Earlier this week, the City of Birmingham concluded our open process to solicit Magic City Recovery project ideas from community partners and City employees. We received over 150 submissions from 105 unique submitters, including 70 community organizations. The budget requests totaled $2.4 billion for the City’s available $141.3 million in Local Coronavirus Fiscal Recovery Funds from the U.S. Department of Treasury.
With the first $70 million of our allocation in hand and the next $70 million arriving about a year from now, the City will now engage in a process to evaluate project idea submissions. We will first determine whether proposed projects meet the rules for allowable uses set forth in the Interim Final Rule by the U.S. Department of Treasury. For those projects that meet that baseline, an interdepartmental group of subject matter experts will then score projects for feasibility and impact for further consideration.
We share the urgency to distribute these funds quickly to address COVID response needs. That urgency will be balanced with the need to accurately scope complex projects and ensure compliance with federal rules.
In the coming weeks, we will publish a more detailed timeline for project review. We look forward to working with City Council in this process, and we are grateful to all our community partners and City employees who stepped up to share their Magic City Recovery project ideas with us.