Tag: Randall Woodfin
An Open (Check)book. Birmingham Launches Site to Look up Financial Reports
Birmingham residents can now see detailed financial reports for the city at its new Open Checkbook portal. The website is part of the effort to increase transparency and accountability in city government, according to a press release from the city. Read more.
Birmingham Offers Help to Renovate Homes in Blighted Neighborhoods
Two big economic development projects in Birmingham may pay off for city neighborhoods. Birmingham Mayor Randall Woodfin announced a program Wednesday to spend $1 million on home renovations in blighted neighborhoods.
The program will improve 100 homes in 100 days. Woodfin said the money comes from the sale of two city properties: a downtown parking deck after the grocery delivery company Shipt expanded, and the site of a new data center planned near Sixth Avenue South in North Titusville. Read more.
Neighborhood, Economic Development Groups Protest Woodfin’s Budget
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.
What’s in Woodfin’s Budget? Infrastructure Funding, Eliminated Vacancies and a Transit Shake-Up
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.
A Work in Progress: Woodfin Assesses His First 100 Days
March 8 marked the 100th day of Randall Woodfin’s first term as mayor of Birmingham — a major benchmark for any newly elected politician. Woodfin spent much of last year’s campaign laying out his plan for this first stretch of his tenure in office, in opinion columns, on his website and along the campaign trail.
It was an ambitious slate of objectives to accomplish in just more than three months: conduct an audit, eliminate nepotism, increase neighborhoods’ input in the budgeting process and assess a wide variety of issues facing the city through a citizen-led transition team, among many others.
Now, nearly two weeks after the 100-day benchmark, those goals remain in various stages of realization. Some of them, such as the audit and the appointment of a LGBT liaison to the mayor’s staff, are nearing completion, with announcements, Woodfin said, coming soon. But others remain farther down the road, some dependent on the results of the audit, which is slated to be completed in early April, and others dependent on the slow-turning wheels of city government.
Woodfin spoke with BirminghamWatch on Wednesday about which campaign promises his administration has been able to meet, which ones it hasn’t, and his outlook on his term so far.
Read the Q&A.
The Next 100: Woodfin Outlines Recommendations Committees Made on Neighborhoods, Economic Development and Schools, Among Others
Mayor Randall Woodfin in his “The First One Hundred” event Thursday evening presented the findings of his transition committees and vowed to make several changes to the structure of Birmingham’s city government based on the reports.
Woodfin gave his presentation during an event at the Alabama Theatre. Though the event’s title ostensibly referred to Woodfin’s first 100 days in office – a benchmark reached March 8 – Woodfin mostly ceded the spotlight to the heads of his transition team’s five citizen-led committees. He responded briefly to their suggestions at the end of each committee’s presentation.
Among the changes he said would be coming, Woodfin said he’s willing to form a formal partnership with the city school system. He also said he will reshape the mayor’s office’s division of economic development to the Department of Innovation and Economic Opportunity, and he said he would create the Mayor’s Office of Social Justice during his next 100 days.
A 35-page booklet titled “The Woodfin Way: A Citizen-Led Transition for Progress in Birmingham” summarized the transition team’s findings and Woodfin’s resulting plans. The booklet was handed out during the event and is available online.
Transition committees reporting during the event were on neighborhood revitalization and public safety, education and workforce development, entrepreneurship and economic development, transparent and efficient government and social justice. Read more.
Read the full version of “The Woodfin Way: A Citizen-Led Transition for Progress in Birmingham.”
100 Days and Counting: Bham Mayor Randall Woodfin Set to Discuss Reports on His Top Issues
March 15, 2018 — Birmingham Mayor Randall Woodfin is slated to present his transition team’s reports this evening at the Alabama Theatre during an event commemorating his first 100 days in office.
Woodfin’s transition team is led by former Birmingham-Southern College President Charles Krulak and former Alabama Power executive Bobbie Knight. It consists of five citizen-led committees focusing on various priorities in Woodfin’s administration: neighborhood revitalization and public safety, education and workforce development, transparency and efficient government, entrepreneurship and economic development, and social justice.
In the weeks following Woodfin’s inauguration, the committees held public meetings to gauge citizens’ concerns, the results of which were published on Woodfin’s campaign website. Reports from follow-up meetings among city officials and transition teams will be the focus of Thursday evening’s event. Read more.
Birmingham’s Future “an Open Question,” Woodfin Says in First State of the Community Address
Jan. 15, 2018 — Mayor Randall Woodfin shared a cautiously optimistic vision for Birmingham’s future during Monday night’s State of the Community address, highlighting several of his administration’s planned initiatives while also calling on citizens to take action themselves.
“The state of our community is an open question that only you and I can answer together,” he said. “I believe that we, as a city, can do great things — if we do the right things.”
Woodfin’s remarks the full text of which can be read here, reflected the collaborative tone of his Nov. 28 inauguration speech, emphasizing the importance of his relationship with the City Council and his focus on addressing education, poverty and crime, which he described as intrinsically interrelated. Read more.
A Walk Across the Park: Birmingham’s New Mayor Meets with JeffCo Commission
Dec. 14, 2017 – The Jefferson County Commission received a visit from a neighbor Thursday morning – Birmingham Mayor Randall Woodfin.
“It’s 100 percent important,” Woodfin said. “Birmingham is the largest city in our county, so city and county should work together. … “We can’t be in a space where we’re operating in silos.”
Commissioner Sandra Little Brown, a former Birmingham City Council member, acknowledged that the lines of communication haven’t always been open from the two governmental sides of Linn Park.
“We represent the same people that you do,” Brown said. “I hope we can get the message to the council members.” Read more.
Rick Journey and Chanda Temple Joining Woodfin’s Staff
Birmingham Mayor Randall Woodfin has tapped television news reporter Rick Journey to serve as his director of communications. Former Birmingham City Schools spokeswoman Chanda Temple also has taken the position of public information officer.
“Our administration’s focus on servant leadership by putting people first starts with transparency and providing a clear message to our citizens and our employees that we will serve with the public’s best interest at the core of our work,” Woodfin said in a statement. “I am pleased to have Rick and Chanda be part of providing that clear message and joining an administration committed to core values of transparency, efficiency, effectiveness, accountability and customer service.” Read more.
