Joe Knight alerted his fellow Jefferson County commissioners Thursday that some entities are lining up for any money left over from the county’s fiscal 2022 budget. Read more.
When the best journalists put their work in book form, they invest exhaustive effort to portray the subject as completely and truthfully as possible. Often, they nail it. Sometimes, in hindsight, they miss. Sportswriter Jeff Pearlman, a New York Times bestselling author whose work includes books on Barry Bonds, Roger Clemens, the Los Angeles Lakers and the Dallas Cowboys, believes he missed with his 2016 book “Gunslinger: The remarkable, improbable, iconic life of Brett Favre.” Remarkably and improbably, Pearlman went on Twitter on Sept. 13 and told his followers not to buy or read Gunslinger. He did so in the immediate wake of news reports that Favre, the retired Green Bay Packers and Southern Mississippi quarterback, knowingly participated in steering $5 million in government money intended for impoverished Mississippi families to building at new volleyball stadium at Southern Miss, where his daughter played on the team. Read more.
Discussion of garbage segued to garbage of a different sort during Tuesday’s committee meeting of the Jefferson County Commission. The agenda included a resolution to address garbage pickup at county facilities, including the courthouse. The resolution calls for EcoSouth Services of Birmingham to handle county facility garbage collection and disposal for three years for $785,400. County Manager Cal Markert said that cost is double what it had been. The aim, he said, is to keep coverage in place until proposals can be accepted from other vendors. Read more.
The Birmingham Police Department will host a 10-week “community police academy” beginning Oct. 4. The program, approved by the City Council Tuesday, will be free and is intended to provide “an opportunity for the community to find out how the police department operates,” said Captain Janice Blackwell, the BPD’s community engagement liaison. It also provides guidance for setting up neighborhood watches and has the goal of strengthening trust between the public and the police department, particularly in the wake of rising gun violence in the city. Read more.
UAB has received the single largest gift from an alumnus in its history. J. Frank Barefield Jr., president of Abbey Residential and chairman of Crime Stoppers of Metro Alabama, has given the school $10 million. Of that amount, he committed $5 million to name the UAB J. Frank Barefield Jr. Department of Criminal Justice in the College of Arts and Sciences; and the other $5 million was committed to name the UAB J. Frank Barefield Jr. Entrepreneurship Program in the Collat School of Business, according to a statement from the University of Alabama at Birmingham. Read more.
A century ago, U.S. Steel was one of the companies involved in Alabama's convict lease system. The steelmaker has a mixed record on acknowledging that history. Read more. BirminghamWatch looked at the history of convict leasing in Alabama as party of its Legacy of Race kickoff story, Vestiges of Segregation Remain. America Is Fighting Over Them Today.
Survey numbers from 2021 show that roughly five percent of people in Alabama's prisons are housed in isolation for at least 22 hours a day for 15 days or more. Read more.
"Dear Denise" follows Lisa McNair's life in a series of letters to the sister she never met. Lisa recounts her experience growing up in the first generation of African Americans after legal segregation. Read more.
The Birmingham Board of Education on Tuesday approved a $506,988,421 budget that includes pay increases for all employees and establishes a $15 minimum hourly pay rate. The 2023 budget also includes additional pre-kindergarten classes, six new school psychologists and adjustments in the teacher salary schedule to make pay more competitive with surrounding school districts, according to a news release from the board. Read more.
Several Birmingham City councilors on Tuesday called for significant changes to the city’s current organization of neighborhood associations. Discussion over an item setting neighborhood elections for Oct. 18, later passed by the council, veered into a discussion of councilors’ broader dissatisfaction with the system. Most of that centered on low attendance at neighborhood meetings, leading to uncontested elections. District 5 Councilor Darrell O’Quinn, a former president of the Crestwood North neighborhood, suggested that there were “other ways of devising a system that provides representation and embraces the reality that even though there may be hundreds of residents in a neighborhood, there’s only ever going to be a handful of people who actually engage in neighborhood-level conversations.” O’Quinn added that many neighborhood leaders are elected almost by default because no one else signs up to run. Read more.
