Committee votes to pay city's first $500,000 UAB football pledge this year

In May, the Birmingham City Council promised to contribute $2.5 million to UAB football over the next five years. But in recent weeks, confusion arose about when that pledge would begin.
Last week, the council unanimously approved a budget for fiscal year 2016, but UAB football was missing from the $400 million in spending.

A Birmingham City Council committee voted late Monday afternoon on a resolution allocating money from the sale of more than $500,000 worth of city property toward UAB football this fiscal year.
The city previously paid $250,000 each year for a block of UAB football tickets at Legion Field.


On Friday, Birmingham Finance Director Tom Barnett said the funding was not included in the current budget because the city had not anticipated that it would need to deliver on that pledge so soon.
The city's contribution was a key component of outside funding, pledged by the city and private donors, in order to bring back UAB football.

In June, UAB President Ray Watts wrote a letter to Mayor William Bell and Council President Johnathan Austin explaining that the city's pledge was "absolutely critical" to relaunching the football, bowling and rifle programs.

"There is a lead time during the reinstatement process in which important investments are made in these programs to support coaches and coaching staffs, to recruit and train student athletes, to provide scholarship support for the student athletes, to rebuild the UAB Athletic brand of these teams as Birmingham's teams," Watts wrote.

He also noted that UAB needed the funding to begin this year because of costs related to the reinstatement process before a team takes the field.
"The business plan for the reinstatement of these sports and for the overall health of UAB Athletics is not viable without this level of support from the city, beginning in the upcoming fiscal year and running for five consecutive years," Watts wrote.

In a response to the letter, Austin assured Watts that the council would find the funding this year, but he cautioned that the commitment is contingent upon the programs' return.