By TODD STACY, Alabama Daily News
MONTGOMERY, Ala. – It has been just over a year since Steven Reed was elected mayor of Montgomery, a historic moment that brought national attention a city known as the birthplace of the Civil Rights Movement electing its first black mayor.
But the celebration was short lived because in just a few months, Reed was dealing with multiple major challenges: a fight with the Legislature over a planned occupational tax, a worsening threat from the coronavirus pandemic and calls for policing reforms in the wake of the killing of George Floyd.
Now, Reed is taking on perhaps his biggest challenge yet: trying to convince the people of Montgomery County to raise their property taxes to pay for improvements to the long-troubled Montgomery Public Schools. Technically, the mayor has no authority over the school system. It’s governed by the county school board and superintendent. But Reed has become the biggest cheerleader for the plan, which he says is essential to turn local schools around, help recruit more businesses to the city and even keep Maxwell Air Force Base from relocating.
Here are the basics of the tax plan:

* Local schools are largely funded by property taxes, which are calculated in millage. A one mill tax would assess $1 for each of the $1,000 of assessed property value. So, if you’re home is worth $100,000 and the local education property tax is 10 mills a month, as Montgomery County’s is, your tax is $10 a month. If your home is worth $200,000, then your education property tax is $20 a month, and so on. Note: this is only the education portion of the tax. There are other local property taxes assessed by millage.
* The referendum on the Nov. 3rd ballot would raise Montgomery County’s education millage rate from 10 to 22. So, instead of taxing $10 for every $1,000 of home value, $22 would be taxed. That means education property taxes on the $100,000 home would increase from $10 to $22 a month. For the $200,000 home, the education property tax goes from $20 a month to $44 a month.
* According to Reed and other advocates, the plan would generate more than $33 million for local schools to pay for badly-needed maintenance and construction, more teachers, counselors and security guards and improve course offerings like AP and career tech.

Opposing the tax plan is John Pudner’s Take Back Our Republic group, which argues that the school system can’t be trusted with more tax money and that the process to pass the tax through the Legislature was rushed and had little public input. Anyone who has been around Alabama Politics for long knows Pudner’s name. He is well known for his conservative grassroots campaigning and was instrumental in defeating both Gov. Bob Riley’s Amendment 1 tax plan in 2003 and Gov. Kay Ivey’s school board reorganization amendment in March of this year.
A simple “Vote No on Higher Taxes” message is easy enough to sell, and Pudner usually does it pretty well. Brian Lyman and Krista Johnson of the Advertiser have more on that effort.
Still, Reed is confident the amendment will pass. He thinks the same coalition of voters who elected him a year ago will come through for him again on this tax package.
Here’s our full conversation, In the Weeds.
 
 
Todd C. Stacy: This past week marked one year since your election as mayor. That was obviously a historic moment, but it has been a lot of work since then. Can you reflect on that milestone?
Mayor Steven Reed: You know, it has been a blur. The last year really has been a lot of work, a lot of change, but I think it has also brought a lot of promise as well.