The Jefferson County Commission voted unanimously Tuesday to contribute $4.5 million for the proposed Red Mountain Park.
Commission President Bettye Fine Collins and Commissioners Jim Carns, Bobby Humphryes, Larry Langford and Shelia Smoot voted to spend the money.
Collins said the county had a legal and moral responsibility to spend the money for the park.
The commission had agreed in 2005 to pay $7 million over six years to buy and help develop the park, but recently the new commission said it lacked the promised money and wouldn’t be able to pay.
Then last month, the Red Mountain Park Commission, after negotiations with the commission, voted unanimously to accept $4.5 million – as long as it was made as a single cash payment.
Steve Jones, chairman of the Red Mountain Park Commission, said the county’s contribution could spur corporate donations and other private fundraising efforts for the proposed 1,108-acre public park on the crest of Red Mountain. The park could eventually cost $40 million to develop, of which $7 million is the purchase price being offered by current land owner U.S. Steel Corp.
In other business, Collins said the county has renegotiated from $275 to $180 the hourly figure paid to a software vendor for training and consulting county employees on a new financial software system.
BearingPoint Management & Technology Consultants, a Virginia-based company, serves as the county’s software implementation vendor.
On Monday, the county scrapped plans to begin using the system after employees couldn’t get numbers to add up in a last minute test.
Collins said she was confident the system will be ready to go live in two weeks. It has been delayed twice since March.
The county needs more system testing and employee training before switching to the new software, she said.
The software will handle accounts payable, accounts receivable and other financial areas for all county departments.
“Everybody is working overtime; BearingPoint is cooperating, and everybody is set to go,” Collins said. “We want to be sure before we convert that all systems are go. It’s like a launching at Cape Kennedy. Sometimes you have to delay the launch.”
E-mail: bwright@bhamnews.com
