By NEAL WAGNER / City Editor

The Alabaster Arts Council is working to book musical acts for the 2013 Alabaster CityFest, and received financial and city employee help from the City Council during a Dec. 17 meeting.

During its meeting, the City Council voted to donate $60,000 in cash plus the use of rented restroom facilities and city employee time to help put on next year’s CityFest.

During a recent work session, council members said the Arts Council will use the $60,000 cash donation to help book musical acts for the festival, which is held at Alabaster Municipal Park in early summer each year.

“We always look forward to partnering with the city,” said Arts Council President Adam Moseley, noting the Arts Council started planning for the 2013 CityFest a few weeks after the 2012 event. “We are in the heavy planning mode right now. We will come back in the new year and have six months of intense work and planning. We try to make every CityFest better than the previous year.”

Council members previously said they considered the donation to the Arts Council a “worthwhile expense,” and said they were pleased with CityFest’s growth over the past decade.

In other business, the City Council:

-Voted to accept the low bid of about $205,000 to install eight banks of lights on galvanized steel poles around the soccer fields at Municipal Park. The lights could be installed as early as February, Alabaster Parks and Recreation Director Tim Hamm previously said.

The light poles will be installed outside the fields’ fences. If the lights are still being installed when the city’s soccer season begins early next year, players will still be able to use the fields, Hamm said.

-Voted to donate $3,000 to Creek View Elementary School to help fund a schoolwide Wi-Fi system.

The council previously donated similar amounts to Thompson High School and Thompson Intermediate School to help fund Wi-Fi systems.