The Birmingham City Council voted Tuesday to unanimously approve Mayor Randall Woodfin’s plans for spending the city’s $81 million budget surplus, with money allocated to a cost-of-living adjustment for city employees, capital improvement for parks and libraries, and funding for a new amphitheater in the city’s Uptown entertainment district. Read more.
The Birmingham City Council has approved a partnership with the nonprofit Aspen Institute to gather and analyze a wide variety of data about the city’s 99 neighborhoods. The project, named the Birmingham/Aspen Justice and Governance Partnership, is intended to reduce crime by gathering and analyzing hyperlocal statistics — for example, the number of traffic stops or emergency room admissions in a given neighborhood. This information would be made publicly available and could be used by lawmakers to inform policy. Read more.
The Birmingham City Council has nixed a church’s request to build a car wash in the city’s Huffman neighborhood proposed to help pay for church ministries. Read more.
Taking the first steps in a community-focused plan to combat homelessness, the city of Birmingham has signed on to purchase 50 units of transitional housing for the unsheltered. The purchase, totaling nearly $1 million, is the first step in a program that will require significant participation from third-party nonprofits and for which details remain fuzzy. Where the new shelters will be placed, for example, is still up in the air. That will be dependent on the results of a request-for-proposal process, through which local nonprofits can pitch locations and operational plans, including wraparound services they would offer on-site. Read more.
A “transformational” housing redevelopment project could be headed to the Smithfield Community — if the city can obtain a highly competitive federal grant. Birmingham is applying for a Choice Neighborhood Initiative Grant from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, which would supply the city with up to $50 million to construct up to 1,000 new and replacement mixed-income housing units in the neighborhoods of Smithfield, Graymont and College Hills. The scope of the grant would include redevelopment of the Smithfield Court public housing community, though the affordable housing would be decentralized and blended with market-rate housing. Read more.
Birmingham Police officers will be assigned to a new High Intensity Drug Trafficking Areas task force under a partnership between the Police Department and the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency. The partnership, Mayor Randall Woodfin said, will “make a huge difference” in the city’s fight against violent crime. Read more.
The city of Birmingham has revised its plans for the former Carraway Hospital complex to give developers more up-front money for demolition. At Tuesday’s meeting of the Birmingham City Council, councilors approved revision of a 2-year-old funding agreement with Corporate Realty (doing business as Northside Redevelopment LLC), which is redeveloping the former Carraway Hospital site into a mixed-use development, Star at Uptown, which is to include residential, retail, office and dining spaces, as well as a 9,000-seat amphitheater. Under the original incentives package, the city would have remitted $9.1 million in future sales, use and property tax revenues to Northside Development; Tuesday’s revisions cut that number in half to $4.55 million. In return, developers will now receive $3.7 million from the city for demolition right away. Read more.
Birmingham is optimizing its trash pick-up service. The City Council voted Tuesday to approve a three-year contract with Routeware, a software company that will collect and analyze data to determine ways the city’s garbage collection can be more efficient. “Each day when we have drivers and supervisors leave (work), that’s historic knowledge that walks out the door with them,” Joshua Yates, the city’s director of public works, told the council. “This system will (place) an iPad in the truck, where anybody can sit in that driver’s seat and know exactly the route they’re supposed to be driving … . Consider this the infrastructure backbone for our fleet.” The software will also include an “accountability” component in the form of video surveillance. Read more.
The Birmingham City Council on Tuesday approved a three-year partnership for conflict resolution programs in city high schools. Birmingham-based nonprofit the Penny Foundation will implement and administer the Common Ground initiative, a program using the Habilitation, Empowerment and Accountability Therapy (H.E.A.T.) curriculum, which is “designed for people of color and/or others facing socioeconomic issues which applies a holistic, culturally relevant, responsive, strength-based model that emphasizes a positive and engaging approach to handling anger management and conflict resolution.” Read more.
A new micromobility service has been approved to operate in Birmingham despite open doubt from city councilors that such businesses are worth the trouble. Councilors approved allowing the Lime bike- and scooter-sharing business to operate in the Magic City, although some councilors suggested tightening city ordinances to make sure e-bikes and e-scooters don’t become a public nuisance, particularly if customers leave them randomly on sidewalks and streets rather than returning them. Read more.
