Transportation, green spaces, and the long-awaited expansion of I-65 are top priorities for Alabaster Mayor Scott Brakefield in 2024.

In his Q&A with the Lede this week, Brakefield detailed his plans for the city over the next few years and said that community-based decision making would be his key to success.

This interview has been condensed and edited for clarity.

Is the city still following the 2016 Alabaster Forward comprehensive plan?

Yes, we are following our comprehensive plan, but we also have Alabaster Fast Forward, where we went and passed a sales tax increase early last year.

Our comprehensive plans are due to be renewed every 10 years but because of everything that we have going on, we’re actually going to speed that process up by a couple years. And we’re going to start with a new process. The Regional Planning Commission [of Greater Birmingham] will come to the city next month to start the public input section of it and kind of get our comprehensive plan updated, and what it’s going to look like for the next 10 years.

Our Fast Forward program just lists a lot of capital projects that we wanted to utilize from the extra penny in sales tax revenue. We’re working our way down through that list pretty aggressively. We’ve opened one park. We’ve got another area that’s under construction.

The big piece of it will be dedicated towards a rec center and a new library. That won’t start until the end of 2024/2025. So, we’re kind of doing two different things. But yes, we’re following them to an extent.

So, what are some plans for Alabaster in 2024 that you haven’t already mentioned?

Yeah, so a big part of our Fast Forward program was just really enhancing and improving things that the community said needs to improve. So, we really focused a lot on parks. We opened Patriot’s Park last year and we’re super excited about it. It addressed a need at the north end of our town where we didn’t have a park. So, everybody’s excited about that.

On the south end of town, we have Veteran’s Park. It’s currently under construction with new playgrounds, baseball fields, pickleball courts, all those things are getting updated. Veteran’s Park is about 20 years old. So, it was in need of an injection of funding to enhance it.

As we move into this year, we just recently approved an amphitheater. In between city hall and our senior center is an area that we call the Municipal Green. And we will be starting construction at the end of this month on the expansion of our senior center but at the same time, adding a stage area and theater area to hold small musical acts and festivals and events and things like that. So that will be under construction.

Our Buck Creek Trail is kind of a gem of Alabaster. In 2024 we’ll expand that up to our high school. So, we’ll have that really walkable area in the center part of our town. We’re almost creating a downtown because we don’t have a downtown or a city center. So that’ll be a nice project that we’re going to be working on in 2024.

And then we’ve got a lot of outstanding projects that we’ll continue to complete. Larry Simmons Stadium, which is a youth football field that were completely redoing. A baseball field that we’re completely redoing that the high school used to utilize and now we’re utilizing it for our city parks and completely revamping it. So, we’ve got a lot that’s going on which will include transportation in and around that area. So, helping traffic flow on Highway 119 and Thompson Roads, that will be a significant project that we’re working on in 2024.

And then hopefully continuing to work with ALDOT [Alabama Department of Transportation] on our second phase of our Highway 119 expansion. Last year we expanded several miles of 119 from two lanes to five. I think in 2024, we will start right away with acquisition, with hopefully that project kicking off in 2025 as far as starting construction.

And do you have any updates on the expansion of I-65 through Shelby County?

That will probably be late 2024. This is a Shelby County project. They are the lead governmental agency, with partnerships from the city of Alabaster and the city of Calera. But it’s exciting to see that. The first phase will be widening kind of the area in and around Alabaster and just improve traffic in and around our city. So, we’re just super excited about that.

What are some focus areas where you would really like to see Alabaster improve this year?

The big thing that we continue to work on as far as whether it’s next year or into the future is just transportation. Alabaster is a growing, vibrant, diverse community. We will continue to attract commercial development along with residential development. But we have to ensure infrastructure is there. Most notably traffic and traffic patterns.

And then also just internally identifying areas that we can work with those agencies to install traffic lights, pedestrian crossings, etc. just to make our community flow a little bit better. That’s kind of more of a long-range thing, but it’s something we’ll continue to work towards in 2024.

So, garbage pickup has been a big topic of discussion across the metro lately. I wanted to ask, has Alabaster ever considered switching from managing its own pickup service to contracting a company like AmWaste?

We’re actually lucky due to timing. I first started on the city council in 2008. And we contracted our trash back then. And over the years, our Director of Public Works, Mark Harris, who is now retired, continued to kind of pitch the idea of bringing that back internal. In 2016, we got really serious about it. We were having problems with a lot of the same things that people across the metro are having now. You know, their trucks broke down, or the service just wasn’t good. The trucks would break a hydraulic hose and leak hydraulic fluid all throughout a neighborhood.

So, it was just problem after problem. Nothing to the extent where we were having to call in help to get our trash picked up or anything like that, but just a constant nuisance and a constant challenge that we had. So finally, I think in 2016 or 2017, we voted to bring it in house. And I think by the end of 2017, or early 2018, we were running our own.

We would gladly pay a little bit more for the quality of service that we’re getting and to not have to be dealing with what our sister cities are dealing with. We’re more than happy to utilize our trucks and help Hoover out of a pinch. They’re always going to be willing to return the favor. And Frank and I, we’ve worked together through the Shelby County Mayor’s Association. So, we’ve got a great working relationship and we’re very fortunate and very happy to have our own service here controlled by the city.