Spanish Fort’s city leaders began their budget negotiations last week for the upcoming fiscal year, with some potential expenditures raising questions from council members.

The city’s budget for the coming year is set to be slightly less than $9.7 million and includes adding some additional city staff members to the library and senior center to help extend the hours for those departments.

“Expanding the hours of those places is something people have been asking for, so this was a way for us to be able to offer the services people in our city say they want,” Mayor Mike McMillan said.

The budget also included salary adjustments for people who had reached maximum seniority within the current pay scale and $20,000 for an independent study about the city’s fire department.

Several council members raised concerns about the more than $843,000 that could be allocated to the Spanish Fort High athletic department for improvements and upgrades to the school’s fieldhouse facility.

“The fieldhouse obviously give me an enormous amount of heartburn,” Councilwoman Mary Brabner said. “I think they need to find additional revenue sources to help with that and I don’t think the city needs to be the one to always hand it out to them.”

Brabner said she felt the city wasn’t doing the athletics department any favors by continuing to honor every request they made.

“I don’t think it’s the city’s responsibility to continue to fund athletics,” Brabner said. “If you want to put $843,000 into the school, there are so many other areas in which to spend that money.”

Brabner said when the fieldhouse was originally built, it was supposed to be able to be used by both boys and girls athletics, which was why the council was supportive of it. She said since it was built, it had been largely used by only the boys athletics groups, which was a cause for concern.

“I’m concerned with how they take care of stuff up there,” Councilman J.R. Smith said. “The athletic facilities there were not taken care of the way I thought they should be taken care of, and you’ve got to show respect for those facilities when the city is footing the cost for them – plain and simple.”

Councilman Curt Smith said health and cleanliness was a factor in why the facility needed improvements, but he wasn’t certain the city should necessarily give the full ask amount.

“There are technicians that won’t go in there because it stinks so bad,” Curt said. “I know we had a couple of options presented. Maybe there’s some compromise we haven’t heard yet.”

McMillan said he would try to arrange time for the council members to visit the facility and hear from SFHS athletic director Ben Blackmon before voting on the measure in October.