The Birmingham City Council voted Tuesday to allocate $540,000 of American Rescue Plan funding to subsidize an affordable housing development in the city’s Belview Heights neighborhood. Read more.
The city of Birmingham has hired a local consulting service to review and potentially redraw City Council district lines in accordance with 2020 census data. When the city opted to shift to single-member districts in 1989 — meaning that each district is represented by a specific councilor and school board member — it included a provision ensuring that the districts would be responsive to changes in census data so that the populations of each district would remain roughly equal. “If you’ve got unequal districts, the weight of one person’s vote in a smaller district bears a heavier weight than if you’ve got a very large district,” assistant city attorney Julie Barnard told councilors Tuesday. “The goal is to try to get the population between districts as balanced as possible. That’s the primary thing driving this.” Read more.
The Birmingham City Council voted Tuesday to approve more than $500,000 in grant funding for five local nonprofits as part of the city’s Building Opportunities for Lasting Development initiative. Mayor Randall Woodfin launched the BOLD program in 2018 as a mechanism for distributing city funds to local nonprofit and economic development organizations. The council also voted on its legislative agenda. At the top of the list for councilors is expanding the city’s number of entertainment districts from five to 15. It also approved $500,000 in in-kind services to the new United States Football League, which this year will be playing its entire season in Birmingham, including eight to 11 games at Legion Field. Read more.
The Birmingham City Council voted Tuesday to reappoint four members of the Birmingham-Jefferson County Transit Authority board whose terms had expired. The council also appointed one new member, Becky Carpenter, to replace outgoing board member Kevin Powe. The city of Birmingham appoints five of the BJCTA board’s nine members; Vestavia Hills, Hoover, Homewood and the Jefferson County Commission round out the other four appointments. Four of the city’s 2017 appointees — board Chairman Theodore Smith, Vice Chair LeDon Jones, Darryl Cunningham and Willie S. Davis — have all been reappointed to a second four-year term on the board; their terms will expire in September 2025. But board member Kevin Powe, who was also appointed to the BJCTA board in 2017, will not be back for a second term. He’ll be replaced by Becky Carpenter, a project manager at Corporate Realty Associates. Through her job, Carpenter has worked on several major redevelopment projects in the city, including that of the former Carraway Hospital and Southtown Court housing project. Read more.
The Birmingham City Council has approved an agreement between the city’s police department and U.S. Immigrations and Customs Enforcement that would deputize several BPD officers as customs officers for ICE’s Homeland Security Investigations jurisdiction. The agreement was approved unanimously despite tense opposition from several advocacy groups worried that it could lead to more deportations in the city and give ICE too much power. The agreement — a continuation of a previous 3-year deal — went before the council Nov. 2 but was delayed due to councilors’ concerns that it would require the police officers involved to participate in the deportation and removal of undocumented Birmingham residents. Read more.
The Birmingham City Council voted Tuesday to “modernize” the city’s taxicab ordinance, loosening restrictions on the appearance of taxis and allowing them to use third-party GPS technology to calculate fares. The change comes as traditional taxi companies compete against ride-sharing operations that aren’t under the same rules as cabs. “The goal of this is updating, modernizing some of the (ordinance) to the way the industry operates now,” Assistant City Attorney Julie Barnard told the council. “There’s a lot of changes. The primary thing is, this opens the city up to more modern operations and taxis, and that’s the goal here.” Read more.
The Birmingham City Council has approved the transfer of two sanitary sewer pump stations in the city’s Fairmont neighborhood to Jefferson County. Operations of those stations already had been turned over to the county as part of a 1998 unification agreement, but the properties themselves had remained under city ownership. Read more.
The Birmingham City Council has revoked the business license of a crime-ridden Crestwood Boulevard motel. The USA Economy Lodge had been given eight weeks to fix its numerous issues — including drug trafficking, prostitution and damage to neighboring properties — which had led to 151 calls to police between Feb. 2 and Aug. 8. Read more.
Mayor Randall Woodfin’s Birmingham Promise educational initiative has received a $1.8 million grant from Bloomberg Philanthropies, it was announced Tuesday. That grant will go toward the program’s apprenticeship initiative, which Woodfin said “will be used to help Birmingham City Schools high school students to start gaining work experience to gain career skills that will last them a lifetime.” Woodfin also told the City Council during Tuesday’s meeting that Bloomberg Philanthropies’ “very vigorous vetting process … shows that this program is sustainable, and it’s a model for any city across America for how we should engage in partnerships to invest and give opportunity and exposure to our youngest generation and our high school students.” Read more.
The Birmingham City Council has delayed approval of an agreement with U.S. Immigrations and Customs Enforcement that would appoint several city police officers as customs officers for ICE’s Homeland Security Investigations jurisdiction. The 3-year deal would provide for the continuation of a previously established task force that District 2 Councilor Hunter Williams said is focused on “combating both human trafficking and large-scale narcotics operations in the city of Birmingham.” Mayor Randall Woodfin asserted that the agreement would not result in deportations or administrative removal of any undocumented Birmingham residents. “I have stated on a pretty consistent basis that the city of Birmingham does not have any interest in doing the federal government’s job, but there’s something more powerful than words, and that’s, like, your actions,” Woodfin said. “We’re not here to do the job of deportation.” But the association with ICE — and the unclear wording of the ordinance — left both advocates and councilors dubious of the proposal. Read more.
