Author: Virginia Martin
County Considering $1.6M to Support Innovation Depot, Other Econ Dev Projects
Following a presentation from Innovation Depot, the Jefferson County Commission Tuesday moved to its Thursday meeting agenda a package of more than $1.6 million supporting the business accelerator.
Brooke Gillis, CEO of Innovation Depot, told commissioners about the depot’s aim to nurture the efforts of entrepreneurs so that their businesses can grow beyond the walls of the business center in downtown Birmingham. Read more.
Birmingham Council Moves Meetings for the Summer
Birmingham City Council meetings are scheduled for a temporary venue change this summer. From May 2 through Aug. 1, the council’s regular Tuesday morning meetings will move from the third floor of City Hall to the second floor of the Boutwell Auditorium. The move will allow for renovations to be made to council chambers.
JVTF Gets $805K From City to Teach Students About Farming and Food
The Birmingham City Council has allocated $805,000 toward increasing the Jones Valley Teaching Farm’s presence in Birmingham City Schools.
The money will go toward the nonprofit’s wide-reaching Good School Food educational program, which is intended to foster skills in and appreciation for farming and the culinary arts in BCS students. The new funding will expand the JVTF’s capacity to host field trips and weeklong camps and will expand JVTF’s internship and apprenticeship programs. Read more.
After Botched Executions, Alabama Will Try Lethal Injection Again
Alabama paused executions for three months after the state failed to execute two men and took more than three hours to kill another man. Now, after an internal review and a rule change, prison officials will resume the procedure. Read more.
U.S. Judge Rules Insurers Don’t Have to Cover Many Free Preventive Health Services
WASHINGTON — Health insurance companies may no longer need to cover a wide swath of preventive health care services that were required by the 2010 Affordable Care Act, under a federal judge’s ruling issued Thursday in Texas.
The decision could affect millions of Americans’ access to no-cost preventive health care — including pregnancy-related care, cancer screenings, HIV prevention pharmaceuticals and more — that a federal agency given new powers under Obamacare required health insurance companies to cover. Read more.
An Inside Look at an AP African American Studies Class
Lead keeps poisoning children. It doesn’t have to.
SANTA ANA, California — The news came as a shock: Lead, lurking somewhere in Nalleli Garrido’s home, was poisoning her 1-year-old son.
His pediatrician instructed her to clean all the toys of her toddler, Ruben, keep the home dust-free and prevent him from playing in the bare soil outside her rented bungalow in Santa Ana’s Logan neighborhood. She did all she could. But the dust kept sneaking in.
No one offered an alternative. The only solution she and her husband could find was to get out. In 2019, after two years of constant worry, they moved north to the city of Buena Park, buying a home with a grassy yard — not an exposed patch of soil like her Santa Ana front yard, where the toxic metal could be found in concentrations as high as 148 parts of lead per million parts of soil. California’s Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment considers 80 parts per million and above dangerous for children.
“I was terrified to take my son out,” said Garrido, a psychiatric nurse. “Even walking through the yard, I would tell my kids to hold their breath. ‘Don’t breathe that in, don’t breathe in the dust.’” Read more.
In Brandon Miller Case, Blaming the Media Is Way Too Simple
The University of Alabama men’s basketball program ended its season Friday having squandered its national championship chances and its good reputation. In the same process, the reputation of the news media took a thorough pounding, as well.
Many UA fans blamed the press — mostly the press outside of Tuscaloosa — for sparking national hatred of the program that showed itself in arena chants and on social media, culminating with death threats and armed security for star player Brandon Miller, who was part of the chain of events that led to the shooting death of a young mother. I got to wondering if the blame was valid. Read more.
What Passed in the Alabama Legislature: March 21-23, 2023
Civil Rights District Groups Get Nearly $2.7M in Support From JeffCo Commission
The Jefferson County Commission today approved $2,691,642 in federal ARPA funding to organizations in the Civil Rights District to improve civil rights tourism.
The $1.9 trillion economic stimulus bill was enacted to speed the country’s recovery from the economic and health effects of the COVID-19 pandemic. Jefferson County determined that tourism had been affected by the pandemic. After their applications were vetted by consulting firm Witt O’Brien, 16th Street Baptist Church, Urban Impact Inc., Birmingham Civil Rights Institute, Alabama Jazz Hall of Fame, St. Paul’s United Methodist Church and historic Bethel Baptist Church in Collegeville were allotted funds for unique projects. Read more.
