After more than six months of searching, Birmingham has a new police chief. Mayor Randall Woodfin announced Monday that Patrick D. Smith has been appointed as the city’s new law enforcement head, succeeding A.C. Roper, who announced his retirement in November. Read more.
Birmingham’s controversial PACE Board is back in action after being defunct for nearly a year. The Birmingham City Council voted Tuesday to appoint new members to the board in order to secure approval for a new restaurant at the Negro Southern League Museum, despite deep reservations by some council members over the board’s accountability. The Public Athletic, Cultural, and Entertainment Facilities Board — PACE, for short — is a five-member board created by the city in 2011 to oversee development of Regions Field and the Negro Southern League Museum. But the board drew ire from the council after construction costs for Regions Field went over budget by roughly $8 million, $4.1 million of which the council is paying off in installments through 2021. The rest of those costs were taken on by development companies Robins & Morton and A.G. Gaston Construction.
The Birmingham City Council Tuesday approved funding for computer coding “boot camps” at Lawson State Community College this summer. The funding, which according to the resolution is not to exceed $85,000, will fund four weeks of four-day camps for Birmingham City School students, running from June 18 to July 19. Up to 100 students of the city’s school system — 50 middle schoolers and 50 high schoolers — will get to participate. Lawson State President Dr. Perry Ward said that the program would be similar to Chicago’s Apple-sponsored “Everyone Can Code” initiative, which teaches city school students an easy-to-learn coding language called Swift which can be used in developing mobile applications. Read more.
May 14, 2018 – Mayor Randall Woodfin was not present Monday night at the public hearing on his proposed FY 2019 budget. If he had been, he would have faced complaints from a handful of organizations unhappy that their city funding had been cut or eliminated entirely. The members of the City Council who were there — all but District 1 Councilor Lashunda Scales — appeared sympathetic to almost all of the parties who spoke at the hearing, and they even pledged to some organizations that they would advocate for them during the upcoming budget negotiations with Woodfin’s office. Eliciting the most sympathy from the council were several neighborhood association officers, led by Central Park Neighborhood Association President Susan Palmer, who expressed anger that the new budget would cut funding to neighborhoods. Read more.
Mayor Randall Woodfin revealed his proposal for the city’s FY 2019 budget during Tuesday’s meeting of the Birmingham City Council. At just more than $436 million, it’s the city’s largest budget to date, clocking in at nearly $7 million more than that of the previous year. As the first budget proposal created entirely during Woodfin’s time as mayor, it is the clearest representation of his nascent administration’s economic goals to date. “It’s a new day in Birmingham,” Woodfin told the council, “not just through the budget process, but with the way we spend and oversee the tax dollars entrusted to us.” The budget, he added, “represents some difficult and responsible decisions that must be made to support our priorities,” most significantly neighborhood revitalization. Read more.
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.
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.
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.
After nearly three hours of debate, lawyers for the city of Birmingham and the state of Alabama left court Friday with homework instead of a ruling on the matter of the Confederate monument in Linn Park. The city erected a plywood screen around the monument and sought to challenge a state law signed in May 2017 that protects monuments. But in court Friday, Jefferson County Circuit Court Judge Michael Graffeo raised questions related to older laws dealing with Confederate monuments. He asked lawyers for the city to address his questions by May 4. Attorneys for the state will then respond. Lawyers also argued over whether, if the judge does decide to fine the city, that find should be a flat $25,000 or $25,000 a day, which would be more than $6 million. Read more.
April 10, 2018 — The Birmingham City Council approved two revenue-generating ordinances during Tuesday’s meeting — one allowing for earlier alcohol sales on Sundays and the other extending the city’s 1-cent sales tax indefinitely. The first of those, nicknamed the “brunch bill,” will allow restaurants in the city to service alcohol for on-premises consumption starting at 10 a.m. on Sundays. Previously, restaurants had been barred from selling alcohol from 2 a.m. to 12 p.m. on Sundays, a rule that still applies to retailers selling alcohol for off-premises consumption. The sales tax extension proved more controversial, with two councilors expressing concern over how the revenue was being spent. Read more.
