, not a certified court transcript. The recording has been reorganized into two topic tracks as requested: **Ordinance Discussion** and **Other Business**. Timestamps preserve the original chronology, so the original meeting order can be reconstructed. Police Chief Todd Burr’s extended comments about crime, enforcement, staffing, underage drinking, DUI patterns, and personal responsibility are included in the ordinance track even though they occurred during committee reports.

Speaker names come from spoken introductions, Zoom labels, agenda context, and official roles stated in the meeting. Where the evidence was insufficient, the label is deliberately qualified. Obvious automated-transcription errors in names and “Montevallo” were corrected; unclear wording was otherwise retained rather than silently rewritten. Crosstalk, room acoustics, and compression make a few passages uncertain.

### Identified speakers

| Speaker | Identification basis |
|---|---|
| Rusty Nix, Mayor | Agenda role and repeated address as mayor |
| Steve Gilbert, City Clerk/Treasurer | Zoom label, agenda role, and ordinance reading |
| Councilmembers David King, Lelia Mitchell, Kenneth Dukes, Brandelyn Nelson, Alyssa Green | Zoom labels and committee introductions |
| Police Chief Todd Burr | Introduced role and subject matter |
| Bobby C. P. Pearson; TJ; Joe Hohen; Katherine Wood; Rachel Phillips; Mary Moon; Jimmy Maddox; Donna McDowell; Brianna MacLennan; Rebecca Collins; Alex Toole; Cheryl Patton; Richard Carruthers; Rebecca Bay; Emily Gill | Spoken introductions and/or direct address in the meeting |

# 1. Ordinance Discussion

## Work-session discussion of proposed alcohol-sale hours

**[00:06:27–00:09:11] Mayor Nix / council discussion:** the budget as proposed. All right. We'll move down to the next one. Ordinance 09142026-222. An ordinance amending the municipal code of the city of Montevallo Chapter 16, Article 3, Section 16-59E regarding the hours of on-premise alcohol beverage sales, and also Section 16-59F regarding the hours of off-premise alcohol beverage sales. Let me tell you the reasoning behind this ordinance. Thank you. Had a restaurant owner wanting to serve brunch and our legal time was 12 o'clock on Sunday. We felt like that we could move it back to 10 to give them an opportunity to sell alcoholic beverages with their meal. So that's why that first proposal's on there. The second proposal is to move from 2 a.m. back to 12, and the reason that's being is on October the 21st, I believe, it was chaos in the streets. Fights broke out, a gun fell out of somebody's pocket, I don't know, 100 people, 150 people in the street, folks walking around with open containers, people throwing up on the sidewalk into bushes, pedestrians almost getting struck by traffic, and our job is the safety of the citizens and investors in this city on that. The footage of what went on, you would be shocked. There's still an investigation going on, so that part of it can't be made public yet, but when it does, and it's out, there's one video floating around that apparently just bystander made it, and I have no control over them showing

**[00:09:11–00:09:50] Mayor Nix / council discussion:** it to the general public, but what went on that night, it can't be tolerated, and it's not going to be tolerated. Some underage drinking went on, I think eight people got arrested for underage drinking, a couple of them were athletes with the University of Montevallo, and they no longer have their scholarships, don't they? Council up, take any input you get. Mayor, can I ask what time,

**[00:09:50–00:10:48] Councilmember and Police Chief Todd Burr:** all this happened? I haven't seen the videos, so. The fight was at one, roughly 1 30? Good point. I didn't say on August the, I think it was starting on August 1 second, went into August 23rd, I would say somewhere around 1 0 2. Okay. And then you mentioned that there were some arrests, were any people actually booked, or were they just arrested on the street? Were they arrested and booked, or were they just arrested? Okay. They were ticket. Okay. I mean, personally, Mr. Mayor,

**[00:10:48–00:12:28] Councilman Kenneth Dukes:** yeah, a lot of people say you're looking at it from your past story or side of you, but I'm really not. When I was these kids age, I ran a what they call a hole in the wall, and I DJed, and I parted, and there was one little business in Montevallo that sell us some from Boom Farm and Mad Dog 2020, and they end up having their license taken from them, not because of me, because I was just the same driver. But when I'm sitting here, and you got parents of students that are afraid that their child could first of all die, the thousands of dollars that's costing them because of the scholarship, and that's based off the university, you know, we're simply saying, we got to do something, we can't just sit and just do nothing. I don't care if it's one time or five times, when you got that many children underage, and they're done, and the people that's running the establishment, based off what I visually saw, is doing nothing about it, in my opinion. I take it very serious. I don't care who like it or don't like it. You know, my thing is, if you are contributing to the delinquency of minors in any shape, form, or fashion, then you should not have a business in the city of Montevallo or any other city. And if we sit back and allow someone to do that without setting some guidelines and parameters,

**[00:12:29–00:13:26] Councilman Kenneth Dukes:** which I think what you're doing here is just putting up the, you know, you're at the bowling alley, you're just putting up the guard rails. You know, if someone can't accept that fine, all of these businesses are doing it the right way. All of them are doing it the right way, but now you have a situation. I'm not against the individual. Business is business. But at the end of the day, the next step is us having to witness the news media here or anybody here, because a child has been killed downtown Montevallo, a student that came from somewhere in the state of Alabama, and their parents have to come and take them home in a body bag. I've seen it happen. So all I'm simply saying is, what's the expectation from us outside of following what's right and understanding the safety of the citizens of Montevallo? I respect everyone's opinion. Everyone has a right to their opinion, but I support what you're doing, because if we do nothing,

**[00:13:27–00:14:36] Council discussion:** we in turn become liable, in my opinion. What have been the past? Have we had problems like, is this in the past with this kind of thing going on with our young people from the University of Montevallo? I know they've been here for a while, and they kind of find what they want, because we've all been in that position that we'll seek out what we want and find a place to get it, if we sincerely look for it. So my concern is, how have we had this incident before with minors being sold alcohol and with the eruption that went on the street before? Have we had situations like this before? I have to turn it achieve on the court, I was just concerned about this incident that just happened on 22nd, 23rd. What about in the past that we had incidents like this to happen with the young people with the University of Montevallo students coming downtown and not ID'ed and sold alcohol by them being underage or

**[00:14:38–00:16:20] Police Chief Todd Burr / council questions:** scholarships? Naturally, I would say that there's always been a problem with underage drinking, whether that's a gas station, a business, a restaurant, or whatever else. We've always had problems like that. I think every city has those types of problems, and they occur. So I'm not going to tell you that they don't, they do. It happens, we have arrested in the past a number of individuals for underage drinking. They want to get it, they're going to get it from some way. Exactly. But we have to ID them before we, you know, they're ID'ed. Yeah, so. Have to have ID before they sell it to them, or whatever. They know the rules, the ABC board and their responsibilities. They have to have ID individuals. Everybody has to ID, you have to provide an ID, you can purchase alcohol. How many people do that? How do they not, I mean, I don't know how to answer that. Only time we deal with it is when we have an incident, we have to deal with it, whether that's a traffic stop where somebody is underage that has alcohol and stuff, and we try to figure out where they get that alcohol from. Sometimes they don't sometimes they don't. But under, but so that you're clear, underage drinking is not something that, no, it's not. And Paige admit that when I was, you know, I was underage. Yeah, right. So I'm embarrassed by that idea. It's not something

**[00:16:20–00:17:51] Police Chief Todd Burr / council questions:** new. Yeah. So when you if you say, is this stuff just started happening? No, it's always happened. Yes. Underage drinking has always happened. And people selling about various underage people. Yes, that's always said. I guess that's an incident like this happened before on Main Street where Main Street is more visible versus a side street or somewhere that just doesn't have as much visibility. So has it happened before? Was it that there was more visibility on this incident versus in the past where it could have happened on a side street and it just didn't get that same attention? Was it just students or was it locals also? So if you're asking like in the last year or something like that. I guess in the last five, ten years, I can say that when I was in school, I knew something that happened and it was on a side street. I mean, it was very similar to this. I don't know to the magnitude. I know I knew of that because I was a student, but I don't know how aware I would have been of it if I were a resident here or if it were on the Main Street because where it happened was not on the Main Street. Yeah, I don't know of any personal instances working in the police department. This happened on Main Street. I know a few years passed when there were other staff establishments on Main Street that were police. I would say some fines and stuff like that.

**[00:17:52–00:19:53] Police Chief Todd Burr / council questions:** I'm sure of that, but if you're saying they have incense like this has happened in other places not on Main Street, absolutely. I mean, I'm not saying that it happens all the time, but yeah. Historically, Chief, would you say that around the start of the school year, we typically have something? Start of school year, the college students, we call it to adjust and adapt and everything else. So yeah, and the adjustment period, somebody asked me today, what do you think the adjustment period is? I don't know. Sometimes the adjustment period has been really quick. Sometimes it's going into, you know, Thanksgiving and stuff like that. The incidents are going to happen. So I can't narrow that on the same. Right. But in this case, and again, historically, there's a pattern first of the school year things happen. In this case, eight children were, or young people, students were arrested. Over that weekend. Yeah. I can use some numbers. Some numbers. So you just said over the weekend, so was there more than one incident or? And that particular incident that took place just in that incident, there was one DUI that was made and two public investigations that were made since that incident. Ten had been arrested for underage drinking. Okay. But we don't know if that happened in that one a.m. It was not during that one a.m. period. I had to go back and look at all of them to

**[00:19:53–00:21:38] Police Chief Todd Burr / council questions:** see. Okay. Or rather, as a result of. Yeah. And this and it was just students. I don't know. So I'm just wondering, was it students or was it locals? Those are just students. Okay. Yeah. And most of you individually. And we usually don't have a lot of interaction throughout the year. If we do, it's it's on occasion. They are at a party, they sign that and we get caught going to have interactions with them. But for the most part, we don't have a lot of interaction with competencies. Some do running for the rest of them and everything else. That's a given. But for the most part, our experience with college students here, or at least mine, had been most of them pretty respectful. Most of them knew what we asked them to do and things like that. There are some that if you provide the right environment, the human beings do. That's right. They can get out of hand for that. So, you know, one, I know everybody's focusing on the college students. Right. They're the college students. They belong to somebody, right. And so I can tell you how I've policed since I've been here. We're going to take care of the college students regardless, even when they can't take care of themselves. Sometimes parents like that. Sometimes parents do not like that. But if we find a college student, if we encounter a college student that has or has appeared to be intoxicated, then we're going

**[00:21:38–00:23:10] Police Chief Todd Burr / council questions:** to take care of that individual. The way we take care of that individual is we place them under arrest and then they go to Shelby County Jail. They're monitored under 24 hour surveillance. They have a nurse that's on staff there. So if there's any problems, they can find out in jail when they have no alcohol in their system. Okay. That's how we take care of it. That's the safest thing that we can do. Okay. And so that's how we have chosen to have that. Otherwise, if we encounter them, say your child is on campus, we encounter them and they are intoxicated. And we just say, move on, move on, move on. And in the process of moving on through the night, something happens. We can be dealt with that and see it can be dealt with because we may contact them. Okay. And so the way we have chosen to deal with that over the years is we're going to err on the side of Boston and we have to be responsible for them. That's how we do it. And it works out pretty well for us. Like I said, we can over the course of a year or the school year, I didn't go back and look at figures, but I'm going to guess and say probably no more than 12, 12 or 13 students a year. Which I think is pretty good. You know, that's how we handle those situations. Thank you too.

**[00:23:10–00:23:14] Police Chief Todd Burr / council questions:** Safety for concerned about the safety of, as well as other people as well.

**[00:23:15–00:25:07] Councilman Kenneth Dukes:** In my opinion, this ordinance, and I know it's dealing with young people and just people in general, but this ordinance is not about trying to stop college kids from getting alcohol. This ordinance is about making sure the businesses that do that are responsible and making sure that they understand what they're doing. And if they're wrong, that's the only thing we govern. We can't govern morality. Morality is based off the individual and who they feel they have to be more attuned. That's their parents responsibility and us as adults to try to speak positive things in them. But we control how businesses serve and take care of the citizens of Montevallo. And so that's what this order is about in the business. And I hate this. I really do because there are some people that's doing it right. I'm not saying this is wrong. I'm just simply saying that based off what we've seen and based off what's in front of us, if it quack like a duck, nine times out of 10, it's a duck. And I hear a lot of quackings when it comes to this. And I'm going to say, hey, we have to make a decision. And what's that kind of goal? You know, when you said being first of the year and us new students in and all that, it's the restaurant owner's responsibility to not let this happen. When I saw drinks in, taken out open containers. I mean, that's, that violates any, any ordinance that we've got

**[00:25:07–00:25:14] Councilman Kenneth Dukes:** as far as alcohol. Keep in mind that we, nobody in Montevallo has a ABC license

**[00:25:14–00:26:31] Council discussion:** as a bar. They're all restaurants that serve alcohol and they're going to have to meet this 60, 40 split. So an ABC license, and this is me, I'm educating myself and ABC licenses, a, if you were strictly a bar, then all of your profit can come from the sell of liquor. That's correct. And then with the, but with nobody holding that, then they have to, it's a restaurant license. And so it's that 60, 40 where 60% of your profit comes from food already comes from sales, not from sales. Excuse me from sales. And then what is the procedure? What, I mean, how do you know if someone is in like, is following that procedure? Well, there'll be audited. Oh, it can be audited is auditing. I know it's an audit. So it's it, they can surprise you with it. And for lack of better words. So businesses aren't regularly audited for this or restaurants aren't regularly audited for this. Or is it a, if a situation happens, I'm just wondering, because I, again, I will be the first to admit, I don't know much about this, which is why I'd rather ask questions because I don't know.

**[00:26:32–00:28:19] City Clerk/Treasurer Steve Gilbert:** It's a matter of enforcement from, from the ABC board itself. Yes. I mean, they grant a municipality, a lot of power in terms of establishing the control of sales, the hours of sales. Uh, the issuance of licenses, as you know, is a, is subject to council approval. Even though the ABC board has approved a license, council still has the final vote as to whether or not that license is granted within the municipality. Now the way I understand it from conversations with, with the agents that an audit is conducted only if they feel like that sales are out of proportion. And that is a comparison. Every sale of alcohol is regulated by the state of Alabama. So when an establishment purchases alcohol, and this is hard liquor, they purchase it from the ABC store, just like if you and I went in and bought a bottle of liquor, they, they buy wholesale, right? And then that receipt is kept by the restaurant or, or the bar or whatever. And then they can come in and compare the actual amount of retail sales based on the amount of alcohol purchased at wholesale. And that's different for beer and wine, because that goes through a distributor where hard liquor goes strictly through an ABC store. Beer and wine go through a distributor, which is responsible for paying the wholesale taxes on that. The restaurant owner, the bar owner is responsible for paying the wholesale's tax directly

**[00:28:19–00:28:27] City Clerk/Treasurer Steve Gilbert:** to the city. So those audits can be based on those figures if there is some discrepancy,

**[00:28:27–00:30:14] Council discussion:** but that is at the discretion of the ABC. Okay. Yes. I have a question, mayor. In this instance, it would seem that this resolution, it will be prohibitive from any businesses moving forward to being open until 2 a.m. Would there be a way that we could find or, or in some way challenge the current businesses that we find doing, selling underage? Is there another way we could do it instead of? That's a violation of the ABC license selling to underage persons. Right. Which I'm assuming that the municipality police, city police can arrest the restaurant owner for undercover, I mean under underage sales. You can report it. We have to report it. Okay. And my question here is just instead of putting a blanket, we can't serve. If we find a restaurant continuously causing problems, could we not deal with that particular restaurant instead of putting a blanket? We don't do this at all because Montevallo wants more businesses on Main Street. We do. We do. We want it's going to have to run on the correct way. Absolutely. We want them to be run correctly and we want them to be here, but we also want our students on Main Street. We do. Our economy needs them. And so instead of limiting ourselves in this way, I feel like there's, there's another solution. I know that this is a problem. We need to find a solution, but I'm not sure that this

**[00:30:14–00:31:56] Council discussion:** blanket coverage is what will help us in the long run. Well, my thoughts with the blanket with all the restaurants is assault on that. Number one, you can't, you can't have a bar on Main Street. Right. You can have a restaurant that serves alcohol, but you got to be, you got to follow the rules. What is that? So tell me an ordinance. When we do an ordinance like this, when it passes, if it were to pass, what is the, what is the, I guess the procedure for that? What is okay? So we have the ordinance, then what? If it passes next, not this council meeting, but the next one, it goes into effect that night. So it goes into effect. So then there can't be the sale after midnight and then say business is found in violation. Then what happens with the ordinance? They stand the opportunity of losing their liquor license and losing their business license. Remember the council has the right to refuse the business license. Okay. So that's what happens with the ordinance. And so what if you put ordinance in place, it's in place until you lift it. It's continually in place. It can be ordinances can be changed. Okay. Changed or lifted is that is right. It would have to be amended council amended. Yeah. In other words, that the council would have to vote to strike that language from, from the ordinance, which would remove it from the code of ordinances for the city.

**[00:31:57–00:32:31] Council discussion:** So it would require a separate council vote to remove that section or these two sections from the order. There is an existing code here, which is section 16, 16 dash 59, which currently establishes the hours of sales of alcohol within the city. These two sections are being added to that to change that. So if council in the future decides that they no longer wish for this to be the restriction of hours, then you would vote to remove them from the ordinance.

**[00:32:31–00:33:19] Councilwoman Alyssa Green:** Okay. So there's a potential for there to be a compromise if we were to agree on a accepting the ordinance, but striking that so that there could be, say, whatever time frame it is. Say you give it a year, you give it six months. I don't know. Whatever is agreeable that, hey, we know that we're doing this in place, yes, for the community, but for the safety of the students, especially helping them be responsible in that way. And then future businesses know, hey, this isn't to hinder you from coming here. This is to be a safeguard for the community and it shouldn't stop you from opening your business because this will be reviewed once again and voted on once again in six months, 12 months, whatever it is. So is that a potential?

**[00:33:20–00:33:43] City Clerk/Treasurer Steve Gilbert / Mayor Nix:** This is an addition right here. This is amended in an ad in dating to them. I think what, I think what council woman green is saying here, an ordinance carries the weight of law. It is law. Right. Okay. A resolution is what council does to resolve to perform something. And I'll pick that up. Please stand for the pledge.

## First public-comment period on the ordinance

**[00:41:23–00:41:24] Mayor Nix / council:** All right, it's open.

**[00:41:29–00:42:53] TJ — owner, Dive Bar & Grill:** My name is TJ. I own the establishment that we're representing right now. Going back to August 22nd, every year at the beginning of the school year, we all know this, these kids are wild. All right, I've been doing this a long time and I control a lot, I would say 98 percent of these kids and they do what we say and they respect the place and all that but you got those accused that are new to us and they're usually big cities and everything they come down here and just pull up wild and it's up to us to let them know that that ain't happening. We've been doing it the same way year after year. Up here on August 22nd, that is nothing compared to what you're looking at that y'all don't even talk about. You know that was the gun thing. I didn't see it. Y'all said y'all saw it. I didn't see the video. I'm still in trouble with this. I gotta say it didn't. There was four people in that, two of them which were fighting and we separated them and then the friends come out and it made it where it looked worse than it was. It was just a bunch of kids shoving each other, separating. That's what we do. One party over here, one party over there. That's how we handle it all the time. We separate it. Don't go that way. Don't go that way. That got out of hand a little bit too quick. Now

**[00:42:53–00:44:05] TJ — owner, Dive Bar & Grill:** the underage drinking and all that, we check if every person comes through there. I'll give them I don't care if you are a hundred. We're checking. You can't buy them all without one. It doesn't matter how old you are. We said we had a special alliance that I've got the ABC board even look at him like, is this good? They said yes. Every one of those fake IDs we turn away. I turned last week we turned some way. Ended up breaking a pot down the road. He tried to come in and buy alcohol at a restaurant. Not a bar no more. Now tell them that you come in and you eat all day. You cannot get any alcohol. What's good about it? So you sit in that bar and you leave. Can't sit at a food table for dinner. You gotta have time to sit that bar. They got mad. And then they ended up breaking a pot or something. I feel bad about that. My authority leaves at the door right there. I can't do nothing outside. Inside my establishment, I am so strict beyond what I should be about certain things. I kick people out all the time for attention to drink. We've all done it. There ain't one person in the room or in the state that can say they never checked a drink. We've all did. But in my house, I don't allow none of that. Even if

**[00:44:05–00:45:14] TJ — owner, Dive Bar & Grill:** you have a cup of water for checking. If it happens to have a smell of alcohol from somebody else getting a drink now, that would be fabulous. This weekend, I kicked a number of people out. You know, and they all understood it. Like, yeah, you do it again, you're never coming back. And I'm telling them that. I moved on Main Street for a reason. I didn't move on Main Street to become a ball. I didn't move on Main Street to become far even more than it would. I came on Main Street to be a restaurant, but I also gave these kids something fun and more extravagant and tender than what they're used to. And they said, well, this incident at half foot on a joint second, again, it was nothing compared. Yeah, it was a self who happens for the first three weeks of all, every year. It's the same thing. I have been in business for a long time in every year. Y'all don't hear anything about the accident. There's not one incident that goes on in there that is out of our control. Now, I call the police when I have to. And they do a fantastic job when they show up. They don't slam nobody. They're not disrespectful. They see the problem. They fix the problem. That's when it gets beyond my unit, at least my authority. And, you know, there's nothing I can do because of legal matters. I have to call them. That's their job.

**[00:45:15–00:46:29] TJ — owner, Dive Bar & Grill:** And they do a fantastic job when they get there. They're not crazy with it. That guy, that guy, and that guy. And they can't quit, usually without any incidents. And, you know, they were sad. But I'm not going to call the police when it's something that I can deal with. They have bigger things to worry about. Now, when it comes to underage drinking, these kids drink on campus. They know they can't drink in my place. They know they put facts on. They drank on campus. And they go on their dance and sweat it off in our party room and stuff. And they just let loose, socialize, do their thing. That's what they do all the time. We'll be allowing them to do it. And I have my guy walking circles in that room, checking the wristband. I was like, you got no cup, no wristband? I'm here to talk. We hear that all day long. They've never failed. You know, I mean, there's not, we're not just standing there. We're always working. Now, in the amount of years that have been open, three fights. And almost, what, nine years, eight years, something like that? Three fights. Was there any more? Was there a lot of incidents? When you were patrolling, did you tell me you followed over there a lot? Oh, yeah, that's what I said. I don't, I don't, yeah, it's everybody that I know that owns forms. I tell them in the years that I've been open,

**[00:46:29–00:47:39] TJ — owner, Dive Bar & Grill:** three, that I know about. I'm there every day. Three of them that I had to call the police on. They look at me like I'm crazy. How do you do that? I don't know if you can stand them. You fight in my place, you can get with somebody. I got two of my best friends that are still there in that place. Even the restaurant, still can't go there. They may have them, but that's what was the rule. And if this thing passes, I'm going to lose over 300 grand in a year. A lot of my money is made from 10-2, but I also make a lot of money during the day. I'll survive, but I won't make it fun. I didn't get into this business to survive. I got into this business to grow the clerk, grow this town and everything else. That's what I do. Now, I wanted to do, build on tattoos and stuff like that to make more money. I could do that all day. I love my job. But I don't want to have a cut off at 12 that's foolish. It's not only that, you're just going to go to the store, go home and drink and all that. But you control the maturity. You take that away. They're going to be all over the place. They're going to drop the fire in there. They're going to drop the alabaster pedal into all these other places,

**[00:47:40–00:49:02] TJ — owner, Dive Bar & Grill:** drink all night long and then drive back. That's going to be a lot of the UIs, a lot of more police words. It's going to be okay. Now, I'm not saying if y'all pass this, I will follow it. I'm not saying I'm going to break the law if you don't know. I'm going to follow it. But I'm going to tell you, you're going to have a little more chaos on your plans than when you do now. There's a couple of incidents of the year that happen every year everywhere. Very low, mind you. You don't carry an alabaster. Four yards. Hello, 261 and all that. You think that feels crazy. You know, why don't you get that shot up? It's double week though, but you can't just freeze it up. You can keep on just start trying to wrap it up. I just want you to think about it very, very clearly. Think about what worse things can happen versus what we do already. And I know y'all will. If y'all pass it, I will lie back. I'm not going to like it, but I'll do it because I'm stepping down from all that and I'm taking a seat and moving on. But the way I do that is for a reason. And I do move that way because it works. I check every single ID. If y'all don't believe that, have somebody come sit at that door.

**[00:49:02–00:49:49] TJ — owner, Dive Bar & Grill:** All right. There is probably, I'd say 20 to 30 or so, and I might be a little off that we kick out before they even walk into the building. I do not allow you to walk into that building and pick up. If you present it, I have you ready to go. That's the way I do it. Very good at what I do. Now underage drinking is a thing. Some of these fake IDs are really good. I can't stop everything. I do what I can for when I'm out. And so they come out with a way that, you know, we can put it under there and it's like, oh, no faith. I have to do it this way. It's the only way I'm going to do it. And I'm very good at that. I catch more of them than anybody else around. But if you pass this, it's going to be a lot more chaos on the street. They're going to do it. We control it. Thank you.

**[00:49:56–00:52:08] Bobby C. P. Pearson:** Mr. Mayor, Council, Bobby C. P. Pearson, 1131 South West Oak Street. You know, at the National Education Association, they have a good assembly in Montgomery and eight whatever. We have what you call a yellow card. If you raise that yellow card, because you want to get some understanding of what's going on. I heard what the gentleman just folks said. But my question is, my question is, they must state the name question. They must have an ID in order to enter into that establishment. They must have an ID that says they are 21 years away in order to purchase alcohol. Now, my question is, you all, the chief said that a fight broke out in the street. My question is, I think he alluded to it a little bit. My question is, is he saying that when the students show up at this establishment, they're already drunk when they get there? Because if he's not selling it to them, Steve, they're getting drunk somewhere. That's just my question. Because really, truthfully, I don't drink alcohol. I never did drink alcohol. He made a statement that said, other than here who never had a drink underage, I raised my hand. Because I don't drink. And I didn't drink. The reason why I didn't, because I saw what alcohol did to my family. I taught health and drive ladies. And we say, alcohol and drugs. I never did like that.

**[00:52:10–00:52:26] Bobby C. P. Pearson:** I put them all in the same ballpark. They're drugs. So, here it is. If they get them in the streets, that's different. If they get them in the streets and they're not getting them at his place, that's when she take care. Thank you again. I yield my time, brother.

**[00:52:34–00:52:36] Mayor Nix:** Anyone else like to address the council?

**[00:52:43–00:54:21] Joe Hohen:** It's Joe Hohen. I live at 1141 Nabors Street. I am concerned that we're targeting a specific business. That's what bothers me about this and I think we could all be concerned if the law is put into place that affects one business. If that business is not following the law, you guys said yourself, there are ways to go about punishing the business. I think that's the way we need to do things. According to the chief, there hasn't been a problem. According to TJ, he does what he can to limit the situation. He's been in business for eight years. How many businesses on Main Street have been open that long? How many doors do you see that are closed and shuttered because businesses have closed? Why are we targeting a business that has stayed in business for so long and is part of the community? I find that to be wrong. I think there are other things that we can do and I wonder, I know, of course, I know Brandeline very well and I know that she has talked to her constituents, that she's speaking on their behalf. I do wonder if all of you have talked to your constituents about whether this is a problem for them. Councilman Dukes, I'm not sure why you raised the issue of morality. I'm not sure why that has to do with anything about alcohol, but I think that's dangerous and a dangerous statement, particularly since you and I have

**[00:54:21–00:54:26] Joe Hohen:** had a margarita together. Is that okay at 6 p.m. and not okay at 1 a.m.?

**[00:54:26–00:54:46] Councilman Kenneth Dukes:** I was not comparing morality to alcohol. I don't think morality is based off of alcohol because my choice of drink is a long aisle of nice tea. Okay, so I'm just telling you, it's not about that. That was misunderstood. See out there that we are clarifying what

**[00:54:46–00:56:13] Joe Hohen:** I mean by that. I also think that having anybody, whether they are a college student or an adult in this town who chooses to drink, and I personally did not drink before the age of 21 either because my father was a preacher and I was terrified. I do drink now. I'm a bourbon lover. His establishment, I've been there maybe two or three times, but I think it's important that businesses in this town are able to function and make money because we need our town to thrive. I have the opportunity right now to be in the co-starters class for Montevallo for all little small businesses trying to make it here and we have a couple that are interested in starting a business that is going to have a target audience of college students and be open late and they are interested in serving pizza and serving beer, you know, late into the night. Are we saying we don't want that business? Are we telling people who are interested in things open later at night that we don't want them because of their serving alcohol? I think that's a dangerous thing to do. I think you guys need to rethink what you're doing here and look at the legal aspects of if a particular business is not following the laws that we need them to follow, challenge the business, not all business. Thank you. Let me go ahead and

**[00:56:13–00:57:42] Mayor Nix:** make a statement here. I'm not anti-business whatsoever, so, you know, keep that in mind. I root for every business that ever has come into Montevallo. I want you to survive and I want you to do right. So this thing of I'm targeting somebody, no, we're not. I'm not targeting anybody. I've never called the name of the establishment. This applies to all restaurants that we have in our city. So, you know, don't come up here and tell me that, oh, I don't like this business. I don't like this business. I mean, I've eaten in that establishment several times. It's good food, by the way. You need to go in there and eat something. I've been in there on a Friday or Saturday night, I can't remember, and had a couple of adult beverages in there. So, you know, I do patron that restaurant, and by me being mayor, I just can't concentrate on one restaurant. I have to go to China Garden. I have to go to Zappapan. I have to go to Huddle. I mean, I have to spread the love out, and I wish I had enough money that I could eat out every night, but I can't, but I do try to go to all the restaurants in town. Go ahead.

**[00:57:42–00:59:16] Councilmember (not confidently identified):** What I'm going to say is I've talked, I think those of you who know me know that I talk a lot to a lot of people, but what I've done is I've talked to people about this situation, and every person that I've talked to has said, if you close up, they're going to get in the car, and they're going to go, and I know it's already been said, but that's one of the things. Another thing that has been said is if this gets out, if this happens, it's going to hurt businesses in Montevallo. People will stay. It might even hurt the university, and these are just, these are things that people have told me, and I do believe that, especially with the hotel opening, they're going to meet people that come and want to have a late night drink and may want to be out after 1 o'clock or 12 o'clock, and that's all I had to say. I just feel like that it's, I just don't think that we need to close it off at that point, especially with the kind of policing that we have, with the kind of taking care of situations in their facilities that we have. I think that we need to keep it like it is, because our town is great, and we are growing, and people are coming, and I don't want to do anything, I don't want our town to do anything, not me, but I don't want our town to do anything

**[00:59:16–00:59:45] Councilmember (not confidently identified):** that might stop that, and I think that we, from everything I've heard, I think that it can be handled, and I know, I was a freshman at the University of Alabama in 1967, and believe me, it was mighty wild then, and it got wilder as the time went on, and so I don't think it's nearly like that in Montevallo, but yeah, and that, I just wanted to share that with y'all. Thank you.

**[00:59:55–01:01:23] Katherine Wood:** Hi, my name is Katherine Wood. This is my first time doing one of these, so I apologize if I'm nervous. I live at 851 Morgan Street. I lived in Montevallo and attended the University from 2005 to 2011, and I enjoyed my time here so much that when I decided to settle down, I purchased a home here. As much as I love my home, and as much as I love this town, if this ordinance had been passed, I would have chosen to look elsewhere, because at my big age of 39, I would like to be able to get a drink when I get off work at midnight. I'm a second and third shift worker for one of my jobs, and you know, as somebody that lives in this town, I would like to socialize here when I get off work. I know that it's been said that this is not a reactive ordinance, but it is hard to feel like it's not reactive and restrictive. It disproportionately impacts citizens and a single business owner. It will rightly cause reluctance from future investors in this town. You know, why would somebody use their life savings to open a business in a town that's okay with passing a whole ordinance instead of getting together a collaborative community solutions? Why purchase property in a place where you have less freedoms as a tax paying responsible citizen? Nobody wants to live in any state. I imagine least of all in Alabama, and I don't think the solution is to,

**[01:01:23–01:02:32] Katherine Wood:** I don't think the solution to this issue is legislating away our rights and interests. I think that if young people have the opportunity to drink at establishments in town with the citizens of the town, our community will be able to help teach them how to act right and to be right. And I say that as somebody who learned how to drink in this town. It's a wonderful place to live. It's a really wonderful place to go to school. It's safe. It's loving. And it taught me how to be a good person, whether or not there is a drink in me. And I can say I can personally attest that at 39 years old, I have been ID'd at TJ's establishment and I have had people make sure that I have my ID on me, even though they know me, just in case anything comes and gets checked. I love Johnny. I miss him. May God rest his soul. I was, I have been ID'd more at Dive Bar than I ever was at Double Play. And I just, I'm worried how this will affect the town and future investment. Thank you for your time. Hey y'all. I'm Rachel Phillips. I live at 635 Main Street

**[01:02:32–01:03:59] Rachel Phillips:** and I live upstairs from the Dive Bar and Grill. I was in bed the night that this happened. It did not happen in the bar. It happened outside. It was taken care of very quickly. Again, I live upstairs. Out of anyone, the late night, guess who it affects? Me. Because at 9 p.m., I'm the one that hears it. And also, I love that these kids have some place to go that's safe. I have watched both Breezy and TJ take kids home to make sure they're safe, walk them home to make sure they're safe. I have never seen two people care so much about their customers and their safety than these two. They don't drink. They're not in there partying it up. They are there to provide a safe space. Me and TJ both have kids the same age and they're 21 years old. And we have talked multiple times about how we just wanted a safe place for our kids to hang out and then to make sure they get home safe. They not only make sure the kids get home safe, they make sure the community gets home safe. So if one incident is causing all of this, I really think we need to reevaluate and come to a different agreement on how to fix this. Thank you. Mr. Mayor, I want to make one statement. I've never voted against

**[01:03:59–01:05:41] Councilman Kenneth Dukes:** local license for any business in this city. Never. I voted for TJ several times. And I will continue because that's the person's right. Everybody that's of age has a right to be able to obtain how it should be. When you sit here or stand there, we have lawyers that tell us what the law says. We have people tell us what our liability is. And they never sue the establishment. They go into bigger money and they come at us. And one thing I really dislike, and I've had it happen since I've been on this council, where we get lawsuits and I see my name on it. And so I'm not against TJ. I've always supported and will support any business. Don't worry. We do absolutely nothing. And so all I'm simply saying is that, you know, and not talk to all of these up here. And I think we support every business in Montevallo, every business. And I wish we can recruit more. I'm always talking to somebody. I'm still waiting on that church's chicken. So I'm always talking to somebody about coming to Montevallo. All I'm simply saying is that when you put us in a situation where we have to look at the liability part, that's why we come up with certain things to try to make sure that we're making a statement. So when the lawyers get it, they can't say, well, the city didn't do anything.

**[01:05:42–01:06:07] Councilman Kenneth Dukes:** So help us. This is a discussion. Help us make the best decision for the safety of the people of Montevallo, regardless of the business. I really would love to hear more of other businesses that have liquor license and how they feel about it. Really, I would. Like Ms. Mary Moon, I think she's right across the street. I would love to know her opinion on it. It would help me.

**[01:06:14–01:07:38] Mary Moon:** I just want to know your opinion about going from 2 p.m. to 12 midnight. Is that something you think will hurt business in general in the city of Montevallo? Yes, I definitely think it would hurt businesses in Montevallo. And I don't even stay open that way. But I like the idea that if I wanted to host a wedding party or something like that, I would like the option to be able to do that. Also, when you talk about being protective, I mean, men may not know this, but there is a drink you can order at a bar that the bartender tells will know to call the police. And I'm not going to say what it is. I asked T.J. if he knew what it was. So there is some safety in having these people in a supervised license facility versus the frat houses, the parties. If you're serious about liability, let's make this a dry community. I mean, if you want to go, I mean, we want to protect everybody all the time. We don't think that'll work either. And if you're serious, then why are you having an exemption for gas stations? Because they can cart all day long, but those kids go and buy that drinks and they take them to the frat house. That's what your underage drinking is happening, not at T.J.'s. It's not about T.J. It only affects T.J. I mean, it's only you may not want to say that you're targeting him,

**[01:07:39–01:07:44] Mary Moon:** but you're only targeting him right now. And you're targeting future businesses that haven't even done anything wrong.

**[01:07:54–01:09:09] Jimmy Maddox:** My name is Jimmy Maddox, 1380 Highland Street. I own a number of buildings in town, including the one involved. I'm talking about liability. 10 years ago, 12, Jeff Webster, Main Street, had an issue where the fight inside the building, one of the guys got beat up. And so he went to court. He sued me, the owner of the building, Jeff, the owner of the business, and then the owner and then the guy that he fought. They threw out hours. We had no liability. Jeff had no liability. So there's no problem. Obviously, somebody didn't win in court. So fighting outside or inside, you know, that's not going to be an issue, I don't think. Now, also, let's talk about small business. Montevallo has signs up. This supports small business. Hey, we can take these signs down in there. I will put up a big billboard in my yard. Montevallo does not support small business. And that's the truth. So I don't need, I don't, you know, I think we're making a huge mistake. And so, you know, I'm, you need to do the right thing.

**[01:09:17–01:10:08] Donna McDowell:** I just wanted to say, I don't know how many businesses are, oh, I'm sorry, I'm Donna McDowell. I live at 149 heritage, Trace Parkway in Montevallo. And I don't know how many businesses currently are open from midnight to two. It sounds like only one, maybe another one, maybe there are a few businesses to come in. We're talking about two hours. I don't know that two hours is going to make a big difference. The big difference is made by the attitude around here. But I also want to challenge all those who are here tonight on this one, on this one piece of business. If you haven't ever been to council meeting before, come every time to council meeting and be interested in everything else. Thank you, Donna. Hey, everybody. My name is

**[01:10:08–01:11:52] Brianna MacLennan:** Brianna MacLennan. I'm actually a citizen of Hoover. However, my problem today, I would have never looked at Montevallo to join in on owning a business had something been so detrimental to what we have established here. I fell in love with this city. I went away from Hoover and came down here because of how wonderful this community is. I never would have dreamed I would be coming to Montevallo. But hearing something that I love being targeted, it doesn't have to be the business. But you are impacting children's lives here. You are making them leave town. If this passes, they will leave town. I went to school in New York. You want to know where I stayed? In Tuscaloosa. I didn't go to Birmingham. I had the option in Tuscaloosa to have fun with my friends. What's going to happen here is they will leave town. They're going to drive to Tuscaloosa. They're going to drive to Birmingham. They're going to drive to Helena. They're going to go everywhere because they can't have a safe environment here. That's what we're facing. And any future business, if there is a limit on what they can achieve, they're not going to look here. They won't. We have fought for the expansion of this city for so long. It won't come if people know that they are being limited from reaching their goals and to be having a strong, successful business. We limit that.

**[01:11:52–01:13:21] Rebecca Collins:** We're only hurting ourselves here. Thank you. I'm Rebecca Collins. I am a small business owner in town. I own Sky Apothecary on Main Street. Two doors down from TJ. I have been going to the dive bar for five years now. Actually, my spouse is the DJ and has been for five years. So guess what I've gotten to do for five years? Sit behind the scenes or at the front door of the dive bar and watch all these kids coming in. How TJ and Bree interact with them. How the bar interacts with them. See them having a good time. See when they mess up how TJ pulls them out. He's more like a dad to them than a business owner. He walks to them. They look up to him. They deeply respect him and he protects them. And I think that doing this what Bree just said is correct. In fact, me sitting in the back of town observing, watching them, listening to them talk, they won't stay here even until midnight. They're going to go to Auburn. They're going to go to Tuscaloosa. They're going to go to Birmingham. They're going to go to Alabaster. Then they're going to be traveling back here because they're kids. They don't, they haven't lived yet. They don't understand the consequences all the time. Here with TJ, they're in a controlled environment. He watches out for them. Other people in the bar watch out for them and we make sure that

**[01:13:21–01:14:12] Rebecca Collins:** they get home safely. I personally have driven them home after the bar closed while they were cleaning up while my spouse was packing up DJ equipment. I have driven these kids back to their door frame because we all look out for them. And I also moved my business here because of how supportive you all are. So I am going to say that I support leaving it like it is and coming together as a community to work on this because I don't think that closing two hours earlier is going to make a difference. I think it's only going to hurt businesses and it's going to hurt the town. Okay, this will be the last one here because we need to move on.

**[01:14:13–01:15:02] Alex Toole:** My name is Alex Tool of 851 Morgan Street. I'm new to town but I just wanted to step up and say regards to concerns about seeming to not do anything and that being a idea that seems to be proposed that, sorry, behind this ordinance and the idea behind this ordinance is the idea of being seen to not do anything. And I just want to pose an alternative idea that during these first couple weeks of the school year, you know, perhaps instead of creating a blanket law that covers the whole year for how we handle alcohol sales, we can just do a little bit of increased police presence around the town of Great Hill, South where events like this can happen. And that's really all I have to say. Thank you all for

**[01:15:06–01:15:48] Police Chief Todd Burr / Mayor Nix:** I'll add one thing to that. We did that and then we got called, I got calls that we were targeting establishments with extra police. So I'm just telling you that's that's out there too. And I appreciate that. Have what? Okay. All right. We're going to move on. We're down to committee reports. Councilman Dukes.

## Police Chief Todd Burr: crime, enforcement, staffing, and public safety

**[01:17:03–01:18:39] Police Chief Todd Burr:** that, that's fine. So let me let me tell you where we stand on the police department side. Okay. And I appreciate the gentleman's comment because I think that if we had more police, we can cut down on a lot of other stuff as well too. But here's the deal. We don't police businesses, police officers, never police businesses. Police, again, go back to my comment. Police are the community, community is the police. That means I belong in the community, but I'm a police officer. You belong in the community, you help the police. That's how we police each other. That's why we don't have, we only have 704,000 nationwide. It's my involvement. 704,000 sworn law enforcement agents, officers nationwide. You can't police every situation that's out there. There's no way. We try to be proactive, but anybody that tells you that their department is successful being proactive, they're not telling the truth because 85 plus percent of our work is reactive. Okay. We had no reason to be on Main Street that particular night outside of normal patrol. We were called to Main Street. Okay. That's the only reason our officers were there. All right. This past weekend, we had to call us. The only reason those people had any guns in law enforcement was because we were called for service. Okay. That's it. But I want to tell you something about when it comes down to laws that we have, and people don't like to hear this, but I just want to take it through. It's

**[01:18:39–01:20:24] Police Chief Todd Burr:** not more law enforcement. It all comes back to personal responsibility on everything. We have a speed limit. It's your personal responsibility to drive the speed limit, right? It's my personal responsibility to do that. If I choose not to, there's consequences with that if you get caught, right? But it's still my personal responsibility. That goes for anything. You guys are talking about alcohol and stuff like that. Listen, we're the police department. I don't care if you pass an ordinance that says you can serve out about 24 hours a day. I don't care if you say you can't serve an adult. Doesn't bother me one bit. But what does bother me is when we shut the responsibility, a personal responsibility. All of y'all have a personal responsibility. Every officer in my department has a personal responsibility. We have policies, and there's a lot of them. If they violate them, listen to me. Personal responsibility. That's what it boils down to, okay? And everything you do is personal responsibility. A lot of this stuff you're talking about is enforced by the ABC board, local law enforcement. We cannot go into an establishment and make sure that they're checking IDs. We cannot. We cannot stand at the door and make sure that they're checking IDs. We cannot. We cannot go to gas stations and make sure that they're checking IDs. If we encounter them not doing that or selling to underage, we can make an on-site arrest then because we witnessed that mistake that took place, okay?

**[01:20:25–01:22:06] Police Chief Todd Burr:** This other stuff is out of our hands, this ABC board stuff, all right? There have been college students on Main Street and everywhere else, every time college is in, okay? There's 3,300 college students there, right? You'll never convince me that whatever you guys do, 3,300 college students is going to drive somewhere else and do business. There will be some that do that, okay? They're right. There will be some. There will be some that stay. You're dealing with hypothetical stuff here to say, well, they're going to go drive drunk. We arrest more people for DUIs, and by the way, we do a lot of DUIs here, coming in here from other businesses and establishments than we ever have from establishments here in Montebello. You know why that is? I think personal responsibility. Personal responsibility is a personal choice. You want to go somewhere else and dream, and it's your personal responsibility. If you're 21 years old, you can purchase alcohol in the state of Alabama. It's your personal responsibility to stay within the law if you get behind a vehicle and drive intoxicated. If you're under age, you can't purchase alcohol in the state of Alabama. It's a personal responsibility to enforce that. Every clerk that has that, every waitress that serves alcohol, it's their personal responsibility. If they don't, they don't, okay? And so don't point the finger. We need more law enforcement, because I'm telling you, we flooded some on Main Street, and my office got hammered.

**[01:22:07–01:23:37] Police Chief Todd Burr:** Why do we have officers on Main Street? We've never done that. We've never done that. You can't have it both ways. You can't say, we need more law enforcement when we put law enforcement, let me tell you what happens. We put more law enforcement out there. This weekend, 10 arrested for underage drinking. They didn't come from that establishment, okay? That we know, but not all 10 of them came from that establishment, right? But they got alcohol, and they're not supposed to have it, and they went to jail. And somebody said, well, why did you do that? Well, we had to increase our presence. They kicked over a flowerpot, big deal. I know somebody get on the big, it's a flowerpot. Well, it wasn't their flowerpot, but it was business owners. By the way, we ID'd the young man, and within two hours, he was here taking personal responsibility for it, and went to the business owner, apologized, and replaced the pot, and admitted that he made a bad mistake. I said, why is it that you made that choice? Because I was intoxicated. And I said to him, well, you're not going to get in trouble now. Are you old enough to drink? No, sir. So he goes back to personal responsibility, right? I can't control that young man from drinking alcohol, and I couldn't stop him from kicking over a flowerpot. That's a personal choice he made. Everybody in here, we have a personal

**[01:23:38–01:25:30] Police Chief Todd Burr:** responsibility. Don't give your responsibility to me, because when you do, there's consequences to pay for it. If we encounter you in your own main street, and we increase our presence, and you have been drinking, you are going to go to jail. And when we start putting the numbers like this in jail, it infuriates me, because they're college students. Every one of them was underage. That's somebody's child. Understand? That's somebody's child. I don't need my guys out here dealing with underage drinkers. When we have fentanyl that's being tragic through the year that we're trying to put people on the curb, and math, and everything else. I don't want to deal with these college kids. College kids have a personal responsibility. I've talked to the university, I've talked to everybody over there, and I've said to them, I just want to give you a heads up. We're increasing our presence for the next couple of weekends. You're going to have some of your students and your athletes that are going to go to jail. A group of five individuals this weekend, all five underage, all five heavily intoxicated, left one of their buddies laying in the road, chose to go off and leave you. My officers were out because they chose to throw trash and beer cans and bottles all down the city street. Officers are out, telling the homeowner, hey, you got to get this cleaned up. This is unacceptable. They had an encounter with these young men who were heavily intoxicated,

**[01:25:31–01:26:56] Police Chief Todd Burr:** who had alcohol with them, carrying it with them, and our officers said to them, hey, don't leave your buddy laying here in the road, come back and get him. By the way, hey, what do you have in your hand? I just have water. Come here, we want to make sure your buddy's okay because he's laying in the road intoxicated. They chose not to come but to take off running. They ran through the parking lot, ran through the Waffle House gas station, and when they thought they were running from one of our officers, they was picking all of their Jack Daniels and everything else under a car, another one of our officers standing there said, what are you doing? And they all five went to jail. So that's what you're going to get when we increase the patrol on Main Street. That's what you're going to get. And then I want to tell you, I am not going to listen to any phone calls asking me why I have a right to do business and y'all are up here putting people in jail. Bull. It's personal responsibility. If you want police to handle it, we will handle it, but you're not going to like it. I would much rather everybody have personal responsibility. Let us patrol, let us do our job. By the way, we have, I know there was some communication about us not having enough officers,

**[01:26:56–01:28:31] Police Chief Todd Burr:** so I want to clarify before I sit down. When I took over this job, we had 15 officers. We still have 15 officers. We have one in the police academy, which will give us 16 officers. We have another one that starts October the 1st, which will give us 17 officers. We had three to retire from this department. Two of them chose to come back and be SROs. One left to be an investigator. One I hired stayed here for nine weeks. And the police had the police called on him. I don't mind telling you that. You can't work at Montevallo Police Department. If you're the police, then you get the police called on you. And he got fired. So we hadn't had a lot. We hadn't had a lot of turn over the same people that were here when I took over are the exact same people plus two that were here except those other ones. We don't have a policing problem. We have a personal responsibility problem. And I'll be the first to admit, I don't like taking personal responsibility for myself when I do something wrong. It's not human nature. That's what we have to do. We do. And so let's hold each other accountable. It's not your fault. I got arrested. It's my fault. I got arrested. We're not out here looking. We're not out here looking for college students. We're not out here for that, for that kind of stuff. We want to protect everybody here from the north end,

**[01:28:32–01:30:13] Police Chief Todd Burr:** all the way down to the south end. We want to do everything that we can to do that. Our guys are doing a great job of that. Yes, there have been problems at the beginning of the school year. Always have been problems. But if you're going to say we want a heavy police presence, it's expensive and you'll get it and you're not going to like the results. I have to deal with these parents that come in here for court and most of them thank us for taking care of the kids that are under arrest. That's what we have to do. Let's take care of them. Once they leave an establishment, once they leave a gas station, once they leave the frat house, wherever they're drinking, we have to take care of them when we make an encounter with them. I'll give you this and I'm done and I'm not taking questions afterwards from anybody or from any other news reporter who's making an appointment tomorrow. I'm late for dinner and we'll talk about this. But one young man that we found in a parking lot, when I tell you heavily intoxicated, heavily intoxicated, we arrested him for his safety. He was booked into the Shelby County Jail with a blood alcohol level of 0.12, 0.08 or you can't argue in court per se limit you're drawn. He was booked in at 0.12, 12 hours later, he should have been eligible to bond out at zero, he was a 0.11, 12 hours later.

**[01:30:15–01:31:41] Police Chief Todd Burr:** When I tell you heavily intoxicated, heavily intoxicated. Who served it? Don't know whose responsibility he is. But if our officer found him in a parking lot and he would have died, somebody's kid, then somebody's kid, right? I get to talk to him out here. I get to talk to him. It's not fun talking to him when they're bailing their kids out of jail, five of them this weekend. I was down here for a couple of them coming in and they were mad. You know what I said? Go find the place that served it to him and throw a fig. They'll tell us, I mean, we're not dumb. They're drunk. And so what we do is we ask old drunk person, where'd you get it from? They just tell us they're too drunk to lie. I mean, think about this. We're talking about dumb college kids when they're drunk. They just tell us where they get it from. And I'm not going to stand up here and debate where they get it from. I'm telling you, we know where they get it from. And there's a personal responsibility to stop it. And it's not my duty to go out here and make sure you do it. I don't police businesses and I don't police personal homes. We police for the public. So let's take personal responsibility and whatever you do and do the right thing and

## Councilman King: public-safety balance and keeping young people in town

**[01:46:45–01:47:24] Councilman David King / City Clerk Steve Gilbert:** a young, foolish college kid. You don't need to tell everything you know of any. And we spent a lot of nights doing things we probably shouldn't have done. And, you know, I understand we have a public safety element that we have to take care of. But we should also consider that we need to make sure that our young people have safe opportunities not to leave town. And that's all I've got to say on that. Thank you. Thank you. We need a motion to pay the bills.

## Formal first reading of Ordinance 09142026-222

**[01:49:01–01:49:12] Mayor Nix / council:** carries. This is the first reading of the ordinance. Ordinance 09142026-222

**[01:49:12–01:49:35] Mayor Nix:** an ordinance amending the municipal code of the City of Montevallo Chapter 16 Article 3 Section 16-59E regarding the hours of sale on-premise alcoholic beverages. Section 16-59F regarding the hours of sale of off-premise alcoholic beverages.

**[01:49:36–01:51:36] City Clerk/Treasurer Steve Gilbert / Mayor Nix:** Steve would you read the the ordinance please? Yes sir. Ordinance 09142026-222 amending Section 16-59 of the Code of Ordinances of the City of Montevallo regarding this public consumption and possession of alcoholic beverages hours of sale. Whereas the City of Montevallo under authority granted by the State of Alabama Code 1975 Section 1147-112 granting the power of municipalities to adopt ordinances to promote temperance and suppress intemperance. Whereas the City Council believes it is necessary, advisable, and in the best interest to regulate the hours of sales of alcoholic beverages within the corporate limits of the City of Montevallo at duly licensed restaurant, bars, clubs, etc. and retail sales outlet. Now therefore be it ordained by the City of Montevallo Alabama as follows. Chapter 16 Article 3 Public Consumption and Possession Section 16-59 is hereby amended as follows. Article 3 Section 16-59E the hours of on-premise consumption of alcoholic beverages shall be as follows Monday through Saturday from 6 am until 12 midnight and Sunday from 10 am until 12 am midnight. Article 3 Section 16-59F for hours of off-premises sales of alcoholic beverages shall be as follows Monday through Saturday from 6 am until 2 am and Sunday from 10 am until 2 am. Sections 22-141 Severability each section and provision of this ordinance is hereby declared to be an independent section or provision. If any section or provision shall be declared void, invalid, or unconstitutional the remaining sections or provision shall not be affected but shall remain in full force and effect.

**[01:51:36–01:51:51] City Clerk/Treasurer Steve Gilbert / Mayor Nix:** The ordinance shall take place and become effective upon its passage and advertisement as provided by law. Thank you. Like I said this is just the first reading so it will not be voted on

**[01:51:51–01:52:09] Mayor Nix / City Clerk Steve Gilbert / council:** tonight. Next is resolution 091426-544 the resolution authorizing the release of the

## Entertainment-district discussion and hotel/tourism comment

**[01:56:32–01:56:49] Mayor Nix:** we do have another opportunity for citizens to address the council hopefully on a different topic but uh go ahead the birds slightly um my name is Cheryl Patton 1220 Lynn Street I realize I

**[01:56:49–01:58:11] Cheryl Patton:** just said that last time um a few weeks ago um Emily Gill stood in front stood here and asked that y'all consider um an entertainment several of us I think spoke in favor of that and the indication we got that night was that y'all would move forward and at least discussing with the business community how we might make this possible my understanding since then is because of this incident that that is off the table and we will no longer talk about it which for me the distinction of what happened here tonight and what happened August 21st means we do need to have conversations between us and you you don't understand the regulations we're under this um we do want to take our job seriously as teaching because how do you bring the responsibility and what that looks like and I think if we work together rather than feeling targeted um for you know an incident that we can't necessarily control with the move forward so I hope that again we can begin conversations um together and we'll just the conversations that we're going to have was

**[01:58:11–01:59:17] Mayor Nix / Councilman David King / council:** an event based entertainment and I'm I'm still willing to do that for our walk uh maybe uh house code music in the park things like that but we're we're a long way away from having an entertainment history okay mr mr mayor can we uh consult with the abc board and gather some information sure about what we would need to do to have events based open container and what that looks like and what we're what a city can allow what they can allow can we can we get event based events based so that we can so that we can all fully understand that you know we've had a lot of conversations not about public safety and I think certainly maybe the late night activity doesn't represent what evening or afternoon activity with responsible adults looks like so if we can understand what we're allowed to do then as a group we can decide what we believe is best for for our city obviously with conversation with our constituents but I think it's time

**[01:59:21–02:00:27] Richard Carruthers:** my name is Richard Carruthers I'm at 450 Shelby Street I'm just curious about a couple things is the hotel going to have a bar are they going to close at midnight um because you may talk to the hotel about how they feel I have not a house they and they're fine because at all their other establishments they have they shut their bar down at 10 o'clock so you know thinking about tourism if I come to Montevallo and I stay at the hotel and there's nothing to do everything that I'm just sitting in the hotel you know no good story to talk about Montevallo so if I come to Montevallo and I spend the night at the bar or at the hotel and they walk down to the cool bar I've got a story to tell I've got something new I've got a reason to come back it makes my experience better it improves tourism you know you just just want to get that out appreciate it all right we don't forget we still got a uh executive session

## Emily Gill: collaborative process and security planning

**[02:04:39–02:05:49] Emily Gill:** hello everyone I'm uh Emily Gill back with new hair and new glasses and I missed the beginning sorry I had rehearsal I couldn't I had rehearsal the bumper stickers are true from what I wanted to do was just come up after after hearing the tail end of things and then hearing councilman King's suggestion if I can amend the proposal for a plan that I made last time I think last time I said I was going to send you all this you know cute little infographic I made what we were waiting on was the security plan piece it sounds like that's the thing that we really need to coordinate look at ABC coordinate with our stakeholders here and what I wanted to say is that as a tenured scholar of collaborative processes I would like to volunteer as a citizen to help facilitate that progress that process so anyone who is interested in working on that um my you'll know where to find me I don't want to say my email address and phrase back um but please contact me I'd like to get a group together so that we make sure that we get all opinions heard and weighed and we have all the facts in one place that's something I do quite well so thank you very much for uh hearing it thank you thank you for

**[02:05:49–02:05:54] Mayor Nix / council:** volunteering Emily I appreciate that Mr. Mayor I move that we in the end regular session and go

# 2. Other Business

## Pre-meeting audio and technical setup

**[00:00:00–00:02:09] Pre-meeting participants (not individually identified):** the back that we had made the part of the issue. Necessary. Any school we're not going to take five minutes. Is that going to close me? That's that's over. OK, yes, that's not weird. Everybody doing a lot better folks. We don't have any time. It is going to be handy. But yeah, some of us are going to have to do this. And they're going to be there. It's like nobody's ever going to get a good job. OK, so that's my goal. Appreciate it. Thank you, sir. Hello, Michael. I'm going to give it a little. I'm going to put it right in front of you. I

## Work session: consulting MOU, street closures, and budget resolution

**[00:02:14–00:03:03] Mayor Rusty Nix:** I'd like to call the meeting of the Montevallo City Council work session to order September the 14th, 2026, 530 here at City Hall. We do have a quorum present. First item on the agenda is the renewal of the MOU with the Stephens College of Business. One-year renewal of Falcon Consultant Services provided by Stephens College of Business. What this is for their service, we let them have a room over at our annex building there. We've done this what the past three years. So just just a renewal on it. I wish more people knew that they could take advantage of those

**[00:03:03–00:03:24] Council discussion:** opportunities to get finding them and all the stuff that they can get right there. I wish more people were aware of it. Any questions or other comments? I agree with your notes. I've gone to several of the classes and they're very helpful. Yeah. All right. Next item is request to close

**[00:03:24–00:05:27] Mayor Nix / council and staff:** street from the University of Montevallo. Request to close Oak Street from the Performing Arts Center to Vine Street and North Boundary Street and Valley Street on Thursday, October the 8th, 2026 from 1 p.m. to 12 a.m. And this is Founders Day. Yeah, it is. Yeah, Founders Day and I think they're going to have a band set up and things like that. And it's just it affects no businesses, affects really no residents. They have gotten with principal butts about bus traffic that day. And that's that's it. Any questions or comments? All right. Next is resolution 09142026-350, a resolution adopting the annual budget for the fiscal year 2026 and 2027. I think everybody's received a hard copy plus you've got your digital copy. It's a good strong budget. It's a little over 12 million, but the working budget is actually about nine million. The 12 million includes grants and all that, but the working budget's right at nine million. Then we finish, if everything comes in good, we'll finish in the back. So any time you can finish there, you better be in the red. I applaud you and Steve and all of that work so hard to do this because when we took counsel, what, two years, six years ago, we was working with a four million dollar. Probably five, man. Five million dollar budget and now we're up to 12. And you see it in the city, you see the things and the investments

**[00:05:27–00:05:36] Mayor Nix / council and staff:** and the different things that is happening here in Montebello and it's only going to get better. So, you know, I think it's a great budget. I went through it and I didn't have any questions.

**[00:05:37–00:06:27] Council and staff discussion:** Thank you, Kenny. Anybody else? Are we going to vote on that tonight or just voting next week? State is this the first reading or what's the first reading? It is the first reading. It's a resolution council can can take action if they so choose tonight since they've had since they've had all the figures, you know, for the past several weeks, that's entirely up to council. Council, what are y'all going to vote on the budget tonight? Yeah, let's go ahead and get it out of the way. Okay. All right. We'll do that tonight then. And this has been reviewed by our auditors and everything. I always send that over to them, you know, just to kind of get their blessings on it and, you know, to make sure that there's no addition and subtraction errors there. And so I'm very, I have a lot of confidence in

## Opening, pledge, invocation, minutes, and Constitution Week proclamation

**[00:33:46–00:34:15] Mayor Nix and attendees:** I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands for a nation under God indivisible with liberty and justice for all. I'd like to call the meeting of the Monellala city council to order September the 14th, 2026, 6 PM here at city hall. We do have a quorum present at this time. I would like, uh,

**[00:34:16–00:36:22] Bobby C. P. Pearson:** ask CP Pearson, if he would say the indication, please. Good evening, American city council. Good evening. Again, I'm Bobby CP Pearson, 11 31 Southwest Oak street. I attend the Monellala church of Christ here in Montevallo. We're talking about loving one another, you know, Scott sent his son, his only forgotten son to earth that we all should have the right to the tree of life. And if we, as humans, we as humans would love one another the way that God loves us earth would be a better place to live. But we, we don't do that. We have a tendency sometimes to not like individuals because of, of, uh, what they look like the color of their skin and all those different types of things. But if you are a Christian, you're a Christian, we are all children of God and we are descendants of Adam and Eve. And with that being said, we should be able to love one another and get along. So would you pray with me, please? Eternal God, our father, father, God, we want to first thank you. Thank you for what you have done for us before we can ask you to do anything else for us. Father, I pray for this city council. I pray that the things that they discuss here tonight is done in accordance to your will. I pray that they will put the city first in whatever decisions they make. Father God,

**[00:36:22–00:37:39] Bobby C. P. Pearson:** I pray that you will bless our council members, each and every one of them, their families individually and collectively. Father God, I pray that you will bless this beautiful city of Montevallo. Teach us all how to, how to love one another, how to get along and, and just, just live in harmony. And father, I know that's, that's hard for us to do, but you can do that for us. Again, father, we love you. We thank you. And, and when it's all said and done, it was all said and done. I pray that you will give us a home in that big mansion in the sky where the streets are paved with gold and there's no more dying, no more crying, just singing and praising you. Father God, we love you. We thank you. These and all other blessings we ask in the precious name of Jesus. Amen. Thanks. All right. We need a motion for the

**[00:37:39–00:39:38] Mayor Nix / council:** minutes of August the 24th. Do I have a motion? Motion. Second. Got a motion and a second. Any discussion there being none, I'll call for the vote. All in favor say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Motion carries. We have a recognition tonight with the U.S. Constitution Week. I have a proclamation here. Whereas the U.S. Constitution of the United States of America is a guardian of our liberties, embodies the principle of limited government than a republic dedicated to rule by law. And whereas September the 17th, 2026 marks 239 years anniversary of the framing of the Constitution of the United States of America by the Constitutional Convention and whereas it is fitting and properly accord official recognition of this magnificent document in the memorable anniversary and to the patriotic celebrations for which is granted it and whereas public law 1915 guarantees the issue of proclamation each year by the President of the United States of America designating September 17th through the 23rd as Constitution Week. Now therefore, I rest in ex by virtue of the authority vested in me as Mayor of the City of Monte Viola in the state of Alabama do hereby proclaim that September 17th through the 23rd as Constitutional Week and ask our citizens to reaffirm the ideas of the framers of the Constitution had in 1787 by vigilantly protecting the freedoms guaranteed to us through this guardian of our liberties. Do we have anyone here to accept the proclamation? Okay, now front.

**[00:40:30–00:41:21] Mayor Nix / council:** All right, we have an opportunity for citizens to address the council. You have three minutes. Please state your name and where you live and I'm sure it's going to be a hot topic. I would really appreciate if you've got something new to add to it. You're more than welcome but you know I don't need to sit here and listen to 25 people say the exact same thing so as long as we keep new ideas going that'll be fine. Please be respectful of this administration up here and we'll be respectful of you guys too.

## Public-safety report before the ordinance-related remarks

**[01:15:55–01:17:03] Councilman Kenneth Dukes / Police Chief Todd Burr:** It's getting dinner time. So we had a total of 592 calls for the month. We made 96 total cases for the month. We had eight traffic accidents. We made 415 traffic stops. We had 100. We wrote 106 citations. We rested 38 people. We had no burglaries, one auto burglary, eight domestics, no assaults, no forgeries, and two theft attempts. I've been quite busy today building your phone calls and things like that. So you haven't talked to me. I will say to you there is video that will be available. It's not available now because those who have been arrested have cases that are going on and they have to be adjudicated. And so you can you can have some access to some of that video ever how long it takes for those cases to be once that's over with. If you want to look at

## Fire, public works, sustainability, recreation, library, arts, tourism, and development reports

**[01:31:41–01:32:27] Fire Chief (name not stated):** stop it. That's all you have to do. Our fire chief has the pleasure of coming behind that. Six left and says four structure fire, three brush fire, two bills fired, seven fire alarm, five motor vehicle crash, two assist the public, one assist other and one assist law enforcement for a total of 145 dollars. And I got a, I don't have a whole lot to call out. A personal card. Can people burn now? No. Okay. Thank you, sir.

**[01:32:33–01:32:46] Councilman Kenneth Dukes / Mayor Nix:** Thank you, sir. Appreciate it. We have Sarah's out of town right now, so we don't have a report nothing on housing or housing abatement or annexation. That's all that happens to me.

**[01:32:46–01:34:06] Councilwoman Lelia Mitchell / Public Works staff:** All right. Thank you. Next, we'll go to sustainability. Councilwoman Mitchell. Thank you, Mayor. Mr. Hamid, do you have anything you want to report to us? I know things have been changing a little bit. Very little. I want to speak on my guys. Yeah. Once it's May and once it's June. May and once it's June. So we are behind the eight ball, as they say. We're still maintaining what we do, but I've got a group of hard workers. This past weekend was a large event. Those tents and chairs don't grow their sense of out there at Tinglewood. But the heat that my guys doing a great job, if you see them, thank them. When you vote on the budget, you're going to be thanking them. So if you have any questions, feel free to ask me. That city truck turns into a pumpkin at a 14 hour day, so I'm about to get out of here. Thank you. Thank you. And we did have a overboard meeting on last week and the historical commission met on the first Tuesday. That is all I have. All right. Thank you. Thank you.

**[01:34:07–01:35:25] Councilwoman Alyssa Green:** Next, we'll go to recreation and community development. Councilwoman Green. Thank you, Mayor. For the Youth Athletics Senior Center and Council Report, youth football games started this past weekend. Our midgets won 28-0, minors won 20-6, majors game was canceled due to lightning, and this game is being played two night at Thorsby at 6.30 p.m. Fall baseball and softball start September 28th. Uniform pickup will be Friday, September the 18th from 5 to 7 p.m., and Thursday, September 24th from 6.45 to 8 p.m. at the Scout Lodge. The senior center participants are going to Shoney's on Thursday, September 17th. The senior center received their grant funds, which covers a new 65-inch TV, entertainment center, new desks, new tables, new word search coloring books, blackstone griddle, and more. Let's go see the senior centers. They're probably real excited. And as far as the Parks and Recreation Report, the meeting we met on August the 25th, we had a really good meeting, and those minutes, the agenda and minutes will be available as soon as I get them to Lisa. That's it. Thank you. Thank you. Thanks to go to Education Art and Outreach.

**[01:35:27–01:36:59] Councilwoman Brandelyn Nelson / Mayor Nix:** Councilwoman Nelson. Thank you, Mayor. It looks like our junior mayor is absent tonight, and Sarah was going to share the MJCC minutes, but it looks like she's logged off of Zoom. So I'm going to read the report from Marissa at the library. She says she is attending the Association for Small Libraries this week in Montgomery, and she's excited about what she'll be bringing back for the Teen Advisory Board. Thursday night at the library is the watercolor craft night. They're painting sunflowers at 6. They're having a huge Hobbit party Tuesday, September the 22nd at 6 p.m. Teen Book Club meeting is every Thursday at 6 in partnership with American Village, and they still have books available at the library for that book club. Thank you to everyone who came to the homeschool hub program for the city at our Meet the Montevallo event. The mayor, City Councilwoman Mitchell, the fire chief, and the police chief were both there and Sarah with impact. So we appreciate everybody who could go out and be a part of that event, and the October calendar is out in the library if you want to know what's happening in October. Councilwoman Nelson, I want to say that the MJCC helped a car show this weekend, and so they raised over $200 for the MJCC helping us out at the car show, and it was probably one of the most successful organizations that we've had work with us over

**[01:36:59–01:37:16] Councilwoman Brandelyn Nelson / Mayor Nix:** our 24-year history as far as what took place. So hats off to the MJCC for helping out. All right, thank you. Next we go to finance, economic development, and tourism. Councilman King.

**[01:37:18–01:39:02] Councilman David King / council discussion:** Yes, sir. Adele. We're talking about Tinglewood, the eighth year. There was one Tim Tingle, one Orr Park, one cooler weather. It was really just 88 degrees y'all, but it felt like 98. One city, one city crew, which was Kyle, and I found out the other gentleman's name is Lou Garrett, so we call him Lou now, and of course Kurt didn't have to stay and do, but he did, and it was greatly appreciated. 55 sponsors, four grants, 200 volunteers, 78 vendor booths, 16 best in class wooden ribbons, one honorable mention, wooden ribbon, one best in show, wooden plaque, one chainsaw carving expo with five renowned chainsaw artists. A portion of the carving sales goes to our local nonprofits, which we included the leaders of tomorrow this year. Thank you. One Cars by the Creek, one which I heard had over 120 vehicles that attended. Yes. One Tractors in the Trees, and I think there was maybe, I don't know, maybe eight or ten tractors. One discovers Shelby Stage with four musical acts, including the Montevallo High School jazz fan, and I don't know if y'all saw the video of a gentleman asking one of the jazz band members to go to the homecoming with him. We made that part of the event. One acts throwing 15 food vendors, one children's area with the show, face painting, Mr. Larry's magic show, and he's retiring this year, I'm saying. The balloon guy Carl, which is wonderful, reptiles and amphibians of Alabama by Jim,

**[01:39:03–01:40:27] Councilman David King / council discussion:** Tim's Whittling Contest, one boat, wooden boat race that now we have named after Joe Williams, it's a memorial boat race. 11 community organizations had boat entries, and one Tanglewood Festival shuttle, we had a shuttle this year that worked out great, and one Tanglewood Festival committee that made it all happen. When I had somebody say to me, there's something else we need to do, I said, do you know how many staff shirts I ordered this year? Do you know how many people are on this committee? Ten. Ten people. So we do a lot, and I was just letting this person know that what they wanted us to do was a good idea, and maybe we could get somebody else to recruit to do that, but it's just a lot for just ten people to do, which I appreciate everyone. And so that's Tanglewood. So we got the luncheon is coming up on Wednesday, which is the central state bank connection. Mitt Schroeder will be doing the, being the speaker, and all the, let me know if you're going to come or not, is kind of over with, but if anybody else on the council wants to come, let me know. Taking pre-orders for the Montevalvicon sales, one pound bag of fresh shell pecans is $15 each. Deadline is October the 16th with pickup before Thanksgiving. This benefits the Montevallo community grant fund, which has went to four of our wonderful organizations so far. So all the money that you spend on these pecans and the

**[01:40:27–01:41:48] Councilman David King / council discussion:** onions in the spring, you know, they're a good cause. And we give all the money out. We don't keep getting the money. The Montevallo Lue aisle, if nobody knows about that, will be Saturday, September the 19th, which will be this Saturday from nine to four, and the chamber's going to be helping with that. Our music community at Village on Valley, which is Valley Street between Walsworth and Ashfield Road, probably one 19th. If you want any more information about it, you can contact Cynthia with C's, and I have her email if you need it, just call the chamber. No. And then we're going to have, since people have been asking, we're going to have Montevallo hometown Halloween on Friday, October the 30th. We want to have it during the week, and we always do this. If Halloween ever lands on a weekend, we always back it up, because we want the businesses to be open and involved. So I will make sure all of them know from three thirty to five downtown on Friday, October the 30th, instead of the thirty-first. Any questions? You did an excellent job. It was, it was nice. Everything was good. I enjoyed it. Oh, and speaking with the people from Living River, they're going to have open house this weekend on Saturday. So if you want to ride out past Pea Ridge, way out in the Boondocks, they'll, they'll have the gates open where you can come in and tour the facility.

**[01:41:49–01:42:17] Councilman David King / council discussion:** You know what it was, we had some people get overheated, it really wasn't that hot, not compared to the farmer's room. And we had one lady trying to sell chicken at Timberland. She had them in a cage. They weren't fried. They were live chicken. Oh, okay. They weren't biddies, they weren't biddies, they were chicken.

**[01:42:19–01:43:46] Councilman David King / City Clerk Steve Gilbert:** Thank you, Bill. MDCD met today. The things we went over, the current projects, multi-purpose field project. The lights are up, they're starting the seating. I did have somebody, I don't mind saying it's Alyssa's husband calling and asking, are they putting turf down? No, they're not putting turf down. It is grass. So if anybody has any questions about that, there's the answer. We talked about the hotel project, which is coming right along. If you go outside, you'll notice they're starting to put the signs up on the outside. So we're getting closer and closer on that. Steve, do we still feel like December is going to be viable? That's still the projected opening sometime December. All right. Crossroads grant. I know Reston and Steve have been working on this with ALDOT and land acquisition and this that and the other, but I know y'all attended the CDBG where they were talking about awarding the money, which is ours. It was the workshop for all of the financial reporting that we have to do for that grant process. Everything's still on track with that. MDCD is watching that, but we do have a cost overrun on the sewer project. Some of the unallocated funds from the sale of the tavern may be allocated that way from our partners, which would be the university and or the county. That's not something we have anything to do with, but it is part of MDCD conversation. We hope that it doesn't come to that, but it is a possibility.

**[01:43:48–01:45:04] Councilman David King / City Clerk Steve Gilbert:** The high school gym project is rocking right along. I think everybody, I think CPC is it every day. City Hall parking lot expansion. Obviously, when we finish the hotel finishes over here, we want to make sure that our driveways and our parking lots and our, you know, it visually matches and we don't have water runoff issues. So there's going to be some money allocated for that. And then we talked about Stevens Park Pickleball Lighting Project, which is not something we've really talked about much, but we've got a little bit of ARPA money that was earmarked for that a while back that has to be spent by the end of the year. Trey Gamp with the county got a quote on the pickleball court lighting, which will light up both courts. They'll have a timer, a button timer to where, you know, when somebody didn't mash it for a little while, it goes off. And that was 32 grand and some change. And I think MDCD went ahead and allocated 25K to supplement the city if we choose to go forward with that project. So it's not necessarily us having to go to, we're going to decide whether we want to do the project or not. And if we do that, we're agreeing to take 25G from the MDCD will be the owner of that. So those things happened. And let's see, planning and zoning is

**[01:45:04–01:46:15] Councilman David King / City Clerk Steve Gilbert:** this Thursday, the 17th at 6 PM. We do have a few little things on the agenda. I'll give you a little sneak peek. Let me preface this by saying very clearly that Montevallo has not been approached or there's no nothing on the horizon about a data center. So don't, don't jump on that. But a lot of cities around Shelby County have placed moratoriums while they get their zoning stuff worked out to make sure that they've got all the protections in place to ensure that any future development meets what they deem is appropriate for their community. We didn't have to do that because we already have zoning protections, but we are going to look at our current zoning. And we're going to see if there's anything we can do to tighten up to ensure that we have as many layers of review so that the public will know everything that's going on before anything could ever come. Now, like I said, we don't have any inclination of any, nobody has approached us, none of that stuff. We just want to follow the other cities in the counties, not necessarily leave. We just want, we're actually ahead of them. We just want to make sure that we cross our T's and dot our I's. And so the Planning and Zoning Commission is going to look at our language and all our zoning destinations and make sure that we have conditional uses placed so that public hearings happen if

**[01:46:15–01:46:45] Councilman David King / City Clerk Steve Gilbert:** something comes up. It has to be reviewed by P&Z. Another public hearing happens. It has to be reviewed by council. We're locking those things up so that we protect our citizenry. All right. Let's see. Courtney didn't have a Main Street report this time. She was very busy at Tinglewood and she apologized profusely for that. And Finance Committee Meeting is the 29th, which is a Tuesday at Fort City Hall. And the only thing I will say past that was I was once

## Bills and non-ordinance new business

**[01:47:25–01:49:01] Mayor Nix / council:** Second. Got a motion and a second. Any discussion? There being none, I'll call for the vote. All in favor say aye. Any opposed? Motion carries. First item under new businesses renewal of the MOU from Stephens College of Business. One-year renewal of Falcon Consulting Service provided by Stephens College of Business. Do I have a motion to approve? Second. Got a motion and a second. Any discussion? There being none, I'll call for the vote. All in favor say aye. Any opposed? Motion carries. Next is request to close streets from the University of Montevallo. Request to close Oak Street from Performing Arts Center to Vine Street and North Boundary Street at Valley Street on October the on Thursday October the 8th, 2026 from 1 p.m to 12 a.m. Do I have a motion? Motion. We've got a motion on the floor and a second. Second. Any discussion? There being none, I'll call for the vote. All in favor say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Motion carries. Resolution 04 excuse me 09142026-350 a resolution adopting the annual budget for the fiscal year 2026 and 2027. Do I have a motion? Motion. Second. Got a motion and a second. Any more discussion? There being none, I'll call for the vote. All in favor say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Motion

## Lexington Park bond-release resolution and related discussion

**[01:52:09–01:54:02] Mayor Nix / City Clerk Steve Gilbert / council:** 842-164 for LGI Homes Alabama LLC for Lexington parcel phase two asphalt wear surface. This is this is a bond that was issued for phase two Lexington Park by LGI Homes and this was for the construction requirements for that section and it has to be released from the bond. They will issue an additional bond for and we have a bond in effect for phase four for land disturbance which is the areas that are still under construction and they will also issue a asphalt bond once they put the steel cove on section phase four well actually what's phase phase four so there's still there's section phase one has been completed phase two has been completed portions of phase three are still under construction and most all of phase four is still under under construction if you've been by there they have been doing a lot of work on the entrance way they're removing the old vegetation and the irrigation systems and addressing some issues that they have there within grass and egress out of the daycare center vis visually they've removed the trees and other shrubs that were in these these areas and so our engineer inspects this on a regular basis so they have met all the requirements to be released from the bond. One I'll make a motion we oh sorry go ahead. Oh they have they paved the streets and got them to par because last time I went through there you had a manhole cover that's sticking about a

**[01:54:02–01:55:45] Mayor Nix / City Clerk Steve Gilbert / council:** you know five inches above the asphalt uh and you still had a lot of humps and ruts and in the street itself. Yes sir um and I'll explain this a little more councilman but um they were not responsible for those areas of the subdivision that was in phase one uh and I have been addressing those issues with them uh because we also have some utility pedestals that are in sidewalks. I'm talking about cable pedestals and telephone and cable television pedestals that are physically in the concrete in the sidewalk and so since this was done by another company which bankrupted and and left left town um the new developer has been approachable about correcting these problems uh and so I'm trying to work with them to get some of those issues and and yes sir the the manhole covers and and some other ruts in the road are pretty atrocious as well as the entrance way and that's why they're addressing that. Um uh you know there was some some uh problems with the sub grade of the asphalt uh breaking up as you came into the subdivision uh and it's my understanding they're going to address those first because it you know quite frankly it's it's affecting their sales of homes. If you don't have a good decent entryway into into your subdivision and and and councilwoman Nelson I see her nodding it it it affects that but yes sir we're trying to continue to work with

**[01:55:45–01:56:31] Mayor Nix / City Clerk Steve Gilbert / council:** the current developer to get some of those problems rectified and the city can't adopt the street until the subdivision is 93 complete and we have not adopted any of those streets not even in phase one so we do have some leverage there before we uh actually adopt the street it would have to meet specifications the city's subdivision specification. Thank you sir. All right do I have a motion motion got a motion on the floor do we have a second second got a second any more discussion there being none I'll call for the vote all in favor say aye any opposed motion carries we have no old business board appointments no other business

## Later citizen comments: trees, sidewalk, and turn lanes

**[02:00:27–02:01:48] Bobby C. P. Pearson / council:** that the house has got to do yeah uh Mr. Mayor Bobby C. P. Pearson 1131 South Oak Street Mr. Mayor several uh months ago I approached you all about the uh the trees on Oak Street on Oak Street where they're building the uh new gymnasium new gymnasium is just taking it's taking shape but you know every day I feel like I'm I'm Andy and Shawshank and uh my my view my view is gone my question is when they complete the gymnasium will those trees at least be pruned and then will someone write a grant or y'all find some money and slush pun to extend the sidewalk on that side of the street all the way down to the four-way stop sign for y'all to think about it thank you I can get my time back I think I do think personally I think that's something because the kids are going to be the gym is new gym is there you'll be able to walk to it without walking in the road so I support something of that nature I agree I think so

**[02:01:52–02:02:48] Rebecca Bay:** I'm Rebecca Bay by the way um I and I know this doesn't have to do with Monte Valle I know it has to come from Aldott or something like that but it is getting scary not to have a turn lane going into Dollar General there on 119 I started I was at um uh Mary Moon big a couple of weeks ago and I said I tell you we need a turn lane and I couldn't think of work and they both said at Dollar General there were two people that said that it is it is so scary you just they just stop to turn because they got away and and you're not ready for that and there's going to be some problems and I know it's not Monte Valle but I don't know who y'all need to talk to but that's

**[02:02:50–02:04:37] City Clerk/Treasurer Steve Gilbert / council:** Rebecca we've we've addressed that with with Aldott as a matter of fact we tried to get that included in the improvements for the crossroads and there are a lot of logistical problems with it and it ran the budget above what the grant was allowable for that particular roadway expansion and so we chose to take the one for the crossroads at 2.1 million dollars and so we until we complete that project we're not eligible to apply for another a trip to grant and hopefully with everything going correctly it'll start sometime in October or November of this year and we'll be completed in about 180 days and the window is open right now for for another grant I'm hoping they will allow us to go ahead and submit an application but they may or may not and and I know how this has all shaped out and and you're correct it's not under our direct control and just for purposes a turn line cost about 100 grand so you know we're gonna have to have some help have some help on that but but we have we have been looking at ways to do that as well as 24 uh which is Ebenezer's shop so a double yellow line same thing down here on highway 25 going to dollar count anyway same thing over there thank you for that

## Motion to enter executive session

**[02:05:54–02:06:11] Mayor Nix / council:** into our executive session do we have a second second any discussion there being none we'll call for the vote all in favor say aye aye all opposed we'll go to executive session I'm gonna say 45 minutes and then we'll come back

## Transcript boundaries

The recording ends after the council votes to enter executive session and estimates a 45-minute session. The executive-session discussion itself is not present in the supplied recording.