The Birmingham City Council voted Tuesday to appoint attorney Carly Miller to the city’s five-member Park and Recreation Board, replacing former Birmingham Mayor Bernard Kincaid.

Kincaid had served on the board since 2011, and his second term on the board expired Oct. 8.

Miller is an associate at Bradley Arant Boult Cummings LLP with a legal focus on construction, government contracting and energy. Her term on the Park and Recreation Board will last through Oct. 8, 2022.

Kincaid had recently clashed with District 4 Councilor William Parker — a fellow board member and chair of the council’s Park and Recreation Committee — over an “expanded tailgating experience” for the Magic City Classic, which will be held Oct. 27 at Legion Field. Kincaid vehemently opposed the measure, citing parking concerns, which Parker called “out of line with the city’s vision for the Magic City Classic.”

Speaking after Aug. 14’s council meeting, Parker — whose committee is responsible for recommending park board appointments to the council — said that the disagreement encouraged him to replace Kincaid on the board “sooner rather than later” after the seat’s vacancy.

“The council makes the appointment,” he laughed. “And I believe that there’s going to be expanded tailgating at the Classic this year. I believe that.”

Kincaid was nominated for a third term on the board by District 8 Councilor Steven Hoyt, but Hoyt’s was the only vote he received. District 1 Councilor Lashunda Scales nominated former Democratic Executive Committee member David Russell for the position despite a lack of recommendation from the parks committee; he received votes from Scales and District 6 Councilor Sheila Tyson. The remaining four council votes went to Miller.

 

Six New Brush Trucks

The council also voted unanimously to approve the purchase of six new brush trucks for the city’s Public Works Department. The funding for the new trucks — $916,540.50 — will come from funds for neighborhood revitalization projects.

Birmingham Mayor Randall Woodfin argued that the trucks were necessary because the ones owned by the city often were broken down or in states of disrepair. That had resulted, he said, in a large number of citizen complaints in recent months, because the city had been unable to deal with the demand of brush pickup.

“There’s been zero maintenance in our brush trucks over the past decade,” he said. “Brush is just sitting on the side of the street … it’s left us with a backlog of not being able to pick up brush in a timely manner … . People in the community don’t care about a truck being broken down. They just want the rubbish picked up. We need trucks that work.”

He added that the public works department would be changing its brush pickup schedule from every two weeks to every three weeks, which he said the department would be able to keep without running behind. The schedule change, he said, would be temporary until the new trucks are purchased and more personnel is hired.