Birmingham agreed to an expanded contract with Alabama Power on Tuesday to add an additional 100 security cameras and license plate readers on power poles throughout the city.

Last year, Birmingham partnered with Alabama Power to install 330 cameras on power poles throughout the city to monitor public areas and feed video directly to the Birmingham Police Department’s Real Time Crime Center.

The updated contract includes more than 100 new surveillance cameras and license plate reading Flock cameras.

“It will be spread out citywide,” said Birmingham Mayor Randall Woodfin. “Alabama Power and the Birmingham Police Department have gone really, really deep into this relationship, as well as the deployment of where they should be.”

Birmingham Police Chief Michael Pickett said the police department will keep track of the ways the cameras help fight crime and whether some of the cameras need to be repositioned over time. They are already playing a key role in crime-fighting, he said.

“The cameras are hugely impactful to assist us and to deter crime,” Pickett said. “We’ll do an ongoing assessment to see how beneficial is this investment.”

The 2024 contract has been amended to add 20 additional months and the deal with Alabama Power is now worth $9.7 million, although the city is not shouldering the entire cost of the contract, which includes maintaining the system.

City officials gave credit to U.S. Sen. Katie Britt for helping them secure a $4.2 million Department of Justice grant available to upgrade IT systems and cybersecurity.

Chaz Mitchell, chief of staff for the city, said the agreement covers five years and the early costs will be covered by the federal grant. “We’re making payments on this yearly,” Mitchell said. “This is something we’re paying out over the next five years.”

It’s not currently coming out of the city’s budget, he said.

“Not until we expend the full grant amount,” Mitchell said. “Hopefully, we can get another grant, or budget this in future fiscal years.”

Woodfin said he’s optimistic about additional federal grants.

“We feel good about our position,” Woodfin said. “The contingency would be to plan for it out of our general fund.”

Alabama Power Public Safety Manager Jonathan Bozeman told the City Council in a special called meeting Monday that the costs include installing and maintaining cameras, along with subscriptions to video software, data plans, upgraded data connections for the Real Time Crime Center and power usage of about $3,000 a month. He said Alabama Power has camera agreements with more than 80 cities in the state to manage security cameras.

Woodfin said the cameras have played a key role in reducing crime and lowering the homicide rate this year after a record high of 151 homicides in 2024 broke the city’s record set in 1933.

“The first half of the year has seen tremendous progress,” Woodfin said. “It’s important that we made this issue a priority of public safety, especially around decreasing gun violence, and especially around decreasing homicides. We’ve done that with over a 50 percent decrease in homicides. Kudos to Michael Pickett, chief of police, and the entire police department, for their aggressive efforts and their new approach to how they’re keeping us safe. I want to thank all the partners who helped in this decrease in crime.”