Author: Virginia Martin
Birmingham Economy’s Prospects? Study Under Wraps Takes Exacting Look
In January, Alabama’s Department of Labor reported online help-wanted ads for 2,089 openings for registered nurses in the state. Only truck drivers were more highly sought.
In metro Birmingham, the help-wanted website indeed.com listed more than 600 openings for jobs with the keyword “nurse” in early April.
Still, with the unemployment rate at a low 3.5 percent, 18,711 people in the Birmingham-Hoover Metropolitan Area were officially unemployed in March of this year, according to estimates from the state Labor Department.
That kind of mismatch between jobs available and people seeking work is typically the kind of workforce issue addressed by Burning Glass Technologies, according to its website.
In Birmingham, a group of influential organizations is focusing on findings about the local economy from a Burning Glass data-based study. The study is complete but has not yet been released for the public to see.
Mayor Woodfin Previews FY 2019 Budget, the City’s Largest Ever
Birmingham Mayor Randall Woodfin gave members of the City Council a preview of his proposed FY 2019 operating budget during a committee meeting Wednesday.
While his brief presentation included few specifics — the full operating budget will be presented during the City Council’s meeting Tuesday — Woodfin did address the pressing issue of the city’s unfunded pension liability and encourage neighborhood associations to be more proactive in their individual revitalization efforts.
At $436 million, the new budget will be the city’s largest to date, edging out the previous year’s budget by $8 million. Woodfin is using a zero-based budgeting process, meaning that each budget item is considered anew, not based on its inclusion or lack thereof in the previous year’s budget. Read more.
2021 World Games Projected to Bring in a Quarter of a Billion Dollars (Yes, With a B)
April 24, 2018 – Jefferson County commissioners were told during their committee meeting Tuesday that the metro area should see a huge economic impact from the 2021 World Games.
D.J. Mackovets, CEO of World Games Birmingham, said the economic impact is expected to be a quarter of a billion dollars.
“That’s with a ‘B,’” Mackovets said, “with 100,000 visitors.” Read more.
New JeffCo Courthouse Mural Replaces Race-Tinged Message With Race-Blind One
Ronald McDowell was excited – and nervous – as a crowd gathered to see his latest handiwork – a mural that brings an up-to-date picture of Jefferson County to the courthouse lobby where two other murals have been displayed for more than 80 years.
“I’m just hoping and praying that the public will appreciate what I’ve done and that I’ve done something that represents them,” said McDowell, the artist commissioned by the county to create the work.
Dozens of people crammed into the westside lobby of the Jefferson County Courthouse for the unveiling of the new mural, which was met with applause and cheers. It complements the Old South and New South murals done by John Warner Norton when the courthouse was constructed in 1932.
Those murals “reflect a different time and a different place in our history,” said Commissioner Joe Knight. “They were created in the Jim Crow Era where the reasoning was such that it is no longer prevalent or acceptable in our society today.” Read more.
Birmingham Pursuing Grant for Titusville Pedestrian Bridge
The Birmingham City Council passed a resolution Tuesday authorizing Mayor Randall Woodfin to pursue a grant from the Alabama Department of Transportation to build a pedestrian bridge across a Titusville railroad track. The bridge would allow students of the neighborhood’s Booker T. Washington K-8 School to safely cross the track. Read more.
Reading Birmingham: In Birmingham 1931, a Man Went Out for Cornbread, Died in Prison
Murder on Shades Mountain: The Legal Lynching of Willie Peterson and the Struggle for Justice in Jim Crow Birmingham by Melanie S. Morrison (Duke University Press, 2018)
By James L. Baggett
UPDATED: Victim’s daughter challenges book’s view.
Willie Peterson just wanted to pick up some cornbread for supper. On a hot September afternoon in 1931, Peterson boarded a streetcar near his home in the Woodlawn neighborhood of Birmingham and rode to Southside.
After visiting his mother-in-law, Peterson walked up Avenue G (now Seventh Avenue South) toward Beamon’s Café. A slightly built African-American man, Peterson suffered from tuberculous and followed his wife’s instructions not to overexert himself. Before Peterson reached the café, three white people in a car — a man and woman in their 20s and an older woman — stopped and began to question him. As the young man held Peterson at gun point, the young woman said, “Yes, it’s him. I know it’s him.”
When three police officers arrived, they beat and handcuffed Peterson and drove him to jail.
“You’ve got the wrong Negro,” Peterson told the officers. Willie Peterson lived in a time when being the “wrong Negro,” or just any black man in the wrong place at the wrong time, could be deadly.
In this new book, Melanie S. Morrison, a United Church of Christ minister and self-described social justice educator, researches and retells a story she heard as a child in Michigan from her Birmingham-born father. Read more.
Reading Birmingham: An Introduction
Today, BirminghamWatch begins a new feature spotlighting books about Birmingham and Alabama. Read more.
Reading Birmingham: An Introduction
Today, BirminghamWatch begins a new feature spotlighting books about Birmingham and Alabama. Read more.
Congressional Votes Last Week
How Alabama’s members of Congress voted on major issues in the week ending April 20. Read more.
Loopholes Remain as State’s Environmental Oversight Board OK’s Coal Ash Rules
Last month, the Alabama Department of Environmental Management levied fines of $250,000 on each of six power-generating facilities in the state for excessive groundwater contamination from their coal ash ponds.
On Friday, ADEM’s oversight board unanimously approved new rules that environmental advocacy groups say open “significant loopholes” in the regulations for disposal of coal ash.
The Southern Environmental Law Center contended in a statement that, under the new rules, ADEM could allow utilities to halt groundwater monitoring around coal ash disposal sites, although coal ash contains arsenic, lead, radium and many other toxic substances. ADEM also could decide that a utility doesn’t have to clean up the coal ash ponds in certain circumstances. And ADEM could shorten the length of time a utility must care for the ash after it is covered and closed, which now is 30 years. Read more.
Birmingham Council Fills Two Library Board Seats Amid Controversy
The Birmingham City Council appointed two new members to the city’s Library Board by unanimous vote this week, including a replacement for the board’s longest-serving member. Read more.
