A six-month budget battle between Fairhope’s mayor and council members ended last week, as the council unanimously passed its amended budget over the mayor’s protests.

During her comments portion of the meeting, Mayor Karin Wilson outlined the budget creation process she had taken over the previous months.

“The budget sets goals and objectives for our city,” Wilson said. “It is the single most important task entrusted to the mayor and council. It is the mayor’s responsibility as CEO to prepare and propose a budget, and it is the council’s responsibility to adopt it.”

Wilson said she had attempted to reach out to council members to discuss the budget during the process but said they did not reach back to her.

“Although I reached out repeatedly to council to reach out with me, this did not happen,” Wilson said.

Wilson alluded to an idea that the council members met secretly to discuss the budget without having to go before the public.

“To assume that each council person agrees on each edit on that document in front of you when council can not deliberate in between meetings would be absurd,” Wilson said. “Different councilmen have different opinions on each item, and the citizens need to see each one of the changes. More importantly, councilmen need to take accountability for each individual vote on those changes. They can’t deliberate between meeting, so how would they know they all agree on those changes?”

One such change to her budget Wilson disagreed with was the defunding of the position of Economic and Community Development Director, a slot Wilson had created and filled with Sherry Lea Bloodworth-Botop.

“It is not the council’s role to determine the positions needed to run a city,” Wilson said. “That is my job as mayor. In the past, many cities focused on recreation and special events as a form of community development, but cities the size of Fairhope must integrate community and economic development. The old paradigm is no longer sufficient.”

Wilson said the council did not have the power to hire and fire, and felt the removal of the position was not within the council’s rights.

Wilson had also released a statement on her official Facebook page before the meeting stating that some city services might be suspended or changed if the council’s amended budget passed, which Councilman Jay Robinson took offense to during his comments.

“When it comes to city services that have been budgeted and approved by the city council, those services cannot be disrupted unless by an act of the city council,” Robinson said. “This press release was another thing that seemed to divide an already divided community, so we need to make sure what information we’re providing to our community is correct and accurate. I’m not going to speculate as to what the reasons for the press release were, but I do know the results were to divide the community. We have got to stop the political posturing that is creating division in this community.”

Wilson replied that the hiring freeze imposed by the council had caused a number of positions within the city to go unfilled, which was stretching current employees and causing overtime overages.

“Unless the five of you want to start working for the city, these services will be cut because there is no one here to work it,” Wilson said.

Robinson said his talks with city department heads yielded a different answer.

“I reached out to a lot of our supervisors over the course of the last several weeks, and what I was told is that the hiring freeze itself has not affected the abilities to do their job,” Robinson said. “It’s the need for a passed budget.”

Wilson later walked out of the meeting and did not return.

Councilman Robert Brown said with regards to the Economic and Community Development department that the council was told one thing and then the mayor did something different.

“We were told when we created the Economic and Community Development position that this was not going to be a department, that it was going to be a single person,” Brown said. “We approved the position, but if you look at the budget sheet, an entirely new department with another new position would have been created.”

Brown said he and the other council members had worked to create a budget that stayed within costs but still was able to fill the city’s needs.

Council President Jack Burrell said the council was not getting rid of Bloodworth-Botop, but did want to change the position back to a director of community affairs position that would have a reduction in salary costs for the city.

“To think that we’re sending someone off without pay is wrong,” Burrell said. “I don’t think this council had the will to create the new department of economic development, and I would hope that person would simply slide into this new position.”

Brown added that while Wilson had claimed to create savings through her budget, the council members had never seen those savings fully explained.

“She’s mentioned savings that aren’t shown in the budget, but none of use has seen a list of those savings,” Brown said. “We can’t budget based on unknown savings. I’m not going to base my budget approval on savings that have not yet been shown.”

Burrell said as far as working with the mayor, he had tried to reach out to her about things, but had grown tired of being talked down to by her.

“I didn’t want to go in there and be told why I’m going to do something,” Burrell said. “I went to make suggestions, not be explained to or at. I did not continue to attempt to go in there because I did not want to be lectured at by her on why something was in the budget.”

Two major items the council added to its budget included an additional $13,000 in funding for the city’s library and a $500,000 appropriation for water tower painting.

The council unanimously passed the budget and then unanimously voted to lift the city’s hiring freeze.