Birmingham at a Crossroads

A
S P E C I A L
R E P R I N T
F R O M
Birmingham
at a
Crossroads
Birmingham is a city with complex urban ills — poverty,
falling population, crime, blight and failing schools.
It stands at the heart of a metropolitan area where
beneath the prosperity of its suburbs are equally vexing
problems — racial distrust, fragmented government,
uneven economic growth, a lack of shared vision.
In 2007, The Birmingham News explored these issues
in a year-long series that laid out the challenges facing
our metro area. The series demonstrated that the central
city and the suburbs were dependent upon each other,
that there was a lack of leadership for the region as a
whole, and that the lack of trust among communities was
causing the region to fall far behind other Southern cities.
The series created a public awareness that caused elected
officials, business leaders, educators, civic organizations
and neighborhoods to face the issues head-on.
“Birmingham at a Crossroads” started a conversation
in our community.
“WHICH WAY FORWARD?”
Birmingham is one of the nation’s
fastest-shrinking cities, yet it has an
ever-growing, world-class medical
center. The metro area’s growth lags,
but many suburbs prosper. Middle-class
flight has left pools of concentrated
poverty. Is there a better way?
Published March 11.
“CAN THESE NEIGHBORHOODS
BE SAVED?”
The core of metro Birmingham suffers
slow-motion destruction. When
heavy industry faded, neighborhoods
followed. Across Jones Valley,
businesses boarded up, people moved
to the suburbs, thousands of homes
were left to decay. How can we fight
urban blight? Published Aug. 19.
“CAN WE TRUST ONE ANOTHER?”
Metro Birmingham’s path forward
must cross difficult fault lines:
A violent racial history. Flight to the
suburbs. Corruption and bickering
among public officials. Each is part
of the most complex challenge
facing the region: Trust.
Published April 29.
“ARE WE FALLING BEHIND?”
The economy is a bright spot in metro
Birmingham’s story. Jobs are diverse
and plentiful, wages increasing. Yet
our economic growth lags most of
the South, exposing some underlying
weaknesses: A failure to work together
and build on our strengths.
Published Sept. 30.
“TOO MANY PIECES IN
GOVERNMENT PUZZLE?”
Seven counties. 102 cities. 21 school
districts. Does local government
have too many pieces, too little
leadership and cooperation?
Published June 24.
“IN OUR CLASSROOMS,
A LEARNING DIVIDE”
Birmingham students face distinct
disadvantages: widespread poverty,
schools with limited programs, outdated
equipment. Suburban students thrive
in high-tech schools with broad menus
of challenging courses. Children — rich,
poor, black, white — don’t have an
equal shot in schools. Is that fair?
Published Nov. 11.
“URBAN VIOLENCE DRIVES
CRIME RATE” Among 27 Southern
metro areas, the seven-county
Birmingham area is 11th in violent
crime, 19th in property crime. But the
city of Birmingham, with 22 percent of
the population, suffers 55 percent of
the metro area’s violent crimes.
Published Aug. 5.
“CAN WE COME TOGETHER?”
Over the past year, The Birmingham
News has explored critical challenges
that face metropolitan BirminghamHoover — race and trust, fragmented
government, inner-city crime, blight in
our industrial core, uneven economic
growth, disparities between urban and
suburban classrooms. Can someone
or some group craft a vision that leads
our communities forward?
Published Dec. 16.
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BIRMINGHAM
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WHICH WAY
FORWARD?
NEWS STAFF/BERNARD TRONCALE
A thriving Birmingham in 1957, top left, contrasts with idle Ensley Works smokestacks and the vacant RamsayMcCormick building today, top right. Bottom: A multiple exposure of bustling University Boulevard and 20th Street
South at UAB.
Birmingham is one of the nation’s fastest-shrinking cities,
yet it has an ever-growing, world-class medical center.
The metro area’s growth lags, but many suburbs prosper.
Middle-class flight has left pools of concentrated poverty.
Is there a better way?
By JEFF HANSEN, JOSEPH D. BRYANT and THOMAS SPENCER
News staff writers
O
n any given weekday, the corner of University
Boulevard and 20th Street South is jammed
with people and traffic. The bustling intersection is the doorstep of the University of Alabama at Birmingham — and the heartbeat of
the region’s economy.
Just four miles away, in Birmingham’s Ensley neighborhood, abandoned homes and businesses scar block after
block. At 20th Street Ensley and Pleasant Hill Road are the
remains of the Ensley Works, furnaces where thousands
of people once made steel. Today, 18 rusting smokestacks
P U B L I S H E D
stand sentry above fields of waist-high grass, the lost heart
of a community whose population has plunged more than
any other in the city.
Both intersections show the realities of life today in metropolitan Birmingham.
One hails the best hopes for the future of Alabama’s largest urban region — a robust economic center built around
a cutting-edge medical center and university. The other exposes the poverty and abandonment that is the Rust Belt of
the South.
Between these extremes is Birmingham’s struggle to
thrive as a city and region.
M A R C H
See CITY | Page 3
1 1 ,
2 0 0 7
T
BIRMINGHAM
Out of the nation’s 100 largest cities in 1960, the ones with the greatest
drops in population were Birmingham and 14 ‘Rust Belt’ cities
Youngstown, Ohio
St. Louis
Cleveland
Pittsburgh
Buffalo, N.Y.
Detroit
Gary, Ind.
Flint, Mich.
Albany, N.Y.
Dayton, Ohio
Cincinnati
Syracuse, N.Y.
Rochester, N.Y.
Baltimore
Birmingham
60%
54%
48%
48%
47%
47%
46%
40%
40%
39%
39%
34%
34%
32%
32%
City’s
decline
affects
whole
area
From Page 2
Of the 15 American cities that
have lost the largest share of their
populations since 1960, 14 are in the
industrial Northeast and upper Midwest — areas traditionally known as
the Rust Belt. No. 15 on that list is
Birmingham, where the population
drained from a peak of 340,887 in
1960 to about 231,000 today.
That phenomenon reaches beyond the city limits, stalling the entire seven-county Birmingham metro area. Although some suburban
counties have grown quickly, much
of that growth is driven by people
leaving Jefferson County.
Population growth in the Birmingham-Hoover metro area over the
past 45 years lagged behind nearly
every urban center in the Southeast,
including the region’s trendsetters
of Atlanta, Charlotte and Nashville.
But metro Birmingham’s growth also
lags well behind that of Huntsville,
Montgomery and Mobile, and behind Jackson, Miss., Little Rock and
Memphis.
Metro Birmingham’s growth also
trails Alabama’s as a whole — one of
the nation’s slow-growing states.
Birmingham, both the city and
the larger metropolitan area, is held
back by:
. Longstanding distrust that
crosses racial, economic and community lines to hinder solving regional problems.
. A patchwork of political subdivisions that includes 102 cities and 19
school districts across seven counties.
. A high level of blight and poverty left in the central city after much
of the middle class moved to the suburbs.
. An unfinished journey from
smokestack industry to an economy
based on medicine, research, finance
and technology — with less room for
unskilled workers.
. Deepening disparities in education between the inner city and the
suburbs.
. A lack of strong and unified political, corporate and civic leadership.
Population shift
In the 80 years from 1890 to 1970,
the city of Birmingham had a mix
of people that was about 40 percent
black and 60 percent white, with
most black residents segregated into
areas with poorer housing close to industrial sites. Beginning about 1970,
the mix began to change as whites
left the city. By 2005, Birmingham’s
population had flipped — 76 percent
black and 22 percent white.
Some of Birmingham’s aging
neighborhoods have become islands
of the poor. A recent Brookings Institution study found that 28.9 percent
of residents within the city limits live
in poverty — the eighth highest percentage among America’s 100 largest
cities.
Yet at the same time, there is a
strong, vibrant Birmingham.
The city is by far the major place
to work in the metro region, hosting about 44 percent of all the jobs
in Jefferson and Shelby counties.
Birmingham is still a major banking
center and home to Regions Financial Corp., now one of the 10 largest
banks in America. And it is home to
N.Y.
9
5 13 12
8
6 3
1 4 PA.
7
OHIO
14
ILL. IND. 10
MD.
11
MICH.
2
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THE RUST BELT OF ALABAMA
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
h e
MO.
15
ALA.
Source: Analysis of U.S.
Census Bureau data.
METRO AREA LAGS
NEIGHBORS, PEERS
CITY PASSES ITS RACIAL TIPPING POINT . . .
For 80 years the city of Birmingham had a stable racial
mix. In 1970 the population began a dramatic shift.
Population increase of
metropolitan areas since 1960
ALABAMA
Birmingham-Hoover
Montgomery
Mobile and
Baldwin counties
Huntsville
SOUTHEAST
Memphis
Nashville
Charlotte
Atlanta
WHITE
BLACK
70%
34%
48%
60%
49%
50%
123%
1890
1900
55%
118%
159%
254%
30%
20%
Source: U.S. Census Bureau. The 1960
population includes all the counties in
the current Metropolitan Statistical Area
definition.
UAB, where 18,500 people work.
The region’s leaders agree their
challenge is to turn away from the
past — the racial distrust, absence
of vision, lack of cooperation and a
dearth of regional leadership that
have hurt the metro area. They wonder who can lead the metro area on
a path to good jobs, decent housing
and the education and skills needed
for today’s “knowledge economy.”
This matters for everyone in the
seven-county area because those 1.1
million people all belong to what nationally known urbanists Neal Peirce
and Curtis Johnson call a “citistate”
— a wordplay on ancient city states
such as Athens or Rome.
By their definition, a citistate is
defined not by political boundaries,
but by a regional economy and the
patterns of daily life. In a citistate,
people:
. Share an identification.
. Work as a single area of trade,
commerce and communication.
. Have social, economic and environmental interdependence.
In that sense, the BirminghamHoover citistate stretches from Kelly
Ingram Park to Calera and Warrior, to
Bessemer and Ashville, to Oneonta
and Clanton.
This view leads to the realization
that major decisions need to be made
at the citistate level.
1920
1930
1940
1950
1960
1970
1980
1990
10%
2000 ’05
22%
. . . BUT METRO AREA REMAINS STABLE
The share of white and
black populations in the
seven-county Birmingham
MSA has changed little in
more than a century.
80%
60%
40%
20%
0
1890
1910
1930
1950
1970
1990 2000
Source:
U.S. Census
Six critical issues face the Birmingham region — trust,
government structure, blight, the economy, education
and leadership. In the coming months, The Birmingham
News will take a deeper look at each issue.
A MATTER OF TRUST
‘We are
making
very little
progress’
Spirit of cooperation
E-MAIL: [email protected]
1910
40%
PORTRAITS OF
BIRMINGHAM
That realization has begun to hit
Birmingham-Hoover metro leaders,
said Charles Ball, executive director
of the Regional Planning Commission of Greater Birmingham.
“The mayors I’ve talked to realize
they need to cooperate,” Ball said.
“As far as the whole region is concerned, we’re way behind.”
Farthest behind is the central city,
where 64,200 men, women and children live below the poverty line, and
where the city school system lost 20
percent of its students in the last five
years because parents don’t trust the
schools.
In the past 17 years, Birmingham has demolished 7,948 houses,
350 duplexes and 3,332 apartments.
While some new houses and apartments have been built, the city had a
net loss of 4,257 dwelling units. That
demolition will continue.
Aside from the downtown and
UAB areas, the Regional Planning
Commission expects much of Birmingham will keep losing people.
By 2030, the projected number of
households will fall 17 percent in
East Lake and Woodlawn, 22 percent
in the Airport community, 27 percent
in North Birmingham, 13 percent in
Pratt City and Ensley and 17 percent
in West End.
Birmingham has at least one life
raft — UAB.
“Just from an economic and social standpoint, UAB saved us,” Ball
said. “It’s the one thing that kept us
from becoming another Gary (Indiana) or Cleveland after the steel industry collapsed.”
The university has 16,600 students, and 3,000 people a day visit
its research and medical complex.
It brings in $408 million a year in
grants and contracts and it’s a nursery for spin-off businesses.
Downtown also is gaining
strength with residential development and businesses putting new
life in long-empty office buildings
and warehouses.
But even with UAB, an improving downtown and a strong banking
presence, the city of Birmingham
and the Birmingham-Hoover metro
area face a limited future if changes
are not made.
“It does matter if Birmingham
continues to decline,” Ball said.
“There’s a consequence to the entire
region.
“We could continue on the same
track, but the end result is something
we’d be embarrassed by.”
75.6%
Percent of population by year
NEWS STAFF/BERNARD TRONCALE
John Rouse says Birmingham lacks a can-do
attitude. For example, expansion plans for the
Birmingham-Jefferson Convention Complex
have been stalled for years.
When John Rouse
arrived in Birmingham
from the Dallas-Fort
Worth area in 1987, the
now-retired president
of Southern Research
Institute immediately
plunged into civic affairs. He thought that
metro Birmingham,
with some regional cooperation, had the potential to match the progress he had seen elsewhere.
In 1995, Rouse helped organize the first of what have
become annual trips on which civic leaders visit dynamic communities such as Portland, Charlotte and Chattanooga.
“People come back from those trips full of excitement, but many would say, ‘That’s nice, but we can’t do
that here,’” he said. “They lacked that can-do spirit that
was so important in the success of those other regions.”
Birmingham is blessed with talented people who
want a better city and are trying to make a difference,
said Rouse, a Hoover resident. But the region is chopped
up in political enclaves, which may have originated in
racial distrust, but are today perpetuated by dysfunction
and corruption, he contends.
“There is no question the city is tortured by its history
of race relations and we haven’t fully recovered,” Rouse
said.
Racial conflict in the 1960s and the breakdown of
segregation accelerated the movement of whites to the
suburbs in the 1970s — and suburban voters repeatedly
halted Birmingham’s efforts to annex the prosperous
over-the-mountain communities.
That divide lingered. In 1998, 60 percent of voters in
the city of Birmingham approved a countywide 1 percent
sales tax to build a domed stadium at the downtown convention center and fund a host of other projects throughout the county. But suburban voters killed the proposal,
rejecting it by votes of 60 percent south and east of the
city and as high as 80 percent to the north and west.
Almost a decade later, leaders at Birmingham City
Hall and the Jefferson County Courthouse still are bickering over how to expand the convention center. Examples
of cooperation are scarce.
Said Rouse: “Compared to what is happening in (other) places . . . we are making very little progress.”
Thomas Spencer
GOVERNMENT
‘You’re never
going to get
100 percent
agreement
on anything’
When Hank Collins had a wreck
along U.S. 280, the police officer arrived at the scene with a map of the
intersection already drawn. Accidents
were so frequent that police saved
time by having the maps already filled
out for the reports.
“It’s one thing to be inconvenienced. It’s another to have your
safety threatened,” said Collins, who
for 10 years traveled U.S. 280 from his
Shelby County home to work in downtown Birmingham, cutting through
portions of the cities of Hoover,
Vestavia Hills, Mountain Brook and
Homewood along the way. “We need
to come to a solution now, and we’ve
studied this thing to death. . . .”
But as traffic on the artery grew
thicker over the past two decades, the
state and the collection of local governments with a say over the highway
have recognized the problem but so
far have been unable to agree on how
The metro area
has scores of
governmental
entities, such as the
Bessemer Cutoff,
above left. Hank
Collins, who lives
in Shelby County,
faced a bumperto-bumper daily
commute up U.S. 280
to Birmingham.
to fix it.
The situation with U.S. 280 is
merely one symbol of the region’s government structure.
There are 102 cities spread across
the seven counties of the Birmingham-Hoover metro area, 49 in Jefferson and Shelby counties alone.
Fifteen cities in the metro area cross
county lines. On top of that, there
are 19 school systems. Even Jefferson
County itself is divided by the Bessemer Cutoff, placing a second county
courthouse in the western end of the
county.
Taxpayers often have a stake in
more than one locale.
Collins, for instance, paid occupational taxes to Birmingham and Jefferson County, even though he lived in
Shelby County. He had no say in how
Birmingham and Jefferson County
spent his tax dollars. And when he
shops at The Summit, he’s paying Birmingham sales tax.
But for Collins, the problems on
U.S. 280 are a concrete-and-asphalt
symbol of how all those local jurisdictions depend on each other.
“You’re never going to get 100 percent agreement on anything,” he said.
“. . . They’ll never be solved as long as
we’re going in 15 different directions.”
Joseph D. Bryant
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birmingham newsgraphics/jody potter
Sources: City of Birmingham; Analysis of data from Regional Planning Commission of Greater Birmingham
ECONOMY
‘The opportunity
to move up here
was too good
to pass up’
Most of her
adult life, Virgia
Wallace lived
in this Fountain
Heights home,
until the
deterioration
of the
neighborhood
drove her to
move.
BLIGHT
‘It was a real nice
neighborbood’
In 1965, Virgia
Wallace’s parents
paid $10,000 for
their piece of the
American dream,
a two-story, fourbedroom house in then-predominantly white
Fountain Heights.
Perched on the hill just north of downtown,
the Wallace home had a view of the city skyline
and beyond to Red Mountain. Wallace remembers her father walking to work at Loveman’s
department store. “It was a real nice neighborhood,” Wallace said. “Quiet.”
But the retail jobs left downtown, nearby industries shut down and the drain left holes in
the community.
As years passed, Wallace, now 66 and an English teacher at Huffman High, watched families
move away. Between 1980 and 2000, the census
tract that includes her home lost 39 percent of
its population.
Paint peeled on the abandoned houses.
Windows were broken. Porches slumped. The
house across the street burned and wasn’t rebuilt, leaving a vacant lot of scraggly privet and
tall winter-brown grass littered with windblown
paper and plastic
bags.
An apartment
complex up the
street began renting to “a different
kind of people,” Wallace said. They weren’t invested in the community. They sold drugs. The
neighborhood became plagued with burglaries
and violence.
The older generation that stayed kept their
houses neat, their yards trimmed, beds planted
with flowers. But they also ornamented their
windows and doors with burglar bars.
In the early 1990s, Wallace fled the crime and
blight that became the standard in neighborhoods across the inner city. She bought a house
in Roebuck. After she left, the old home was
broken into several times. Windows were broken, replaced with plywood.
There didn’t seem any sense trying to sell it.
“There wasn’t anyone interested in buying it,”
she said.
Today, Wallace still owns the home. It has an
assessed value of $11,300, just $1,300 above the
price her parents paid 42 years ago.
Thomas Spencer
Nearly 80,000 people work in downtown
Birmingham and near the University of Alabama at Birmingham. The unemployment
rate in Jefferson County in January was 3.3
percent, well below the national rate of 4.6
percent.
UAB is the city’s brightest economic star.
It has created a medical boomtown around its
hospital and research facilities. David Sweatt,
UAB’s chairman of neurobiology, was lured
to the city from Baylor College of Medicine
in Houston last year. His 16 primary faculty members bring in $6 million in research
grants each year and are training 45 Ph.D. students.
“I was very happy at Baylor, but the opportunity to move up here was too good to pass
up,” Sweatt said.
But for all the strengths in Birmingham’s
economy, there are too many people who find
it hard to make a decent living.
John Meehan’s father worked at the Edgewater coal mine, west of Birmingham. It was
steady, reliable work until the mine shut
down. Four nights a week, Meehan puts on
his uniform as a security officer and sets off
for the midnight shift. He’s done that work for
22 years, trying to make ends meet.
“I struggle every day,” said Meehan. “I
struggle like everybody else.”
His neighborhood in
Ensley was once filled with
steelworkers and miners.
But the economy changed.
Steel plants are gone or
automated. The new auto
plants with higher-paying jobs have been built
miles away on undeveloped land — Honda in
Talladega County and
Mercedes in Tuscaloosa
County.
Most of Birmingham’s former industrial
sites, where blast furnaces or coke ovens once
ran, are undesirable “brown fields” and remain abandoned.
Some businesses are leaving Birmingham
for the suburbs — Red Diamond to Moody,
Trinity Medical Center to Irondale, Southern
Natural Gas Corp. to Homewood.
Others have been altered by merger. SouthTrust was bought by Wachovia; Compass Bank
is being purchased by Banco Bilbao of Spain.
Regions and AmSouth merged, creating one
of the nation’s 10 largest banks that will bring
1,000 more jobs to Birmingham.
But overall, the Birmingham region hasn’t
made a full transition to today’s knowledge
economy. Birmingham turns up on a list
of just 46 “weak market cities,” which sit in
“weak market” metro areas, according to a
Brookings Institution study of 302 U.S. cities.
To make the list, the city and metro area
had to rank in the bottom third in two separate measures: the economy (growth in employment, establishments and payroll) and
residents’ well-being (income, unemployment, poverty and labor force participation).
Only six of those “weak market” metro areas are in the Southeast: Birmingham; New
Orleans; Albany, Ga.; Pine Bluff, Ark.; Rocky
Mount, N.C.; and Shreveport, La.
Jeff Hansen
UAB research thrives
but businesses such as
Red Diamond are leaving the city.
The chairman of the UAB Neurobiology
Department, David Sweatt, was lured
here from Texas.
LEADERSHIP
‘There will be
a far smaller
Birmingham
to lead unless
all of us take
action’
Kwani Dickerson, left, and Chandra Bell
made hard choices between city and
suburban schools for their children.
EDUCATION
‘I shouldn’t have
to send my child
to private school’
Kwani Dickerson and Chandra Bell have been
friends for 20 years and each has three sons.
But while Bell and Dickerson both call Birmingham
home, their addresses show a different reality. Dickerson moved to Cahaba Heights just before she began
having a family, and Bell remains in the city limits.
The reason: schools. As much as any single factor,
the quest for schools today drives where people settle
in metro Birmingham. While some neighborhoods
in the urban core are prized for their revitalization,
neighbors have come to expect that a “For Sale” sign
will soon follow the pink or blue ribbon that welcomes
a newborn as parents flee the city’s troubled school
district for the suburbs.
For Dickerson, the sentiment is simple and strong.
“I can’t subject my kids to the Birmingham school
system,” she said. “If somebody gave me a free house
in Birmingham, I couldn’t move into it.” Her two
younger boys go to Vestavia Hills schools; her oldest
son attends the state-run Alabama School of Fine Arts
downtown.
More than 7,300 students have left the Birmingham City Schools since 2000. The system faces school
closings and hundreds of layoffs to cope with plunging enrollment.
The city touches four of the state’s five top-performing school districts: Hoover, Mountain Brook,
Vestavia Hills and Homewood. Yet Birmingham lags
significantly behind its suburban neighbors. It is one
of 19 school districts across the seven-county metro
area, 12 of which are in Jefferson County.
Birmingham’s average ACT assessment score was
17.3 in 2005-06, compared with 23.7 in Vestavia Hills,
22.8 in Hoover, Homewood’s 22.3 and 25.4 in Mountain Brook. A perfect ACT score is 36.
Bell, who remains in Birmingham, said her 15year-old son is performing well at Wenonah High. “I
know a lot of people at that school, so they watch out
for him, knowing that he’s my child,” she said. “A lot
of (students) get left behind because they don’t have
people to look after them.”
But Bell also is growing dissatisfied with what she
sees as a lack of programs, high student-to-teacher
ratios and discipline problems in the district. She put
her youngest son in private school after a series of
problems at his public school.
“I shouldn’t have to send my child to private
school,” Bell said, her voice rising and her eyes shining
with tears. “The system is broken. It hurts my heart.”
Joseph D. Bryant
Some of the biggest names in business and government minced no words
over the past year as they prescribed a
cure for problems that the Birmingham
region faces:
They called for leadership. They
urged vision for the region that stretches
beyond city limits and county lines and
looks out for the well-being of the whole
community.
“There will be a far smaller Birmingham to lead unless all of us take action,”
Alabama Power CEO Charles McCrary
said last March in what would become
the first in a series of blunt warnings.
Gov. Bob Riley added biting comments. So did former Time Inc. CEO
Don Logan and Birmingham-area politicians. The message was clear:
. “We don’t have the leadership and
a vision of what Birmingham could be
— or at least it’s not well spelled out,”
Logan said. “If so, I don’t understand
At Birmingham
City Hall, right,
and in its council
chambers, top
right, officials run
the largest city in
Alabama. Alabama
Power CEO
Charles McCrary
has sounded blunt
warnings for the
city.
what it is.”
. “We have to make sure we have
leadership — both elected and in business — that will make us a better city,”
McCrary said later last year.
. “You have got to put priorities of
the area over political priorities,” Riley
said. He added later that no region in
Alabama has the influence and resources Birmingham has. “If you focus
on the things that make you unique,
there’s no reason you can’t excel.”
. “There is no question that the
leadership in our community has got
to pull together to move the region
forward,” said state Rep. Paul DeMarco, R-Homewood. “Otherwise, we are
going to let Montgomery, Mobile and
Huntsville pass us.”
Each of the speeches where the
statements were made brought standing ovations from people listening —
crowds that included the region’s political, corporate and civic leaders.
In speech after speech, the stakes
were made clear: Leadership, they said,
is the difference between success and
failure, between growth and stagnation.
Ultimately, they said, it is the element
that will lead Birmingham to prominence among Southern cities, or leave it
in the dust of irrelevance.
Jeff Hansen
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BIRMINGHAM
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CAN WE TRUST
ONE ANOTHER?
NEWS STAFF/BERNARD TRONCALE
The Sixteenth Street Baptist Church was the scene of one of the most violent hate crimes of the civil rights movement. Now a national
historic landmark, the church has been restored through a communitywide $3.8 million campaign led by Neal Berte, former president of
Birmingham-Southern College, and Carolyn McKinstry, who survived the 1963 bombing of the church, which killed four of her friends.
Metro Birmingham’s path forward must cross difficult fault lines:
A violent racial history. Flight to the suburbs.
Corruption and bickering among public officials.
Each is part of the most complex challenge facing the region: Trust.
seeds of trust
Races, places,
politicos get
past differences
by cooperation
By JEFF HANSEN
News staff writer
Birmingham’s fault lines along race,
place, politics and class don’t always allow
easy alliances.
But Kate Nielsen, president of the Community Foundation of Greater Birmingham, fervently believes that obstacles to
trust can be overcome.
While it is difficult for people of differing backgrounds and opinions to sit across
a table and simply decide to trust one another, Nielsen said, they can readily build
and earn that trust.
“It’s working together on something,”
she said. “If we can find something to get
our arms around and work together, the
trust will come. …
“By action, we’re going to build this
trust.”
That is going on across metropolitan
Birmingham today, in projects large and
small, where the metro area’s civic, business, political and religious leaders are
setting aside differences, finding common
ground and working toward shared goals.
By THOMAS SPENCER, JEFF HANSEN
and SHERREL WHEELER STEWART
News staff writers
E
rica Young is a rare breed. She lives in Bessemer, teaches in Hoover, schools her kids
in Homewood, frequents Southside and
downtown Birmingham, visits family in
Center Point and thrift-shops in Midfield.
Too many people in the metro area, she thinks, stay
in their own little worlds.
“Each community, even though it’s part of the larger Birmingham metro area, is so isolated,” she said.
“If I was going to make Birmingham a better place
overnight, it would be: Everyone take ownership of the
city, even if they lived in a suburb.”
That, Young believes, would help build a greater
sense of community and develop a level of cooperation that too often is lacking.
Trust — a level of confidence built on familiarity,
shared purpose, and a sense of integrity and reliability
— is a key challenge for metropolitan Birmingham.
“If we are to move ahead, we need vision, leadership and trust,” said Ed LaMonte, a political science
professor at Birmingham-Southern College and former director of the Center for Urban Affairs at the University of Alabama at Birmingham. “Trust seems to be
the most slippery of the three.”
Metro Birmingham is a patchwork of communities
that grew from the city’s troubled racial history. People
today often are separated by race, income, city lines
and social circles.
See four examples on PAGE 7
P U B L I S H E D
See ROOTS OF DISTRUST | Page 6
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BIRMINGHAM
AT A CROSSROADS
IN THEIR
OWN WORDS
Whom do you trust to lead the community?
What’s right with Birmingham?
How do you interact with people who are of a
different race from you?
Those are a few of the questions our reporters posed to
people across the metro area. Here’s what they had to say.
To see the complete responses, click on the
interactive map at blog.al.com/bn/crossroads
RAYMOND HARRIS
MOrris
“I think
some of the
civic
organizations are led by people who
would make outstanding
governmental leaders, but could probably
never be elected.”
ERICA YOUNG
BESSEMER
“I want my
girls to see
that there
are all
different types of people.
Where I grew up, everyone looked just
like me.”
RITA JONES TURNER
BIRMINGHAM
“As far as
the education program in
Birmingham, it is totally dilapidated. It seems like it’s
Lou Willie IV
Glen Iris
“It just seems
that whatever
I read in an
article about
the City
Council or
the mayor or
hear something on the
radio about
them, it just
seems like
a battle of
egos.”
ANNA REeD
MOODY
“I don’t have
a problem
getting along
with
anybody. It’s
just some
people
don’t like
you.”
declining by design.”
ETHEL STIRTMIRE
ACIPCO
EUEL CLINTON MUSGROVE
LEEDS
“I go to
Gardendale to
shop because
the North
Birmingham
area does not
have the facilities for me
to shop. … It’s
“I would
like to see
more
business in
Birmingham, but I don’t
know what it would take.
Integration started it.
Because the whites
started moving out of
Birmingham and they
just turned it over to
minorities.”
CLEMENT EBIO
HOOVER
not my preference, but
I don’t have
too much of
a choice.”
“We need to take bold
steps in bringing
investments, like the
dome. I don’t know how good
that was — but something similar to that, where
the city can attract visitors.”
DONNA COOK
BLOUNT COUNTY
“I don’t spend time in any part
of Birmingham ... If I go
shopping, it’s to the north.
I’m afraid, at my age, to
go to Birmingham.”
The roots of distrust
From Page 5
A 2001 survey that the Community
Foundation of Greater Birmingham
commissioned, part of a nationwide
study coordinated by the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University, found that metro Birmingham had the lowest score for diversity of friendships — the bonds that
could bridge ethnic, racial and class
boundaries — among eight Southern
metro areas that included Atlanta and
the North Carolina cities of Charlotte,
Greensboro and Winston-Salem.
Trust of government also is an issue.
Across the metro area, people interviewed by The Birmingham News said
that perpetual feuding at Birmingham
City Hall and corruption and power
struggles among Jefferson County officials have left them distrustful of the
area’s largest governments.
On a personal level, many people
interviewed expressed fear of venturing into unfamiliar parts of the city.
Smith Williams, a business consultant who lives in Birmingham’s South
Avondale neighborhood, recently
overheard two suburban elementary
school teachers as they flew back from
a spring break trip with their students
to Washington and New York City.
Despite enthusiasm for the big cities, the teachers chatted about how
they never went to downtown Birmingham or Southside, out of fear for
safety.
According to the City Action Partnership, a security patrol funded by
downtown property owners, downtown Birmingham has less serious
crime, based on its daytime population, than Mountain Brook, Homewood and Hoover.
Most of Birmingham’s violent
crime — 105 homicides in 2005, a rate
10 times higher than the rest of Jefferson County — is outside downtown,
where 90,500 people work during the
day and thousands go for restaurants
and entertainment at night.
“It was just amazing to hear them
speak so proudly about their separateness from the city of Birmingham
…That got me at the heart level,” Williams said of the teachers. “Don’t think
the kids didn’t hear it. Don’t think the
kids aren’t aware of our attitudes.”
A matter of race
In metro Birmingham, race was,
and is, the sharpest dividing line.
Ray Mohl, a history professor at
UAB, said the metropolitan area’s racial separation resembles Midwestern
Rust Belt cities rather than its rapidly
growing neighbors in the South.
Unlike some Southern cities that
grew through annexation after World
War II, Birmingham was girded by
existing suburbs that resisted annexation. The city became increasingly
black and poor as suburbanization
accelerated with court-ordered school
integration in the 1970s.
By 1980, Birmingham was majority black. The city today is 76 percent
black and 22 percent white; its 29 percent poverty rate is the eighth highest
among the nation’s 100 largest cities.
As a child, Rita Jones Turner was on
the front lines of desegregation. Now
46, Turner was bused to the previously
all-white Vestavia Hills school system.
Federal courts in 1970 ordered that
children from a portion of Birmingham’s Oxmoor Valley be schooled in
Vestavia Hills, an arrangement that
continues today.
Every day, often several times a day,
Turner said, she was confronted with
racial epithets. After 10th grade, she
transferred to West End High School,
tired of the taunting at Vestavia Hills. “I
couldn’t take it …”
The experience helped make her
self-reliant, a trait she displays as an
independent remodeling contractor
today. Turner, who still lives in Oxmoor
Valley, finds it ironic that her daughter
Sharita just graduated from Vestavia
Hills High, and her son Malcolm is a
freshman there.
“Their interaction is a lot different
than mine was,” she said.
Race is a minefield beyond the
schoolhouse.
While most voters in the city of
Birmingham are black, whites from
outside the city largely control the
businesses that fuel Birmingham’s tax
revenue. The corporate desire to see
downtown built up often conflicts
with residents who want help for distressed neighborhoods.
Birmingham Mayor Bernard Kincaid garnered support from a large
percentage of the city’s white voters in
1999. When he was re-elected in 2003,
his support among whites went down
but he gained votes from blacks.
“The difficulty in which I find myself is not being painted as an Uncle
Tom by black folks by not looking after their issues, and being painted as
a black nationalist by the white folks
for not looking out for their interest,”
Kincaid said. “Walking that tightrope
is extremely difficult.”
Williams, the South Avondale consultant, believes racial attitudes delay
city improvements, such as expanding
the downtown civic center and building an entertainment district.
“Because of black involvement in
politics, they (whites) fear that somehow they (blacks) won’t know what to
do with all that money,” said Williams,
who is black. “I think a lot of it is about
control.”
In interviews across the metro area, people say race is hardly a thought
in their daily interactions, and that
they come across all kinds of people
where they work, volunteer or go to
school.
While some suburban school systems still are overwhelmingly white,
Young, the white Bessemer resident
who teaches in Hoover, said a lot
has changed. Ten years ago, Hoover
schools were 90 percent white and 7
percent black. Today, the district is 18
percent black, 6 percent Asian and 5
percent Hispanic.
“I think that is a positive thing,”
Young said. “ ... These typical Hoover
students are coming in contact with
people that are different than them.”
A matter of place
There’s an e-mail circulating
around town that describes Barbie
dolls custom-made for certain parts
of the area. The Bessemer Barbie is a
tight-jeaned NASCAR fan. The brassyhaired Alabaster Barbie chews tobacco. A North Birmingham Barbie is recently paroled and comes with a 9mm
handgun.
The stereotypes reflect how people
living in relative isolation perceive one
another.
Benjamin Lewellyn, 20, grew up in
Cahaba Heights and Hoover. His life
revolved around being in the Hoover
High School band. He rarely ventured
into downtown Birmingham. Birmingham-Southern College changed that.
A January mini-term class that
exposed students to downtown surprised him. As “a good Republican,”
Lewellyn said, “you are indoctrinated
to have disdain for government.” But
he was impressed by what he saw, and
by some city officials.
Before, his only exposure to the city
came at night, driving in and out for
concerts. What he saw during the day
was unexpected — the architecture of
places such as the Empire Building,
people filling the streets at lunchtime.
He was impressed to see people investing in and moving into downtown.
“It’s exciting to see that human interest,” he said. “That is what is going
to move the city.”
But in tutoring advanced-placement history students at Birmingham’s
Woodlawn High School, Lewellyn saw
a gap compared with his experience
in Hoover: Woodlawn offered just one
year of AP American history compared
with Hoover’s two-year course.
“It’s a raw deal,” Lewellyn said.
“Without the educational opportunities that suburban kids get, those kids
face a consistent cycle of poverty and
an inability to move out.”
Still, there is a wellspring of affection for the center city. People are restoring older residential areas such
as Avondale, Glen Iris and Norwood.
Some vacant downtown buildings are
being converted into loft apartments,
creating an urban community.
After years in Washington, Ben Erdreich and his wife, Ellen, moved back
to join their son and daughter, who also had returned to work on downtown
residential redevelopment.
Erdreich, a former state representative, county commissioner and congressman from Mountain Brook, now
lives and works in the loft district on
Second Avenue North.
“I’m personally excited,” Erdreich
said. “I’ve built my house downtown
… a townhouse with a garden in the
back and a two-car garage.”
Mayor Kincaid said it is difficult to
achieve political cooperation in a city
that votes Democratic, a county that
elected a Republican-majority commission and a state led by a Republican governor.
Still, Kincaid and Jefferson County
Commission President Bettye Fine
Collins compromised in February to
reduce plans to expand the convention center from a domed stadium to
a 40,000-seat arena.
Then reality set in.
The five-member County Commission — where all three Republicans
including Collins had campaigned
on “no dome, no debt, no Democrat”
— tabled the proposal. The compromise also lacks solid support on the
City Council.
While Kincaid still backs the
compromise, Collins now questions
whether the county will participate
at all, saying the commission needs
to tighten its spending and address
needs throughout the county.
“This city is part of the county as
a whole. We can’t favor Birmingham
over anyone else,” Collins said.
Meantime, the aging convention complex hasn’t added exhibition
space since 1992.
The situation frustrates John Lauriello of Southpace Properties, a pioneer in converting vacant downtown
buildings into lofts and offices. A lot of
money has been invested, he says, and
a lot more is poised for investment
while public officials drag their feet.
“They don’t carry through on
promises,” Lauriello said. “Developers
don’t have a lot of trust that something
is going to get done.”
Erdreich, the former congressman,
said the metropolitan area’s very structure feeds distrust.
“We are too Balkanized,” he said,
adding that the area’s 30-plus cities
hinder a collective sense that Birmingham’s future is “our future.”
Taking risks
What does it take to build trust?
John Northrop, the executive director of the Alabama School of Fine Arts,
said it takes dialogue about the deep
issues that underlie our reality. Race is
part of that.
“Some feel that if we talk about it
(racial distrust), we make it real,” said
Northrop, who also is co-chair of Operation New Birmingham’s community affairs committee. “The fact is, if we
don’t talk about it, we make it real.”
DeMarco says it takes small political victories.
“The public is not looking for an
overnight transformation of problems
that have existed for 40 years,” DeMarco said. “They are looking for small
victories. .€.€. If those can be funded
and managed properly .€.€. then they
can say, ‘Hey, now let’s look at some
other things.’”
Odessa Woolfolk, a lifelong Birmingham resident and the founding
chairwoman of the Birmingham Civil
Rights Institute, recalled a 1937 Harper’s magazine article that called her
hometown “a city of perpetual promise.”
That promise, she said, is still deferred. “We do a lot of little things in
Birmingham but they don’t add up to
something really great,” Woolfolk said.
“I wish the community could grow to
be the great place it ought to be.”
But there are times when a shared
vision can come together across racial
Lou Willie IV, 26, a resident of Bir- and community lines, she noted, such
mingham’s Glen Iris neighborhood, as the founding of the institute and its
loves the city, particularly Southside. recently completed $5 million camThere’s plenty to do, a spirit of hospi- paign, led by Alabama Power’s Charles
tality and it’s not too big. But he is frus- McCrary, that raised $6.3 million.
trated by the tone at City Hall.
Richard Arrington Jr., who for 20
“It just seems that whatever I read years was Birmingham’s mayor and
in an article about the City Council or the first black to hold that seat, said he
the mayor or hear something on the is dismayed by the continuing struggle
radio about them, it just seems like a of Birmingham, Jefferson County,
battle of egos,” he said.
corporate leadership and the overall
State Rep. Paul DeMarco, R-Home- metropolitan area to find common
wood, calls a lack of trust in some local ground on issues from mass transit to
governments,
expansion of
and some lothe convencal boards and
tion center.
commissions
“There is
“one of the
a p p a re n t l y
fundamental
not a lot of
problems in
trust,
beour region.”
cause coop“In Jeffereration on a
son County,
large scale reif you look
quires trust,”
at the fraud,
he said. “Comismanageoperation
ment and correquires an
ruption in the
understandsewer system,
ing of how
or you look at
everybody
Former Birmingham Mayor
some of the
benefits, that
past problems
this comRichard Arrington Jr.
with the tranmunity as a
sit authority or the Birmingham Water whole benefits.”
Works board, the public lacks confiBirmingham seems content to stay
dence or trust in the way government average, he said.
has operated,” he said. “They don’t feel
“It has been a risk-averse city that
funds will be used wisely.”
has avoided change. That is the botTennant McWilliams, a UAB his- tom line,” said Arrington, who recently
torian, said such distrust has long moved to Hoover. “If you invest little,
hampered the region’s ability to work your returns are going to be small. If
cooperatively.
you don’t want to take any risk, you are
“I do see problems not being solved not likely to get any great returns.”
because of a lack of cohesiveness between city and county officials,” Mc- News staff writers Kim Bryan, VicWilliams said. “And to some extent toria L. Coman, Anita Debro, Kent
that is a function of them not trusting Faulk, Jeremy Gray, Patrick Hickerson, Wayne Martin, Rahkia Nance,
one another.”
An example is the ongoing battle Anne Ruisi, William C. Singleton III,
over how to revitalize downtown.
Brannon Stewart, Erin Stock, Kelli
For a decade, the County Com- Hewett Taylor, Nancy Wilstach and
mission, the city and the local legis- Hannah Wolfson contributed to this
lative delegation have bickered over report.
expanding the Birmingham-Jefferson
E-MAIL: [email protected]
Convention Complex.
A matter of politics
T
BIRMINGHAM
RENEE AMBROSE
STERRETT
Here are four examples where people in metro Birmingham
are setting aside differences to work toward shared goals:
The site for the 21-acre Railroad Reservation park.
The Three Parks Initiative
t
t
t
last year were up to $6 million
from foundations and $12
million from businesses and
the private sector, said Kate
Nielsen of the Community
Foundation. The foundation
is about halfway to achieving
those goals.
Contributions to the
Community Foundation will
be split as agreed among the
three parks: $10 million for
Railroad Reservation, $1.5
million for Ruffner Mountain and $5.85 million for
Red Mountain. Backers say
this initiative would give Birmingham more green space
per resident than any other
U.S. city.
Last month, the final
piece of government funding
for Railroad Reservation was
put in place when County
Commission President Bettye Fine Collins said Jefferson
County would provide $2.5
million. Together, the city of
Birmingham and Jefferson
County have pledged a total
of $10 million, and the park’s
first phase is scheduled to
open in December 2008.
The cupola of Sixteenth Street Baptist Church.
Restoring Sixteenth Street
Baptist Church
In May 1963, 2,000 people
at the Sixteenth Street Baptist
Church celebrated the first
day of the Children’s Marches that helped desegregate
downtown stores. In September 1963, a segregationists’
bomb killed four girls getting
ready for Sunday service.
Carolyn McKinstry was
a teenage member of the
church then, and she has
stayed in the congregation to
this day.
For years, efforts to restore
the church languished for lack
of money.
Recently, however, she and
retired Birmingham-Southern College President Neal
Berte helped lead a $3.8 million fundraising effort to fix
water damage and structural
damage, and to get the church
listed as a national historic
landmark. More than $3 million came from individuals,
corporations and foundations
in the Birmingham area.
“We weren’t sure we could
get the money,” Berte said. “I
think it’s a tremendous testimony to Birmingham — it
speaks volumes about how far
our city has come.”
McKinstry said a sign put
up by the architect at the
church says it all: “A restoration of hope.”
N
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7
Jabo Waggoner’s roundtable
The mural at Woodlawn High School.
Saving Woodlawn
High’s mural
from alumni, businesses,
foundations and 10 Birmingham neighborhood
associations is more than
$180,000.
“Six of the neighborhood
associations are located in
the Woodlawn school district, and each one kicked
in $5,000,” Oden said. “We
raised $35,000 from alumni, in small pieces of $50,
$25 or $100.”
“I don’t see color.
But I do see crime
and I don’t want that
living next to me, regardless of race.”
steve gilbert
montevallo
RICHARD EPSTEIN
TRUSSVILLE
“Birmingham is
a great place to
live with a diverse
group of people.
“I don’t know
of anyone
right now that
comes to mind
who is in
politics that
I trust in
Birmingham.
The
Birmingham
I grew up in
and the
Birmingham
of today are
different, and
In my community,
Trussville,
I have confidence
in the current
council.”
things about both
are good.”
JUAN CARLOS ADAN
PELHAM
“People who are from
here need to be more
open-minded, culture-
wise, and need to learn
more about things other than just here.”
JENNIFER POWELL
HOMEWOOD
“The clutter is
getting worse.
We need to find
some solutions.
Other cities have elevated highways and
underground highways. It doesn’t seem to
bother people there.”
State Sen. Jabo Waggoner keeps elected officials
talking.
There was no money in
Woodlawn High School’s
renovation budget to repair
and restore the epic, 1930sera mural around the auditorium’s stage.
So graduates, led by
Mountain Brook Mayor
Terry Oden, set out to raise
money to preserve this visual link to Birmingham’s
past as a brawny city of
hope. The total garnered
i r m i n g h a m
AT A CROSSROADS
Seeds of trust
Three separate propsals
to expand green space in Birmingham could have ended
up in competition, but leaders came together in a joint
fundraising campaign. And
the effort to raise money for
all three parks, coordinated
by the Community Foundation of Greater Birmingham
and Region 2020, is off to a
quick start.
The parks are:
Railroad Reservation, a
21-acre urban park along the
railroad separating downtown Birmingham and UAB
that is expected to become a
linchpin for development in
a resurgent city center.
The pristine, 1,011-acre
Ruffner Mountain Nature
Center east of downtown,
which plans to add 500 to 700
acres at a cost of $11 million.
The 1,108-acre Red
Mountain Park, where there
are plans for sports facilities
and 18 miles of trails. It will
take $7 million to buy the Red
Mountain land and tens of
millions more to develop it.
The campaign goals set
B
h e
Metro Birmingham comprises 102 cities and seven
counties with little understanding of each other’s
needs.
But Leadership Birmingham’s Class of 2005 had critical questions for a panel that
included state Sen. J.T. “Jabo”
Waggoner, R-Vestavia Hills;
Birmingham Mayor Bernard
Kincaid; the Jefferson County
Commission’s then-president, Larry Langford; and
state Rep. John Rogers Jr., DBirmingham.
“The point kept coming
up, ‘Why don’t y’all ever talk?
Why don’t y’all ever meet together? Why don’t y’all ever
communicate?’” Waggoner
said.
The grilling prompted
Waggoner to promise the
group he would support a so-
lution: getting together once
a month to talk.
Waggoner invited all 26
senators and representatives
of the Jefferson County delegation, the five county commissioners, Birmingham’s
nine City Council members
and mayors of the 13 largest
cities in the county.
“I’m talking to folks
throughout the county I’ve
never met,” state Rep. Merika
Coleman, D-Midfield, said after one of the early meetings.
“It’s a way to build trust.”
With the forum now in
its second year, Waggoner’s
question is, “Can we put
aside our egos, and do what’s
good and right and best for
our area?”
On Friday, the group had
its 16th meeting. Its 17th is
scheduled for May 18.
BARBARA BARNARD
MOUNTAIN BROOK
BRETT OATES
COLLEGE HILLS
“I think that we
need a regional
commission
“There is no
leadership or
vision from the
state, county and
local politicians.
that would be over
the entire area and
looking as to how it
should be developed
and what’s in the
best interest of
the entire area.”
Both the
elected officials
and the people
who elected
them are
guilty.”
MELINDA KENDRICK
EAST LAKE
“I would like to see
a domed stadium.
I think that would be
a big advantage to the city.
And I like that the downtown area is
beginning to be rejuvenated.”
Midfield community found trust, and now it survives
By SHERREL WHEELER STEWART
News staff writer
NEWS STAFF/BERNARD TRONCALE
Gary Richardson, a radio station owner and
talk show host, is the first black person to be
elected mayor of Midfield.
In 1990, the city of Midfield had 4,956 white
residents and 554 blacks. In 2000, the city surrounded by Birmingham, Fairfield and Bessemer had 3,347 black residents and 2,210
whites.
In a single decade, Midfield made a dramatic demographic shift, going from nearly
all white to a city where blacks are about 60
percent of the population. Through the shift,
it maintained a middle-class feel, with quiet
neighborhoods, grocery stores and, today, a
drugstore under construction.
About 77 percent of the homes in Midfield
are owner-occupied, with values averaging
around $60,000. The 2000 Census, the most
recent data available, shows that 82 percent of
the adult population completed high school
and went on to some level of higher education
— a rate higher than the national and state averages.
Mayor Gary Richardson, the first black
person elected to lead the city, is proud of the
changes. While the city council is all black,
blacks and whites share in civic and community leadership. The city has attracted a new
CVS drugstore and is developing a former car
dealership into a civic center.
“We just work together to get things done,”
he said, while sitting in the studio at the WJLDAM radio station, which he owns. Richardson,
an engineer by profession, was elected in 2004.
Forbidding to blacks
In the late 1970s, Midfield wasn’t a welcoming place for blacks, although many were bused
in to attend school.
One morning in March 1978, Marva Douglas looked out the window of her Fairfield Highlands home and saw a 6-foot cross smoldering
in her front yard. Douglas, a South Central Bell
employee widely acknowledged to be the first
black to buy in Midfield, was in the home she
had dreamed of — and where she still lives today.
Police wanted to help Douglas remove the
cross. She insisted that it stay. “I told them, ‘If
my neighbors want me to have a cross, I’ll keep
it.’”
Fast-forward to 1989, when Jordan Frazier
bought a Dodge dealership on Bessemer Super
Highway, becoming one of the most prominent black business owners in Midfield. City
leaders came by to welcome him. The dealership drew people from across the region. Last
year, Frazier moved his expanding dealership
to Bessemer to be closer to an interstate exit.
Having lived in Midfield most of his life,
Buck Williams, 65, has witnessed the changes
firsthand. His father ran the local hardware
store, and Williams served as mayor and on the
city council, in addition to running the parks
department for 30 years.
Williams thinks he’s the only white person
left on Violet Street, but doesn’t really know because he never stops to count.
People in the community today have grown
to trust one another, he said. “Those who had a
problem with it, they are all gone.”
E-MAIL: [email protected]
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B
i r m i n g h a m
N
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BIRMINGHAM
AT A CROSSROADS
Too many pieces
in government
puzzle?
NEWS STAFF/MICHELLE WILLIAMS
The Birmingham City Hall, top, faces the Jefferson County Courthouse, above, directly across Linn Park. While just a block
separates the two branches, the county and city operate under different forms of government.
7 counties.
102 cities.
21 school districts.
Does local government
have too many pieces,
too little leadership,
cooperation?
By JEFF HANSEN and JOSEPH D. BRYANT
♦
News staff writers
L
ocal governments sprawl across greater Birmingham-Hoover like political kudzu.
The seven-county metro region has 102
cities — 15 of them crossing county lines.
Children in metro Birmingham go to classes
in 21 separate school systems.
Within the larger governments, there are even more
pieces. Birmingham has nine council members, each
responsible for a single district. Jefferson County has
five commissioners, also elected by district.
This bramble means duplicated services, fragmented
decision-making and roadblocks to inter-government
cooperation, said Natalie Davis, professor of political
science at Birmingham-Southern College. Competing
political priorities often smother efforts to serve common needs and the greater good in Alabama’s largest
urban area.
More tangles come from the outmoded 1901 Alabama Constitution, public administration experts say.
Framers of that constitution set up a county government structure that struggles to meet the needs of a
modern economy.
“Right now,” Davis said, “it is easier to defeat good
suggestions rather than make good suggestions.”
Ongoing squabbles highlight a lack of cooperation,
ranging from a decade of bickering over expanding the
convention center to the failure to find regional agreement on funding mass transit.
See GOVERNMENT | Page 10
P U B L I S H E D
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By JEFF HANSEN
Over-the-Mountain jail
J
efferson County has weak government
structure.
There is no county executive who
is elected countywide, who could have
veto power over commission votes.
The commission itself has only limited authority to pass ordinances, because the state
Legislature holds that power.
Two moves could create stronger leadership from the county: Changing to a county
executive form of government, and giving the
county more legislative power through home
Separating duties
Each is now governed by a county
executive, an administrator who is
elected countywide. The Allegheny
County council members and the
Wayne County commissioners have
legislative — but not administrative
— power. This gives elected officials
just a single duty, either to legislate or
to administer.
Jefferson County, Alabama’s most
populous county, lacks this separation. Instead:
Each commissioner is responsible for both administrative and legislative duties — they not only vote at
commission meetings, but each commissioner also runs several county
departments. One commissioner has
yearly budgets that total $185 million,
ranging from sewers to economic development.
The president of the commission is not elected countywide. Rather, she or he is one of the district commissioners. The president has no veto
power over votes of the commission,
and this eliminates the checks and
balances found in federal, state and
strong-county governments.
“You want the people you elect to
be your policy-makers, your futurists,” said Don Ammons, former Jefferson County director of management and budget for 13 years. “But
when you saddle them with administrative and executive responsibilities,
they deal with short-term problems.
They never have time to get around to
the future.”
Ammons believes Jefferson County needs a council form of government like Allegheny County, with a
county executive who has veto power
over council votes.
“It would be transformational for
this whole community,” he said. “Not
just Birmingham and Jefferson County but for the entire region and even
the state.”
rule.
That was done in Allegheny County, Pa.,
where Pittsburgh — a steel town in many
ways similar to Birmingham —has flourished
in recent years.
“It sounded like they were hitting a home
run,” said lawyer David Proctor about a visit
to Pittsburgh with the Birmingham Regional
Chamber of Commerce in 2006. “If we could
only get on the same page like they do, wow,
we’d get some stuff done.”
Both Allegheny County and Detroit’s
Wayne County, Mich., changed structure to
create stronger leadership.
A second way to gain power is for the state Legislature to grant broader “home rule” to Jefferson
County — in other words, allow the county’s elected
officials to make decisions on local matters, power
that now largely rests with the Legislature.
A committee at the 1901 Alabama constitutional
convention unsuccessfully proposed home rule for
cities and counties. Cities gained some home rule
from a 1907 legislative act. For counties, state legislators still involve themselves with all sorts of county minutiae across the state, such as a bill last year
to allow the Jefferson County sheriff’s department
to hire a public information officer. For contested
issues, just one of the eight state senators that represent Jefferson County can block a local bill.
“We have created the perfect storm,” David Sher,
a businessman and civic leader, said of metro Birmingham, “where even if they wanted to do something good, because of the structure of the government, they are absolutely stopped.”
Jim Williams at the Public Affairs Research Council of Alabama, a public administration analyst who
for 35 years has researched ways to improve state
and local government, says the courthouse — not
the capitol — should have responsibility for good
county government, because:
Metro areas like Birmingham-Hoover, with
24 percent of the state’s jobs and 26 percent of the
state’s personal income, are the state’s economic
engine. In this economic web, a county boundary
may offer the best geographic definition of the entire community.
Though counties were created as organs of
the state to provide duties like courts, voter registration, tax collection and licensing, they increasingly provide municipal-type services. While they
have been granted limited authority to act in areas
like public safety, public works and health, PARCA
argues that they also need general ordinance-making power similar to that of even small municipalities in Alabama.
Along with home rule, counties need to be
forced to govern openly and responsibly, with
clearly defined procedures that involve and inform
the public. They need standard decision-making
requirements similar to those placed on cities —
such as repeated readings of a proposed ordinance
before adoption and public hearings before adopting changes in taxes or zoning.
“If we give them more power,” Williams said,
“they have to be more responsible.”
OPTION: Consolidate duplicated services
t’s hard to find dividing lines between
the city of Charlotte, N.C., and the
Mecklenburg County government.
Both governments share services to virtually eliminate duplication. The governments even share the same office tower.
This cooperation — rooted in the region’s
deference to business leadership — has been
called “functional consolidation.”
“There’s almost no overlap of services in
what the county does and what the city of
Charlotte does,” said Bill McCoy, former director of the Urban Institute at the University of
North Carolina Charlotte.
Cooperation was made easier by having just
seven towns in the county of 827,000 residents
— Charlotte, with its population of 660,000,
and six smaller cities.
“Next down are places that are between
25,000 and 30,000,” McCoy said. “They know
what side of the bread is buttered . . . “
Business always had a powerful voice in
Charlotte-Mecklenburg. In the 1980s and 1990s,
a self-appointed core of influential leaders was
dubbed “The Group.”
The Group was four men: Hugh McColl,
CEO of Bank of America, then called NationsBank; Ed Crutchfield, CEO of Wachovia, then
known as First Union Bank; Bill Lee, president
of Duke Power Co.; and Rolfe Neill, publisher of
The Charlotte Observer.
Regularly, they’d gather privately with the
top city and county leaders to discuss how to
make government operate more like a business
— notions they favored like streamlining the
building-permits process — and the elected
leaders then would push many of those ideas
through the city council and county commission in the form of interlocal agreements.
Through those agreements, most city and
county government functions where there
would be duplication — ranging from police to
parks to planning — have been merged.
Though the four are now retired, McCoy
said strong corporate interest in the Charlotte
community continues.
Transportation shows off Charlotte’s successful regional interdependence.
The region has undertaken a massive masstransit plan that includes bus, light rail and trolleys funded by a half-cent sales tax. That permanent funding source, along with state money, then was used to land federal transit dollars,
said Debra Campbell, director of the CharlotteMecklenburg Planning Department. The first
light rail line should open in November.
Campbell said the Chamber of Commerce
was a unifying force in the campaign for transit
and the need for a tax, and the transit plan was
embraced by urban and suburban partners.
Transit reform, Campbell said, is now a major part of a comprehensive plan for revitalization and economic development.
Details
Differences from Birmingham
Charlotte has a council-manager form of
government, with an elected mayor and 11
council members, and an appointed professional city manager who runs day-to-day
operations. The manager is the key administrative officer of the city.
Four city council members are elected
at-large across the entire city, and seven are
elected from districts. The council appoints
the city manager, city attorney and city clerk;
reviews the annual budget, sets the tax rate
and approves financing of city operations;
and authorizes contracts for the city.
Mecklenburg County has a commissionmanager form of government. Three commissioners are elected at-large and six represent districts. Each December, the board
of commissioners elects a chairman and
vice chairman.
The board adopts the annual budget,
sets the property tax rate, and assesses and
establishes priorities on many community
needs.
The professional county manager, an
appointed position, recommends the annual budget and oversees the day-to-day
operations of the county’s 4,700 employees
and its $1.2 billion budget.
A 1962 law allowed Charlotte to annex any
area within Mecklenburg County that took on
the character of an urban locale.
In the early 1980s, the mayor of Charlotte
called the leaders of the other six towns and
drew up ‘spheres of influence’ for future annexation to prevent fighting. This early planning, McCoy said, prevented expansion feuds.
Also, in the 1960s, race relations in Charlotte were not as violent as those in Birmingham.
Although there was great conflict over integrating the local schools — the landmark 1971
U.S. Supreme Court ruling that resulted in
mandatory busing for desegregation came out
of a bitterly fought Charlotte case — the city’s
business and political leaders worked hard to
keep tensions to a minimum.
“Leading business people invited leading
blacks to go to lunch with them in segregated
facilities,” McCoy said. “The whole restaurant
thing was desegregated within a week. Green
is the color here. It’s not skin color; it’s green.”
Another key difference is in a successful
communitywide effort in Charlotte-Mecklenburg to pay for mass transit, unlike Birmingham and Jefferson County, which have been
unable to agree on a funding source.
News staff writers
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After locking his handgun, Police Chief
Johnny Stanley sets his index finger on an
electronic reader to unlock the door to the
Mountain Brook jail.
Two of the six cells are dark and empty. A
ragged crack runs up one cinderblock wall.
The crack, Stanley says, expands or contracts
when the clay soil beneath the jail dries or
gets wet from rain.
The jail was there when Stanley joined
the force 31 years ago, and it has long needed replacing.
“I don’t think that you’ll find a municipal
police chief who would not like to be out
of the jail business,” Stanley said. “It takes
manpower, financial resources, and the liability is extreme.”
A current plan to merge the city jails of
Homewood, Vestavia Hills and Mountain
Brook under a regional jail authority is a
metro Birmingham example of intergovernmental cooperation.
The planned jail could also house municipal inmates from other cities for a daily fee,
and the three suburbs might try to combine
their municipal court systems at the facility,
possibly sharing staff, even judges.
Closing the Mountain Brook jail would
be a boon for city residents, Stanley said.
Inmates are there nearly every day of the
year, and they need to be checked every 15
minutes.
“That ties up a fully trained officer I could
otherwise use on the street.”
Seeking home rule
By JOSEPH D. BRYANT and JEFF HANSEN
B
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OPTION: CreatE a stronger Jefferson County
News staff writer
h e
NEWS STAFF/BERNARD TRONCALE
Police Chief Johnny Stanley says the Mountain
Brook City Jail needs replacing. A current plan
is under way to create a regional jail authority
where Mountain Brook, Homewood and
Vestavia Hills will share one facility and possibly
share staff and a municipal court system.
Jeff Hansen
Courier
Ralph
Pippin
sorts books
at the
Birmingham
Public
Library
downtown
from more
than 30
different
libraries
around
Jefferson
County.
NEWS STAFF/MICHELLE WILLIAMS
Jefferson County libraries
Courier Supervisor Carl Dunning recently
filled in for one of his drivers, carrying tubloads of
books, movies and CDs in the back of his Chevy
Express van between the Birmingham’s Central
Library, four branches and libraries in Adamsville
and Graysville.
Dunning is part of a cooperative effort that
shuttles nearly a quarter million books and media a year between Birmingham libraries; 18 other municipal libraries that stretch from Warrior to
Leeds to Bessemer to Hoover; and the library at
the Birmingham Botanical Gardens.
This puts the entire circulating collection of all
the libraries at the fingertips of any library card
holder in Jefferson County, and shows what happens when governments — in this case library
boards — cooperate.
A patron in Hoover, for example, can go to the
cooperative’s online catalogue, place a hold on a
book from any other library and have it delivered
to her library. And that patron could even live in
the Shelby County portion of Hoover.
“Every municipal city (in Jefferson County)
that has a library is a member,” said Patricia Ryan, director of the Jefferson County Library Cooperative.
The sharing started as a contract among local
libraries in 1978, and was funded by the city of
Birmingham. The nonprofit cooperative formed
in 1985 and is now funded by the Jefferson County Commission, the state, and fees from member
libraries.
One book in a delivery tub two weeks ago
showed the cooperative at work: A child had returned a copy of K.A. Applegate’s “Animorphs:
The Visitor” at the Homewood library, and it was
on its way back home to the Springville Road
branch of the Birmingham Library.
Jeff Hansen
NEWS STAFF/BERNARD TRONCALE
Chriss Doss is a former Jefferson County commissioner and state legislator. The lawyer
is also a historian whose collection includes a map showing Jefferson County before
legislation in 1910 consolidated 12 towns and created modern Birmingham.
A century ago, building larger
city was political suicide
One early proponent of regionalism in Jefferson County was State Rep. Jere Clemmons
King, who pushed legislation to merge smaller
Birmingham suburbs into one city. King said it
would improve public health and safety, including a more efficient sewer system to help battle
diseases such as cholera.
A narrow referendum victory annexed the cities of Avondale, Elyton, Ensley, Eastlake, Graymont, Inglenook, North Birmingham, Pratt City,
Thomas, Wylam, West End, and Woodlawn into
Birmingham in 1910, increasing Birmingham’s
population from 38,351 to 132,686.
“And, of course, King committed political suicide,” said historian Chriss Doss, a former Jefferson County commissioner and state legislator.
“Consolidation was very divisive among the voters. It didn’t pass by all that much, and there was a
wake of backlash.”
Doss said angry voters erected a tombstone in
Ensley, memorializing the death of King’s career.
Businesses also balked at the annexation and the
extra taxes it brought.
“It created an anti-Birmingham feeling that
has, to some degree, been present ever since,”
Doss said.
Efforts to further push consolidation failed repeatedly, most famously in the 1970 “One Great
City” proposal to merge Birmingham with its
suburban neighbors and create the largest city in
the South.
Joseph D. Bryant
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OPTION: PROFESSIONAL MANAGEMENT
By JOSEPH D. BRYANT
News staff writer
T
NEWS STAFF/JOE SONGER
Members of the Jefferson County Mayors Association gather at the Birmingham
Botanical Gardens. From left to right: Irondale’s Tommy Alexander, Bessemer’s Ed May,
Center Point’s Tom Henderson and Birmingham’s Bernard Kincaid. The association
includes all 36 mayors in the county.
No official
represents
a majority
GOVERNMENT
From Page 8
In an area with scores of elected leaders, no
one has been able to forge cooperation.
Is fragmented government at the heart of
metro Birmingham’s lagging growth over the
past four decades?
“If you look at places that are growing faster in
the South and Southwest and places that are not
growing fast, the question answers itself,” said
Steven Haeberle, chairman of the department
of government at the University of Alabama at
Birmingham. “Places that prosper have less fragmentation.”
Making government work
The Jefferson County government stands at
the center of any discussion about government
structure.
Birmingham is the region’s largest city, but it
represents only about one-third of the county’s
population and less than a fifth of the metro
area’s.
Jefferson County, by virtue of serving the
single largest share of the region’s residents — 60
percent — may be in best position to lead, experts say.
“Their number-one job is to represent the
county as a whole, and that includes all of the municipalities, not just the unincorporated county,”
Trussville Mayor Gene Melton said of the Jefferson County Commission. “They get taxes from all
of us.”
Jefferson County and other metro-area governments could consider changes to make Alabama’s biggest economic engine, the Birmingham-Hoover metro area, work better, said Jim
Williams, executive director of the Public Affairs
Research Council of Alabama, based at Samford
University. Some options are:
Make county governments stronger, as
was done in Pittsburgh’s Allegheny County and
Detroit’s Wayne County.
That alone could help, said Williams. “Research shows that one solution to overcoming
Balkanization is to give the county government
more power,” he said, “which leads to a stronger
voice for long-range goals and objectives and a
greater capacity to lead a region’s growth.”
Hire a professional manager to oversee
county departments, as has been done in Shelby
County.
Draft agreements among local governments to combine certain public services under
a single government roof, as was done in North
Carolina’s city of Charlotte and Mecklenburg
County, where no government services are duplicated and the city and county even share office space.
Consolidate local governments, similar to
the recent merger of Louisville, Ky., and Jefferson
County, Ky., to form Louisville Metro. The merger
vaulted Louisville from about the nation’s 69th
largest city before the merger took effect to the
No. 16 spot.
In contrast, fragmentation hurts the Birmingham metro area, said William Stewart, former
chairman of political science at the University of
Alabama.
“Government is so fragmented that it’s almost
impossible to do anything in a unified way, yet
the problems we face in the 21st century don’t
respect government boundaries.”
More at-large seats
Fragmentation is built into the current system, where no single elected representative in
local government answers to a majority of the
metro area’s 1.1 million residents. The closest is
Birmingham Mayor Bernard Kincaid, who represents the 231,483 people who live in the city.
A central factor is district voting, which can
narrow perspectives for politicians elected to the
Jefferson County Commission or the Birmingham City Council.
“Council members watch only their own district,” said Davis. “Nobody on the City Council
watches over the whole store. If I were dreaming something up from scratch, there would be
five district council members and four elected at
large . . . We need to have people elected who see
the whole issue.”
Birmingham businessman David Sher said
he went to the victory party of one Birmingham
City Council member several years ago.
“There was no discussion of anything that
had to do with the larger region,” he said. “All
they talked about was potholes and picking up
garbage.”
County commissioners are similar, Sher said.
“They are all elected from their district. People
are quick to blame elected officials, but they’re
all acting how they are supposed to, based on
how they are elected.”
A mix of district seats along with some atlarge seats may broaden the perspective of elected officials.
One long-term Jefferson County staffer saw
the reverse effect when the county changed from
a three member, at-large commission to a fivemember, district commission in the early 1980s.
That change resulted from a lawsuit based on
the absence of black commissioners in a county
with a strong percentage of African-American
voters.
District voting enabled election of black commissioners, but formation of districts seemed to
deflect the commission from long-term projects
for the common good, said Don Ammons, former Jefferson County director of management
and budget for 13 years.
For example, at the time district elections
began, the commission was working with the
Southern Research Institute to turn the county’s garbage into ethanol, a process that would
reduce the cost of landfills and would have become profitable at a gasoline price of more than
$1.50 a gallon. The commission had also spent
about $6 million to start a central radio system
that would allow any municipality or school in
the county, even individual school buses, to
communicate with each other in cases of emergency or disaster.
These projects soon faltered, Ammons said.
The radio effort lost steam; 20 years passed
before Birmingham and Jefferson County recently began to make a common communication possible. Money intended for the ethanol
project was redirected to one commissioner’s
district, said Ammons, to pave roads.
“A stronger county government would be an
improvement,” said David Adkisson, the former
head of the Birmingham Regional Chamber of
Commerce who is now president and CEO of the
Kentucky Chamber of Commerce.
“You would then have a chief county executive,” he said, “with a countywide political mandate and a much larger bully pulpit.”
Is change possible?
In metro Birmingham-Hoover, a professional
manager for Jefferson County government may
be the most likely of the several possible changes
in government structure, because elected officials may appreciate dropping the burden of
administrative work, said Davis of BirminghamSouthern College.
But discord among a council or commission
could be a barrier, she said. “If you have a flamethrower, it’s difficult. You won’t agree on the person (to be manager) in the first place.”
The other possible changes in government
structure would, at best, be an uphill fight, said
Davis. “There’s got to be common ground. I don’t
think we have common ground.”
The key to finding that common ground, she
said, is strong leadership.
Elected officials have “built-in radar in a community that’s as fractured as we are. If anybody
is going to lose their job or status, you’re going to
run into trouble.”
E-mail: [email protected];
[email protected]
he walls in Alex Dudchock’s office
are mostly bare. There’s no plush
furniture. The Shelby County manager works in a nondescript building in back of the ornate Shelby
County Courthouse.
Dudchock is an Alabama rarity — an unelected executive hired to manage daily government. In Shelby County, the fastest growing county in the state, this means running 12
departments and a $100 million budget.
No other county in the state, and just a
handful of Alabama cities, including Anniston,
Dothan, Mountain Brook, Auburn and Talladega, have professional managers to lead daily
operations.
In a city or county government managed
by a professional, the elected commission or
council members serve a legislative role. They
set policy, hire and evaluate the manager, and
approve the manager’s decisions. The professional administers the government departments.
Dudchock said his commissioners act like
a corporation’s board of directors. “After the
county commission approves the policy, then
the responsibility and liability lies on me.”
Cynthia Bowling, professor of political science at Auburn University, said the manager
system is considered the most professional
form of government.
“Sometimes the old structure of government (without a professional manager) can’t
effectively handle the increase in demand for
services,” said Bowling. “There has to be some
way to set priorities.”
In 1908, Staunton, Va., population 24,000,
became the first local government to hire a
professional manager. Daily running of depart-
ments is shouldered by the manager. A mayor,
selected from among the council members,
acts only as president of the council.
“It’s very tempting for members of council to do things for their particular area or not
see the broad picture of broad budgets,” said
Staunton city spokesman Doug Cochran. “Everybody wants their street paved first.”
Cochran thinks managers are best for
small- to mid-sized cities. In a larger community, he said, an unelected manager may be
viewed as having too much power in an unelected position. However, several large cities
and counties — such as Broward County, Fla.,
with a population of nearly 1.8 million — have
professional administrators reporting to elected boards.
NEWS STAFF/FRANK COUCH
Shelby County Manager Alex Dudchock
is a rarity in Alabama as a nonelected
executive hired to manage daily operations of the county government.
A Jefferson County manager?
Some oppose idea
Jefferson County Commissioner Jim Carns advocates
hiring a professional manager to run the region’s largest
government.
Currently, the five Jefferson County commissioners
are each assigned departments to supervise, a system
that Carns calls antiquated. He compares it to five silos
functioning without regard to the others.
“The county manager would be ultimately over each
of these department heads,” Carns said. “That way,
hopefully, we can have a unified hiring process that is
not subject to change whenever a county commission
turns over.”
Three bills to create a Jefferson County manager were
introduced this year, but died when the state Legislature
adjourned without acting on them. Carns supported
one sponsored by Rep. Paul DeMarco, R-Homewood,
and Sen. Jabo Waggoner, R-Vestavia Hills, that would
have allowed, but did not require, the commission to
hire a manager.
Buddy Sharpless, executive director for the Association of County Commissions of Alabama, believes the
number of professional managers will increase in Alabama.
“More and more counties are having to get on their
staffs CPAs or people with accounting degrees because
of the increasing difficulty of government accounting
standards,” Sharpless said. “You’re going to see increasing dependence on a CEO or chief administrator.”
Jefferson County Commissioner Shelia Smoot thinks a
professional manager would be
a mistake for Jefferson County,
because it is better to have five
people share the power rather
than one person with all the
power
She calls the idea “a cop-out .
. . a way for people to not have to
learn the operation.”
Smoot doesn’t trust giving
authority to one person who is
answerable only to the majority
of the commission, because a
hired manager would naturally
have loyalty to the majority of
the commission — whether
Democrat or Republican —
while needs of other commission districts went unmet.
“There is no way you’re not
going to answer to a majority
that can kick you out of a job,”
she said. “My district understands where I’m coming from
because they are going to be the
first to get their throats cut.”
OPTION: Merged government
By JEFF HANSEN
News staff writer
I
n 2000, residents voted to merge the city of Louisville and Jefferson County, Ky., along with
92 smaller cities, into the 16th largest city in the nation. Louisville Metro now has 702,518
people and covers 386 square miles.
This merger was the first of its size in the United States in 30 years, and came after earlier merger proposals were defeated three times between 1956 and 1984.
How it works
Louisville Metro government has all the
power of the two previous governments,
but the merger left intact 83 suburban cities
— most of them with fewer than 1,000 residents — within Kentucky’s Jefferson County,
as well as fire protection districts and other
special taxing or service districts. Each of the
small cities maintained its own identity, but
also became part of Louisville Metro, with
residents voting on local town officials as well
as metro government leaders.
The mayor is the top executive, elected
countywide, and oversees Metro services
like police, fire, roads, garbage, health clinics,
EMS, parks and recreation. The Metro Council has 26 members, elected by district. The
council enacts laws, as permitted by the state,
and approves the budget.
The merger allows Louisville Metro government to focus on four large-scale, longterm efforts to help the seven-county metropolitan area.
One is a 20-year effort to get the state to invest 13 percent of its transportation dollars to
build two new much-needed bridges across
the Ohio River and to redesign Louisville’s
“Spaghetti Junction” interstate interchange.
Others are expanding the city’s vast parks
system, originally designed by Frederick
Law Olmstead; and working closely with the
countywide school system.
Finally, Abramson calls for continuing to
invest heavily in downtown Louisville, which
is undergoing a condo and nightlife boom.
“Never forget, my friends,” Abramson
said in this year’s state of the city address,
“that what happens in downtown Louisville
does not stay in downtown Louisville. Study
after study, in city after city, show that strong
downtowns change the chemistry of their
communities. They pay off — in greater prosperity, innovation, quality of life — communitywide.”
Why it happened
Differences from Birmingham
Leaders for decades wanted
to make Louisville stronger and
more competitive. But bragging
rights may have pushed voters
over the edge to merger.
“The straw that broke the
camel’s back” was Lexington
becoming the largest city in the
state, said Tim Ritchie, president
and CEO of McWane Science
Center. Ritchie is a Louisville native who lived in the city during
the last debate over merger. “It
sounds like a minor thing,” he
said, “but Louisville has a very
strong sense of civic pride.”
Louisville also had three-term
former mayor Jerry Abramson
to push for merger. The popular Abramson was then elected
as the first mayor of Louisville
Metro, with nearly 74 percent of
the vote.
Louisville Metro resembles Birmingham-Jefferson
County in population.
But David Adkisson, former head of the Birmingham Regional Chamber of Commerce, said that he discouraged the chamber from picking Louisville for one
of its benchmark city visits.
“I didn’t think a merger was feasible for Birmingham,” Adkisson said in a phone interview from Frankfort, Ky., where he is president and CEO of the Kentucky
Chamber of Commerce. “It takes a special constellation
of stars to do it. Birmingham, because of its overlay of
racial history and also many separate school districts
(in Jefferson County), doesn’t have that.”
In contrast, the Louisville and Jefferson County, Ky.,
schools merged in 1975.
“That set in motion the whole mind-set that made
merger possible,” Ritchie said.
Another help for Louisville may have been its longer
history and greater sense of place than Birmingham,
said Ritchie.
The town of Louisville and the county of Jefferson
were both created by the Commonwealth of Virginia in
1780, and Louisville incorporated as a city in 1828. Birmingham was founded in 1871.
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Out of 27 Southern metro areas, Birmingham-Hoover ranks:
11th 19th
15th
far behind metro areas
such as Memphis,
Nashville and Charlotte.
with an average of 4,763
crimes per 100,000
residents each year.
in violent
crimes,
in property
crimes,
for all major
crimes,
behind the metro areas
of Mobile, Montgomery
and Huntsville.
But with more than 600 homicides in the city of Birmingham since 2000,
urban violence
DRIVES crime rate
NEWS STAFF/SAMANTHA CLEMENS
Birmingham’s West Precinct is the most violent in the city. Officers Dontrell McCray, Terrance McKee, Charles Scheonvogel and Derrick Calvin go
through notes at shift change last week as they prepare to head out on patrol. Since Jan. 1, 2000, 264 people have been slain in the West Precinct;
there were 406 violent crimes reported in the precinct from January through May this year.
Other cities try
different tactics
LIFE IN West End
Bullets mark
epicenter of city’s
violent crime
By CAROL ROBINSON
News staff writer
The playground for Stevin Gardner’s children lies between a burgundy Chrysler and
a red Toyota, a patch of ragged asphalt about
15 to 20 feet square.
It holds a bright yellow toy car, a Fisher
Price seesaw and a plastic slide that slopes
down to a backed-up sewer grate that
spawns mosquitoes and flies.
But that’s not the worst part.
That comes when gunfire interrupts
child’s play.
“They know to run,” Gardner said of his
kids, ages 9 and 5. “They know to stay close
to the wall because, around here, you’re running for your life.”
Like many at his apartment complex in
the 1200 block of Tuscaloosa Avenue in Birmingham’s West End, Gardner said the echo
of gunshots and the threat of violence are
commonplace.
“It’s war, baby. It’s Iraq. It’s Beirut,” Gardner said. “There ain’t no fear; that’s life.”
By JEFF HANSEN
News staff writer
E
ach year when FBI statistics are released, Birmingham is laid bare as
one of America’s most murderous cities.
But in an age when people commonly live in one county and
work in another, crossing municipal boundaries many times each
day, what is the real picture of crime in metropolitan Birmingham-
Hoover?
A Birmingham News analysis of federal crime statistics for 27 metro areas
across the Deep South shows that Birmingham-Hoover ranked:
11th in violent crimes, with an average of 568 incidents each year per
100,000 people, far behind such metro areas as Memphis, Nashville and Charlotte.
19th in property crimes, with an average of 4,195 incidents per 100,000
people, behind the Alabama metro areas of Mobile, Montgomery and Huntsville.
15th for all major crimes, with an average of 4,763 crimes per 100,000
residents each year.
Metro Birmingham led the South in no single category of crime — not even
murders, where the Birmingham-Hoover average of 9.7 slayings each year per
100,000 residents ranked seventh, behind the metro areas of Richmond, Va.;
Jackson, Miss.; Memphis; Baton Rouge; Little Rock; and Mobile.
See WEST END | Page 13
P U B L I S H E D
See CRIME | Page 12
A U G U S T
5 ,
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BIRMINGHAM
AT A CROSSROADS
VIOLENT CRIMES
METROPOLITAN AREA
NEWS STAFF/SAMANTHA CLEMENS
Officer Wesley Robinson walks the intersection of 12th Street Southwest and Princeton Avenue last week after a car accident.
Robinson, who lives in the city, has been an officer in the West Precinct for eight years.
Other cities use different
methods that slash crime
CRIME
From Page 11
But those same FBI uniform crime statistics for
2003 through 2005, the most recent years available, also showed that it’s the city of Birmingham
— where killing has taken the lives of more than
600 people since 2000 — that bears the brunt of
the region’s crime woes.
The city has only 22 percent of the metro Birmingham-Hoover population, but has 55 percent
of all the violent crimes in the seven-county area
and 43 percent of all property crimes.
Across the South, only Atlanta and Richmond
have higher concentrations of metro-area crimes
in their central cities.
“That tells us there is a great deal of difference
between the city of Birmingham and the area surrounding it,” said John Sloan III, chairman of the
Department of Justice Sciences at the University
of Alabama at Birmingham. “Clearly Birmingham
is driving the bus.”
Hardest hit in this urban carnage are the
young — more than half the people killed in Birmingham since 2000 were between the ages of 15
and 30, according to a News analysis of murder
reports. While Birmingham’s overall murder rate
from 2000 to present was about 33 per 100,000
population, for people aged 20 to 24, it was more
than 75 per 100,000.
“Wow,” said David Kennedy of the John Jay
College of Criminal Justice in New York City when
told of Birmingham’s murder rate, “That’s a Baltimore, Detroit or Gary (Ind.) level.”
Terrible costs
Crime gnaws at the quality of life in the city of
Birmingham.
Nighttime gunfire brings fear to some Birmingham neighborhoods, and lives are changed
in heartbeats. This summer, 24-year-old Larry
Dowdell traded in a basketball scholarship to the
University of West Alabama for a prison uniform
as he was sentenced to life behind bars for grabbing a gun in a fit of anger two years ago during a
West End feud.
It was a textbook example, experts say, of how
one slight can lead to an escalating series of incidents among young men, ending in crime and
punishment in a culture where violence is seen as
a fact of life.
It began when Franchesta Morrow’s 19-yearold brother, Glenn, cursed at one of Dowdell’s
aunts. This escalated to a pistol-whipping of the
19-year-old, followed by a retaliatory drive-by
shooting that wounded Larry Dowdell’s brother
and cousin.
Dowdell grabbed a pistol and shot into the
Morrow apartment. He hit — and killed — 15year-old Franchesta as she ran to protect her
puppy named Friday. Such incidents don’t have
to escalate into gunfire, some experts say. Police
ings to plan how to target hot spots and deal with
emerging crime. Each precinct commander sets
targets and is responsible for results.
In New York, homicides dropped nearly 60
percent after this approach began.
Birmingham will upgrade
actually do have the power to cut certain types of
crime.
“The fact is, there are ways to address that
kind of problem,” said Kennedy, who helped pioneer a method to quell youth violence in Boston
in 1995-96. “And the ways turn out to be extraordinarily effective.
“The tragedy is that people don’t understand
they can actually solve these problems,” Kennedy
said. “And the costs of failing to solve them are
terrible also, including incredible arrest and imprisonment numbers.”
We love you but . . .
Thirty years ago, people believed police could
do little to cut crime. Today police and crime
experts in a growing number of cities say crime
rates can be slashed.
“There is much more optimism than there
was,” said Gary Cordner, a former police officer
and police chief who is dean of the College of
Justice and Safety at Eastern Kentucky University
and an expert in problem-oriented policing.
But Sloan, the UAB professor, said the Birmingham Police Department has not embraced
these new approaches.
“Compared to how other cities responded,
Birmingham has not responded in comparable
ways,” he said. “I would say to them, ‘Look, you
can’t keep doing it the way you’ve been doing it.’”
Here is what some cities are doing:
Kennedy has championed an approach
of focused deterrence, known as the “Boston
model” — a radical process that directly engages
young criminals. Young men who are thought to
be involved in groups that are violent or openly
selling drugs are “invited” to a meeting with law
enforcement, social services and members of the
men’s community. The invitation is made as a
condition of their parole or probation.
At the meeting, law enforcement tells them if
violence occurs, if the public sale of crack doesn’t
stop, law enforcement will hit them hard. Social
services offer help in finding work and other support. And members of the community, including
mothers and grandmothers, tell them, “We love
you but we won’t tolerate what you are doing
anymore.”
Using this approach in Boston, youth homicide dropped by two-thirds and citywide homicide by one-half. In High Point, N.C., an overt
drug market where 16 crack houses had operated
15 years shut almost overnight, according to Police Chief James Fealy.
Another approach, created by crime fighters
William Bratton and Jack Maple, formerly commissioner and deputy commissioner of the New
York Police Department, is known as the “New
York model.”
This is a business management model, where
police create up-to-the-minute, detailed crime
data that can be analyzed and mapped. They
then use the data in weekly accountability meet-
Birmingham can’t fully follow the New York
model because it lacks timely, accurate information. Its data system is more than 20 years old and
depends on a balky mainframe computer.
“The data is not easily accessible, not easily
retrieved, and it’s free-form entry, so clerical errors are not caught,” said Capt. Ray Tubbs, commander of the Birmingham Police Department’s
technology unit. “That’s just unacceptable in a
modern police environment.”
A pin map of crimes takes more than a week
to produce, Tubbs said.
Tubbs said that’s about to change.
The Police Department, supported by Birmingham Police Chief Annetta Nunn and a fortuitous major narcotics bust that allowed her to
provide $600,000 in matching funds for a grant
from the U.S. Department of Justice, is about to
buy the hardware and software to create a modern crime database.
“We’ll get up to date, almost minute by minute,” Tubbs said.
When the system is up in spring 2008, city police for the first time will have easily retrievable
and mappable data, 10 years after Bratton made
accountability and getting timely information
two of his key recommendations in a review of
the Birmingham Police Department. With the
data, the department can realign its nearly 60
beats, which were last changed more than a decade ago.
“It’s hugely important,” said Teresa Thorne, a
former Birmingham Police precinct captain who
now heads the City Action Partnership patrol
downtown. “If I don’t have the data, I don’t know
where to put people. If I have to rely on week-old
data, month-old data, year-old data, it’s a handicap to me. Imagine what it is to the Birmingham
Police Department.”
Chief Nunn said that Birmingham precinct
captains already have weekly meetings to talk
about crime trends and tactics, but lack the upto-date information.
“It will increase accountability for us,” she
said, “and the public will be able to see it also.”
And if other police departments in the metro
area create compatible databases, it would allow quicker coordination across city boundaries, such as the ring of thieves who recently were
stealing high-end stainless steel appliances on
Birmingham’s Red Mountain and in Mountain
Brook.
“We had suspects and they didn’t,” Nunn
said.
But the Birmingham police face other challenges, she said.
Demand on officers’ time is very high, with
more than 16,000 calls for service during a recent
week. Because of shortfalls in recruiting new officers to the police academy, Nunn has been
unable to fill vacancies for two captains, seven
lieutenants and 20 sergeants. And war in Iraq and
Afghanistan has meant 15 to 20 other officers are
absent while serving with the National Guard at
any given time.
Birmingham city residents cope with more
Memphis, Tenn.-Miss.-Ark.
Nashville-Davidson-Murfreesboro, Tenn.
Charleston-North Charleston, S.C.
Charlotte-Gastonia-Concord, N.C.-S.C.
Little Rock-North Little Rock, Ark.
Columbia, S.C.
Jacksonville, Fla.
Baton Rouge, La.
Greenville, S.C.
Chattanooga, Tenn.-Ga.
BIRMINGHAM-HOOVER
Pensacola-Ferry Pass-Brent, Fla.
Montgomery
Durham, N.C.
Winston-Salem, N.C.
Atlanta-Sandy Springs-Marietta, Ga.
Knoxville, Tenn.
Mobile
Greensboro-High Point, N.C.
Virginia Beach-Norfolk-Newport News, Va.-N.C.
Richmond, Va.
Huntsville
Jackson, Miss.
Lexington-Fayette, Ky.
Louisville-Jefferson Co., Ky.-Ind.
Augusta-Richmond Co., Ga.-S.C.
Raleigh-Cary, N.C.
VIOLENT CRIME
(RATE PER 100,000)
1,068
870.4
824.1
800.4
796.7
795.8
742.5
694.5
666.4
599.6
567.8
563.1
527.7
521.3
514.4
508.8
494.7
472.3
466.0
444.9
416.2
413.7
394.3
386.7
386.5
384.4
343.5
Source: Birmingham News analysis of three years of FBI
Uniform Crime Reporting Program data for 27 Deep
South metro areas (2003-05).
PROPERTY CRIMES
NEWS STAFF
PROPERTY CRIME
(RATE PER 100,000)
SIZE: 15p8 x 37p9
6,032
5,757
SLUG:
5,388
METROPOLITAN AREA
Memphis, Tenn.-Miss.-Ark.
Little Rock-North Little Rock, Ark.
Mobile
Montgomery
Charlotte-Gastonia-Concord, N.C.-S.C.
Baton Rouge, La.
Durham, N.C.
Chattanooga, Tenn.-Ga.
Greensboro-High Point, N.C.
Winston-Salem, N.C.
Jacksonville, Fla.
Columbia, S.C.
Charleston-North Charleston, S.C.
Augusta-Richmond Co., Ga.-S.C.
Huntsville
Nashville-Davidson-Murfreesboro, Tenn.
Jackson, Miss.
Atlanta-Sandy Springs-Marietta, Ga.
BIRMINGHAM-HOOVER
Knoxville, Tenn.
Greenville, S.C.
Virginia Beach-Norfolk-Newport News, Va.-N.C.
Richmond, Va.
Lexington-Fayette, Ky.
Louisville-Jefferson Co., Ky.-Ind.
Pensacola-Ferry Pass-Brent, Fla.
Raleigh-Cary, N.C.
5,362
5,284
5,019
4,853
4,759
4,693
4,677
4,523
4,480
4,344
4,335
4,277
4,261
4,254
4,220
4,195
3,916
3,896
3,675
3,563
3,526
3,433
3,210
3,140
Source: Birmingham News analysis of three years of FBI
Uniform Crime Reporting Program data for 27 Deep South
metro areas (2003-05).
NEWS STAFF
than a plague of youth killing.
They live with higher rates of many types of
crime compared with metro-area residents outside Birmingham. Nunn says her officers face
greater challenges than any other force in Alabama.
Among the central cities of the 25 largest
metro areas in the Deep South, the city of Birmingham ranked fifth in the violent crime rate
(murder, rape, robbery and assault) during
2003-05, behind Atlanta, Memphis, Little Rock
and Nashville, according to The News’ analysis
of FBI crime reports. And the city ranked fourth
in the property crime rate (burglary, larceny,
motor vehicle theft), behind Little Rock, Chattanooga and Memphis.
E-MAIL: [email protected]
MSA ANNUAL CRIME RATE PER 100,000 PEOPLE
MURDER AND NONNEGLIGENT MANSLAUGHTER FORCIBLE RAPE
Richmond, Va.
12.6 Jackson
Jackson, Miss.
12.3 Augusta
Memphis, Tenn.-Miss.-Ark.
12.0 Charleston
Baton Rouge, La.
10.4 Memphis
Little Rock-North Little Rock, Ark.
10.0 Little Rock
Mobile
9.8 Montgomery
BIRMINGHAM-HOOVER
9.7 Nashville
Jacksonville, Fla.
8.9 Pensacola
Montgomery
8.5 BIRMINGHAM
Durham, N.C.
8.5 Columbia
Virginia Beach-Norfolk-Newport News, Va.-N.C. 8.1 Lexington
Atlanta-Sandy Springs-Marietta, Ga.
7.9 Greenville
Charlotte-Gastonia-Concord, N.C.-S.C.
7.3 Mobile
Greensboro-High Point, N.C.
7.3 Charlotte
Columbia, S.C.
7.3 Winston-Salem
Nashville-Davidson-Murfreesboro, Tenn.
7.2 Huntsville
Charleston-North Charleston, S.C.
6.8 Chattanooga
Louisville-Jefferson Co., Ky.-Ind.
6.2 Virginia Beach
Greenville, S.C.
6.1 Knoxville
Augusta-Richmond Co., Ga.-S.C.
6.0 Baton Rouge
Chattanooga, Tenn.-Ga.
5.8 Durham
Knoxville, Tenn.
5.6 Louisville
Huntsville
5.6 Greensboro
Winston-Salem, N.C.
5.4 Atlanta
Lexington-Fayette, Ky.
4.6 Jacksonville
Pensacola-Ferry Pass-Brent, Fla.
3.7 Richmond
Raleigh-Cary, N.C.
3.6 Raleigh
51.3
49.0
48.1
47.2
46.9
46.5
45.3
42.5
42.0
41.9
40.8
39.6
38.2
37.3
37.1
37.0
34.6
32.7
32.1
31.7
28.0
26.4
25.6
25.5
25.2
24.0
20.3
ROBBERY
Memphis
Charlotte
Montgomery
Durham
Mobile
BIRMINGHAM
Jacksonville
Atlanta
Little Rock
Nashville
Baton Rouge
Charleston
Greensboro
Jackson
Richmond.
Virginia Beach
Louisville
Columbia
Lexington
Winston-Salem
Huntsville
Augusta
Chattanooga
Raleigh
Knoxville
Greenville
Pensacola
370
276
232
219
215
207
206
204
193
188
186
181
178
176
175
173
165
163
150
147
134
131
116
115
108
104
98
AGGRAVATED ASSAULT
Memphis
639
Nashville
630
Charleston
588
Columbia
583
Little Rock
547
Greenville
517
Jacksonville
502
Charlotte
480
Baton Rouge
467
Chattanooga
444
Pensacola
419
Knoxville
349
Winston-Salem
325
BIRMINGHAM
309
Atlanta
271
Durham
265
Greensboro
255
Montgomery
241
Huntsville
237
Virginia Beach
232
Mobile
210
Raleigh
204
Richmond.
204
Augusta
198
Lexington
191
Louisville
189
Jackson
155
Source: Birmingham News analysis of three years of FBI Uniform Crime Reporting Program data for Deep South metro areas (2003-05).
BURGLARY
Memphis
Mobile
Montgomery
Winston-Salem
Charlotte
Little Rock
Greensboro
Durham
Jackson
Baton Rouge
BIRMINGHAM
Jacksonville
Greenville
Atlanta
Chattanooga
Knoxville
Huntsville
Charleston
Columbia
Augusta
Louisville
Nashville
Pensacola
Raleigh
Lexington
Richmond.
Virginia Beach
1,676
1,421
1,411
1,347
1,344
1,320
1,258
1,256
1,134
1,087
1,033
954
950
942
928
925
920
900
882
877
846
815
811
783
718
632
582
LARCENY-THEFT
Little Rock
Memphis
Baton Rouge
Mobile
Montgomery
Chattanooga
Charlotte
Durham
Columbia
Jacksonville
Greensboro
Nashville
Augusta
Winston-Salem
Huntsville
Charleston
Virginia Beach
BIRMINGHAM
Atlanta
Greenville
Knoxville
Lexington
Jackson
Richmond.
Louisville
Pensacola
Raleigh
4,039
3,561
3,544
3,519
3,488
3,386
3,313
3,284
3,191
3,102
3,098
3,031
3,010
2,995
2,984
2,969
2,790
2,747
2,644
2,621
2,613
2,569
2,552
2,533
2,221
2,179
2,125
MOTOR VEHICLE THEFT
Memphis
796
Atlanta
635
Charlotte
627
Jackson
569
Charleston
475
Jacksonville
466
Montgomery
462
Mobile
448
Augusta
448
Chattanooga
445
BIRMINGHAM
416
Nashville
415
Columbia
407
Richmond.
399
Little Rock
398
Baton Rouge
388
Knoxville
378
Huntsville
374
Louisville
366
Greensboro
337
Winston-Salem
335
Greenville
325
Durham
314
Virginia Beach
303
Lexington
240
Raleigh
232
Pensacola
221
NEWS STAFF
T
BIRMINGHAM
WEST END
From Page 11
Some improvement
The neighborhood president agreed the situation has improved some. In the early 1990s it
was not uncommon to see people walking up
and down Tuscaloosa, brandishing weapons
with no attempts to conceal them.
“It’d be easy to go by statistics and say that this
is a very bad place to live and we’ve had a black
eye for so long,” Aaron said. “Crime in West End
today is the lowest it’s been in a very long time.
We feel the presence of God at this time.”
Still, he said, gunfire ranks alongside speeding
as the top two concerns among his constituents.
“The elderly sometimes shoot just to let people
know they got a gun,” Aaron said. “Sometimes
they’ll go in the backyard and just fire off.” Sometimes, he said, the gunfire is simply someone in
the woods by the railroad tracks testing out a
new weapon that was just traded for crack.
“When you hear a gunshot like that, it’s not
so bad as when you hear it right behind your
house,” Aaron said. “The reality is if you hear a
gunshot so close to your house you say, ‘Oh, God,
I hope that doesn’t come through my window.’”
And there’s no way to predict when it will
erupt.
“Most of the time, I don’t think about it until
it happens,” said 66-year-old Beatrice Walters, a
retired Birmingham City Schools food services
manager. “You just never know when you’ve got
to run.”
On most days, residents of both apartment
complexes spend much of their time sitting outside, gathered on a front porch or the steps.
“This is our activity, sitting here,” said Jessica
Hudson, 36, who on a recent Friday joined Deborah Gardner and Velma Davis in their folding
chairs while they flipped through home decorating magazines and a Southern Living cookbook.
Hudson moved into the building several
months ago to care for her father-in-law, 73year-old Pop, who has dementia. She has four
children, ages 19, 16, 15 and 14.
B
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‘When you hear the
crack of a bullet …’
Gardner’s mother, 59-year-old Deborah Gardner, perhaps says it best: “You just get used to it,
like living next to train tracks.”
Though violence is down in Birmingham,
it’s far from gone. Despite across-the-board
decreases in crime last year, the city remained
among the roughest cities in America — ranked
fourth in the nation in murders, and 22nd in violent crimes, according to the FBI.
So far this year, 48 people have been murdered. Through May, 548 people were assaulted;
96 women reported being raped; and at least
9,362 others were victimized through robberies
and thefts.
And those are just the actual victims. The fallout from crime stretches beyond those named
on police incident reports, coroner’s logs and
stat sheets.
It reaches out and grabs hold of almost everyone who lives near it and with it daily. No city or
neighborhood is immune, but some fare worse
than others.
And that means it grabs West End with a
deadly grip. Some streets remain relatively unaffected, but the violence occurs in highly concentrated and sometimes deadly pockets. It reaches
into places such as the 1200 block of Tuscaloosa
Avenue and squeezes hard.
There is often gunfire. There is always fear in
a community long known as one of the hottest of
Birmingham’s crime hot spots.
Keith Aaron, president of the Arlington-West
End Neighborhood Association, pulled from the
Scripture, Psalm 23, when talking about parts of
his community.
“Sometimes this is like the valley of the shadow of death. You think your life could be on the
line,” Aaron said. “I’m not trying to make this
seem like it could be hell, or the most gloomiest place. A lot of changes are happening in West
End.
“But when you hear the crack of a bullet so
close to you, that does make you think you could
lose your life,” he said. “That’s pretty scary.”
Birmingham Police Officer Terry Chandler
patrols Beat 429, which includes West End. According to police department statistics, there
were 214 reports of gunfire on Chandler’s beat
from January through May, and those are just the
times someone called police.
In all, officers responded to 4,636 calls on that
beat in the first five months of the year. In June,
Chandler alone answered 121 calls
Police and residents acknowledge Chandler’s
beat, which he has patrolled since January 2006,
is among the most violent neighborhoods in
metropolitan Birmingham. It is part of the city of
Birmingham’s West Precinct, where 264 people
have been slain since Jan. 1, 2000, and 406 violent crimes were reported from January through
May of this year.
Like most officers familiar with the area,
Chandler says the 1200 block of Tuscaloosa Avenue keeps police busy.
There are a barber shop, a beauty shop, a corner store and two apartment complexes on that
one stretch. It was in one of those complexes
that 15-year-old Franchesta Morrow was shot to
death in 2005 in her Tuscaloosa Avenue apartment, where she was caught in the gunfire of a
neighborhood argument.
“It’s a whole lot quieter out here than, say,
eight years ago,” Chandler said. “Whenever they
do decide to feud with each other, they keep you
busy, they really do.”
He and other officers have whittled down the
crime numbers, he said, by enforcing laws ranging from loitering to drug violations. Many of the
problems stem from drugs, he said, and some
major dealers have been taken off the streets.
“We’ve come a long way in the past year and
a half,” he said. “When I first got here, nobody
wanted this beat. Now people are asking for it.”
h e
NEWS STAFF/BERNARD TRONCALE
A ragged patch of asphalt serves as a makeshift playground for children in an
apartment building in the 1200 block of Tuscaloosa Avenue. When gunfire breaks out,
the children know to stay low and get close to the wall.
Ezzudin Shaibi works from behind thick, bullet-proof glass at Lil’ Joes market on
Tuscaloosa Avenue. He sells bread, milk and other staples, but won’t sell beer or liquor
in hopes of cutting down on problems. “Sometimes I see them gathering out there, I
close,” Shaibi said. “I close in here and go out the back.”
“They don’t stay here,” Hudson said. “I don’t
have them come over here because of the stuff.”
Walters, too, spends time on the ground-level
front porch of her apartment that faces Tuscaloosa Avenue.
“Sometimes it’s pretty rough, and you deal
with it,” she said. “The only thing I worry about
is dodging bullets.
“If I’m in the front room, I fall to the floor,” she
said. “Sometimes every day. Sometimes twice a
week.
“I stay to myself, I tend to my own business,”
she said. “I see, but I don’t see. I hear, but I don’t
hear. That’s why I’ve been able to stay here so
long.”
Work-related problems
Walters moved into her apartment in 1977
when it was new, and filled with working people. She said the onset of Section 8 housing
— government-subsidized housing for low-income families and individuals — has brought
an increase in trouble.
Many of those who use Section 8 vouchers
have come from public-housing communities,
Aaron said, and the transition is difficult. “They
haven’t been trained to live in neighborhoods
and houses,” she said. “They haven’t learned
to respect that people have to go to work in the
morning. They stay up late and there’s noise.
That can create heated problems.”
Residents and police cite a lack of work as a
major contributor to the problems in the neighborhood.
“If you’re just hanging out, you’re looking for
trouble,” Officer Chandler said. “I can’t tell you
how many times a month I write ‘unemployed’
on an incident report. And these are healthy
men and women. Work’s just not their thing.”
“There’s no jobs out here,” Deborah Gardner
said. “Eighty-five percent of the people have
(criminal) records. If they’re hiring, they’re not
going to hire someone with a record.”
Employment is the answer, she said. “It’s just
not happening.”
Even with the frequent gunfire, and group
fights at least once a week, the residents of Tuscaloosa Avenue say it’s not all bad.
“Every where you go, it’s a song about Tuscaloosa Avenue,” Walters said. Get rid of the
apartment complex across the street, she said,
and “Tuscaloosa Avenue would be back in business.”
Deborah Gardner said the reality doesn’t live
up to the reputation. “If my mother was living,
she wouldn’t
come here,” Gardner said with a
“
smile. And she only lived several blocks down
the road. It’s hearsay.”
Wendell Davidson, 39, opened his barber
shop on Tuscaloosa Avenue a year ago. He says
he has no concerns about his safety, but he does
keep the door to his shop locked at all times.
“It keeps somebody from trying to rob me,
for real,” Davidson said.
It’s much the same story at Lil’ Joes convenience store. “We like the neighborhood,” said
Ezzudin Shaibi, who works behind bullet-proof
glass.
The store doesn’t sell beer or liquor, in an effort to cut down on loitering. Instead it peddles
milk and bread and other items aimed at attracting families as customers.
“I like quiet,” he said. “Sometimes I see
them gathering out there, I close. I close in here
and go out the back. It makes problems I don’t
need.”
10 years on Tuscaloosa
Scottie King, 40, said it’s all about what you’re
used to. He has lived in his Tuscaloosa Avenue
apartment for 10 years with his wife, Constance
Morris. He’s a bricklayer, and travels much of the
time. She’s a housekeeper in Mountain Brook.
King said he was a member of the Disciples
gang in the late 1980s when gang violence was
rampant amid the height of the crack cocaine
epidemic in Birmingham and the accompanying
turf wars. Gunshot wounds to both of his legs,
he said, ended his gang-banging ways. He said
he’s spent several stints in prison, but won’t talk
about the nature of his crimes.
That former lifestyle, he said, is why the
sound of gunfire doesn’t bother him. He said he
hears shots probably every other night, sometimes around dusk and sometimes in the predawn hours.
“I get up when they get through shooting and
go look, make sure there ain’t nobody laying on
the ground,” King said.
King said both he and his wife spend much
of their time away from their apartment. When
they are home, they run a makeshift snack shop
there, peddling bubble gum, candy and oversized pickles to the neighborhood kids. His wife
spends a considerable amount of time tending
to the brightly colored petunias lining a quarter
of the upstairs walkway.
He relies on his Muslim faith, and she on her
Christianity, to see them through the woes surrounding them.
“I ain’t scared. I’m not saying it doesn’t concern me, but you’ve got to go on,” King said. “If
not, you’re going to be cramped up in your house
scared. I ain’t fixin’ to let them run me off.”
E-MAIL: [email protected]
THE BOSTON MODEL
Changing behavior
can change pattern
While at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government, David Kennedy saw that ordinary law
enforcement and prevention were not cutting
the rate of killings or stopping the public sale of
illegal drugs in crack areas.
“We could put 100 times more gang members in prison, or fund 100 times the number of
prevention programs, and that would not work
either,” he testified to a U.S. House Judiciary
Committee last winter.
High levels of violence are concentrated in
poor, predominantly minority neighborhoods,
Kennedy said. Most victims and perpetrators are
young men, and the violence stems from small
groups (five to 20 people) of extremely active offenders.
“They recognize each other as groups,” Kennedy said, “and almost all the drug and gun activity is driven by these groups.”
Kennedy found nearly all the violence involved respect or disrespect issues, such as when
one young man hits on the girlfriend of another
at a club. Individual clashes could escalate to a
feud between groups or a vendetta.
This pattern, Kennedy said, was hard to see
and was not revealed by normal crime reports.
“It’s always the case that violence comes back
to these groups,” he said. “So if you can change
the behavior of these groups, you change the
violence pattern.
“Surprisingly, it turns out to be easy to change
the behavior of the groups,” he said, if a strong
local partnership of law enforcement, social
services and community activists put the right
pressure on the young men through meetings.
Law enforcement identifies the groups and
individuals in them. Since many of the individuals turn out to be on parole or probation, that
can be used to force two members from each
group to come to a 1½-hour meeting.
There, law enforcement — the police, federal
prosecutors, local prosecutors, DEA, FBI, ATF
— gives a tough message, “You are here because
you have been identified as a violent member of
the community,” Kennedy said. “When you go
home, you need to communicate to your group
what we tell you.”
Police tell them the entire group will be held
responsible for future violence. After the next
homicide, police will figure out the responsible
group and move against every member, using
every lever possible, from outstanding warrants
and parole or probation violations to unregistered cars or unpaid child support.
At the meeting, social service people tell the
members that they can help with job training
or other support. Finally, community members
— mothers, grandmothers, older ex-offenders,
street ministers — say the community won’t tolerate what the members are doing, and there’s
no excuse for the violence.
“You’re better than this, we’ll help you,” the
young men are told by community members.
“But this violence is utterly unacceptable.”
If there is another killing, law enforcement
follows through with its threats and those members become poster children for the violenceprevention effort.
“The experience across the county?” Kennedy said. “Very quickly the streets understand it,
and the killing drops. All you need to do is keep
that promise.”
For young men, peer pressure changes from
using violence if disrespected to insisting there
not be violence if someone is disrespected.
“It gives guys on the street an honorable way
out from an intolerable situation, without losing
face,” Kennedy said.
Kennedy’s approach has been tested in
places such as Minneapolis; Indianapolis; Richmond, Va.; High Point, Winston-Salem and Raleigh, N.C.; Nassau and Westchester counties in
New York; and Chicago. It is about to be tried in
Cincinnati.
In Minneapolis in 1996-97, summertime homicides dropped from 32 to eight. In Indianapolis, city-wide homicides dropped 40 percent, and
robberies and gun assaults in its most dangerous
neighborhood dropped 49 percent. In Stockton, Calif., homicide among Hispanic gangs fell
three-quarters. In Rochester, N.Y., gang violence
fell by two-thirds from 2004 to 2005.
Jeff Hansen
THE NEW YORK MODEL
Police target hot spots
found via timely data
In the New York model, known in the policing
world as “compstat” (for computer or comparative statistics), police collect, analyze and map
crime data and other police performance measures, and then hold police managers accountable for results as measured by the data.
Accurate and timely data tells when, where,
how and by whom a crime has been committed.
Then a precinct can design tactics to deal with a
problem, carry out the plan and assess results.
Charlotte is an example of a Southern city
that follows the New York model, said Wesley
Skogan, professor at the Institute for Policy Research at Northwestern University in Evanston,
Ill.
“In its purest form, it has to do with pushing
responsibility down in the organization,” Skogan said. “You can set goals, be responsible. It
puts managers on the spot.”
Such data also allows problem-oriented policing.
In Chicago in 1999-2000, police discovered
an emerging hot spot of airbag thefts in a small
geographic area and then targeted the thefts.
In Charlotte, Gary Cordner of Eastern Kentucky University said, police found increasing thefts at home-construction sites. Analysis
showed only certain construction companies
had thefts. It turned out those companies took
delivery of appliances before they had locks on
the doors of the new homes, a problem that police quickly fixed.
Jeff Hansen
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BIRMINGHAM
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CAN THESE
NEIGHBORHOODS
BE SAVED?
NEWS STAFF/LINDA STELTER
Carver Apartments in the 6000 block of First Avenue South have burned several times and now are a magnet for problems in South Woodlawn.
Takeshia and Demetrius Coates walk past the blighted eyesore they must live with every day.
The core of metro Birmingham suffers slow-motion destruction.
When heavy industry faded, neighborhoods followed.
Across the Jones Valley, businesses boarded up, people moved
to the suburbs, thousands of homes were left to decay.
It leaves everyone with a complex problem:
How can we fight urban blight?
URBAN BLIGHT
By THOMAS SPENCER
Poverty, abandoned properties and dilapidated
housing are key factors of blight in metropolitan
Birmingham-Hoover's urban core.
Poverty
Forty-nine Jefferson County
census tracts have at least
20 percent of the
population living below
the poverty line.
All are in Jones
Valley; most
are in
Birmingham.
Birmingham
city limits
20
59
65
59
20
280
459
Census
tracts
Abandoned property
Of 8,595 Jefferson County
properties that have been
in the hands of the state
for delinquent taxes
since at least 2005,
many of them
abandoned,
79 percent are
in industrial
20
Jones Valley.
59
65
59
20
280
Each dot
represents one
property
459
Dilapidated housing
Of 20,997 Jefferson County
homes that are rated
“under 50 percent good”
by the county Board
of Equalization, 78
percent are in
Jones Valley.
20
59
65
59
20
280
459
Each dot
represents one
property
News staff writer
Blight is shattering John Tolbert’s dream.
Tolbert, 59, bought his home in South Woodlawn three
years ago, hoping to help restore the working-class neighborhood he recalled from childhood.
He renovated the house, which had been stripped of its
copper, and moved in with his wife and mother-in-law.
Tolbert and three of his
neighbors on Tennessee Avenue work hard to keep their
homes nice — making repairs,
tending lawns, planting flowers.
But they cannot fight a tide
of urban blight: Two houses
stand vacant and rotting. Two
others were torn down after
owners moved or died. Empty
lots sprout weeds and garbage.
Traffic screams past on Interstate 20, which cuts through
where 10 homes once stood.
Richard Johnson works to keep his home and yard
Drug dealers gather in an alley
tidy, even though a house across Georgia Road is
after dark.
boarded up and decaying.
Tolbert’s mother-in-law
stays shut inside, behind burglar bars and a security door. “She feels like she is in jail.”
Burglars have broken into Tolbert’s house eight times.
Now he is giving up and moving to Center Point.
Tennessee Avenue is a snapshot of slow-motion destruction — house by house, block by block — eating away at the
old industrial core of metropolitan Birmingham’s Jones Valley.
Source: U.S. Census Bureau, State of Alabama,
NEWS STAFF
Jefferson County Board of Equalization.
P U B L I S H E D
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The blight in our midst
BLIGHT
From Page 14
The strip of older communities from Tarrant
to Bessemer was a product of the industrial age,
built for easy access to railroads, iron ore and
coal. But as the age of steel waned, the economy
changed — manufacturing jobs dwindled and
people started moving out. Today, Jones Valley
accounts for:
78 percent of the 20,997 homes in Jefferson
County that are considered less than 50 percent
good by the county Board of Equalization. Sixty
percent of them lie within the city of Birmingham, where 1 in 5 homes is in poor condition.
79 percent of the 8,595 properties in Jefferson County that have been in the hands of the
state — many of them essentially abandoned
by owners with property taxes unpaid — since
at least 2005. Sixty-eight percent are in Birmingham.
Since its peak as the industrial capital of the
South, the city of Birmingham has lost a third of its
population, falling from 340,887 in 1960 to about
231,000 today, according to the latest census estimates. The population decline tracked the collapse
of industrial employment in Alabama’s largest city:
In 1960, manufacturing represented 27 percent of
the jobs in Birmingham; today, 6 percent.
The exodus created a broken real estate market in depressed neighborhoods where sellers
outnumber buyers — and a city where thousands
of houses and apartments were left to decay.
What’s more, the Regional Planning Commission of Greater Birmingham predicts urban blight
will continue to swell. The commission projects
that by 2030 the number of households will decrease by 17 percent in East Lake and Woodlawn,
22 percent in the neighborhoods around the airport, 27 percent in North Birmingham, 13 percent
in Pratt City and Ensley, and 17 percent in West
End.
Since 1990, the city of Birmingham has demolished 7,948 single-family houses. This year, the city
plans to spend $750,000 tearing down 423 more.
Even at that pace, a backlog of more than 200
homes will remain. And the list keeps growing.
Inspectors investigate 1,200 new complaints a
year. The inspections initiate a protracted process
that often ends with the property being boarded
up, decaying to a point of danger and, eventually,
getting demolished.
Even when they’re gone, they’re a drain: The
city spends $2 million a year cutting vacant lots.
Meanwhile, decaying houses and overgrown
lots cost residents who stay. A study in Philadelphia found that a single abandoned property
bleeds $7,627 out of the value of neighboring
homes.
Josephine Hardie, 67, sees that in her threebedroom, one-bath home on Tennessee Avenue.
The retired Hayes High algebra teacher has lived
there since she was 6, when her father, a cook on
the Silver Comet passenger train, bought it.
Years ago, she wanted to move to Roebuck, but
stayed to care for her mother. Today, she doubts
she could sell the home for its assessed value of
$54,000. With the condition of her neighborhood,
she said, “It’s not worth that.”
NEWS STAFF/LINDA STELTER
John Tolbert renovated his Tennessee Avenue house three years ago, but is being chased from South Woodlawn by persistent crime
problems. He recalls the neighborhood as vibrant in his childhood, but says Interstate 20, in the background, cut through in the 1960s
and started its decline.
is hoped, will stimulate neighbors to fix up their
properties and entice private builders.
“We try to give them that little push to create
the momentum to turn it around,” Moore said.
The old Carver High School site in Collegeville, vacant nine years now, is being considered
for affordable housing.
Additionally, there is a growing awareness of
the need to target efforts in areas adjacent to districts where revitalization is already occurring.
Pockets of renovation
A NEW FUTURE FOR DOWNTOWN WOODLAWN?
David Fleming, executive director of
Main Street Birmingham, doesn’t expect Woodlawn to be what it was in
the 1950s — a retail hub with department, drug and grocery stores. But he
hopes it can be something else — a
creative crossroads.
Main Street, a revitalization agency
funded by the city of Birmingham and
foundations, has renovated a former
BellSouth building with offices for itself and has thus far attracted two tenants — an appraiser and American Idol
Ruben Studdard.
Across the street, record producer and
UAB professor of music Henry Panion
turned a decaying building into Audiostate 55 Studios, a professional record-
The vacancy chain
For Mark LaGory, a sociologist at the University of Alabama at Birmingham, Woodlawn offers a case study in the deterioration of inner-city
communities. People who’ve left Birmingham,
LaGory said, often drive through their childhood
neighborhoods and shake their heads.
“They say, ‘Isn’t it a shame what happened
to the neighborhood?’” LaGory said. “Well, it is
inevitable what happened to the neighborhood.
That is the way our system works.”
The government effectively subsidizes new
home construction by giving federal backing to
the mortgage industry and giving a tax deduction for mortgage interest, he said. That leads
to new and better housing, but puts pressure
on older, less valuable homes. “For every house
built, another house below it tends to go vacant.
That creates a vacancy chain.”
Those who can’t afford to move, LaGory said,
stay and watch the neighborhood depopulate.
The downward spiral discourages people from
maintaining their housing.
“Particularly since most of them don’t have
a lot, why would they invest in something they
know doesn’t appreciate?” LaGory said.
Vacating owners often rent their former
homes, bringing in people who aren’t invested
in the neighborhood. As the amount of rent they
can charge declines, it makes less and less economic sense to make repairs.
And those who stay are less likely to have the
financial means to make repairs. According to
a Birmingham News analysis of Census Bureau
data for the seven-county Birmingham-Hoover
metro area, 10 census tracts in Jefferson County
had more than 40 percent of residents living in
poverty. Nine of those tracts lie in Birmingham;
the other is in Bessemer.
Jefferson County has more people living in
poverty than all the Black Belt counties of Alabama combined.
Political vision lacking
Metro Birmingham’s oldest cities, forged at a
time when steelmaking was king, face massive
challenges — abandoned industrial sites, shuttered commercial buildings, vacant houses, gutted apartments, intense poverty.
Dealing with those issues is no easy task. State
law makes it difficult to get abandoned properties back into productive use. And political lead-
ers have no shared vision on how to grapple with
blight or turn around decaying neighborhoods.
Alabama’s Department of Revenue makes
no effort to sell abandoned properties to buyers wanting to get them back on the tax rolls.
State laws designed to protect property owners
complicate the sale of abandoned properties. A
potential buyer must wait at least six years to get
clear title.
In a study conducted for Harvard’s Kennedy
School of Government, author Mary Elizabeth
Evans concluded Alabama’s process for acquiring those properties is one of the longest in the
country. In other states, cities have dealt with vacant properties by creating land banks that have
authority to acquire properties, clear titles and
liens, and get them into the hands of new owners.
While a land bank and reform of the Alabama
tax foreclosure system have been talked about
for years, such an effort would require the cooperation of the city, county and state — and no coalition has successfully united to push reform.
Though Birmingham and Jefferson County
spend federal money combating blight, repairing deteriorating housing and building affordable housing, neither the city, the county nor the
state of Alabama puts its own tax dollars into the
effort.
Across the country, 43 states have established
housing trust funds, as have nearly 600 cities and
counties, according to the National Housing
Trust.
Charlotte, for example, gets about the same
federal support for housing as Birmingham,
ing studio that also offers music education for neighborhood kids. Metal
worker Major Harris has a space at the
corner of First Avenue South.
With rents in downtown Birmingham
and other areas climbing, “Woodlawn
can house the working artist,” Fleming
said.
The activity attracted developer Chris
Boehm, who has bought four buildings
in Woodlawn in recent years. He hopes
to bring a meat-and-three restaurant
to the area. But such an effort requires
a committed partnership, Boehm said,
involving investors and businesses willing to take a chance, and the city willing to back the project.
Thomas Spencer
around $13 million a year. But that city’s own
housing trust fund provides $7.75 million a year
to revive neighborhoods. Additional money for
housing redevelopment is available through the
state-funded North Carolina Housing Finance
Agency and a nonprofit, public-private partnership, the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Housing Partnership Inc.
Habitat’s efforts
For decades, the prevailing view of blight was
that it was a natural part of the aging process of
cities. But in recent years, governments, developers and nonprofits have learned from previous mistakes and are trying new approaches.
Because of delays with Alabama’s tax foreclosure system and the difficulty in finding available
property, nonprofit developers such as Habitat
for Humanity built where they could find lots.
But single, in-fill houses in neighborhoods on
the decline turned out to be poor investments.
Habitat had to foreclose on two houses built in
Woodlawn because the owners didn’t want to
stay.
That experience led to a change of approach,
said Charles T. Moore, the president and CEO of
Habitat for Humanity of Greater Birmingham.
Habitat has formed a partnership with the city of
Birmingham to identify tracts large enough for
multiple houses.
The past two summers, Habitat has blitz-built
miniature neighborhoods at the sites of Baker
and Fairview schools in Ensley, former Birmingham schools provided by the city. The activity, it
Those involved in revitalization are heartened
by trends driving people back into certain parts of
the city.
Traffic congestion is causing some to reconsider buying houses in distant suburbs. The continued growth of UAB is spurring demand for intown housing. To try to keep pace, the city center
has pockets of renovation — such as the lofts in
downtown Birmingham — and new construction. And property values are surging in Glen Iris
and other Southside neighborhoods. The trends
are also driving redevelopment efforts in areas
of Avondale that had fallen prey to blight and in
North Crestwood.
Both areas border Woodlawn and are a source
of hope that blight is not the inevitable fate of older neighborhoods.
Just across the train tracks from Woodlawn, in
the North Crestwood neighborhood, new houses
selling for more than $200,000 sit on a two-acre
site that was once the burned-out and abandoned
Woodlawn Infirmary. After a 2002 fire, the city demolished the infirmary and helped the developer
with sewer work to make the site suitable for 12
homes. The houses are being built in the Craftsman bungalow style to match the architecture of
the surrounding neighborhood.
Christopher Jones, the owner and developer of
Crest Parc, saw the potential to turn the blighted
block around, despite its view of railroad tracks
and proximity to struggling Woodlawn.
“I talked to some bankers who thought I was
crazy,” Jones said.
Eighteen months into marketing the project,
seven of the houses have been sold and are occupied. Two are under construction and three
remain to be built. Perhaps more important than
the dollars-and-cents investment is the tight-knit
community that has formed, in which residents
constantly monitor and demand action when
crime, trash or unkempt property becomes a
problem.
Living across the street from Crest Parc, longtime resident Lois Mahand was one of the first
blacks to move into the neighborhood 23 years
ago. She is pleased to see the improvements.
North Crestwood, she said, never declined to
the extent other neighborhoods have because
people didn’t move out.
“This neighborhood has not done the white
flight,” she said. “You have progressive, openminded people here. I think that is what you have
to have.”
Even though crime and blight are chasing him
out of South Woodlawn, John Tolbert believes that
similar efforts could redeem struggling neighborhoods across Jones Valley. Though he is moving,
his daughter plans to move into the South Woodlawn home and keep up the fight.
“I was born right there at home in the Sloss
Quarters, in the heart of the city,” said Tolbert,
retired from Birmingham’s traffic engineering department. “I believe in my city, I really do.
“There is still some magic left. We’ve got to
start caring more.”
Staff writer Jeff Hansen contributed.
E-MAIL: [email protected]
The difficulty of acquiring abandoned property
Alabama laws protecting property
owners also protect people who
have stopped paying their taxes
and have essentially abandoned
their property. The Alabama tax
foreclosure process prevents an
interested buyer from getting
clear ownership for at least six
years, one of the longest waiting
periods in the country. Here is an
example:
Oct. 1993 May 1994 Jan. 1998
Nov. 1998
May 1999
Dec. 2003
Owners of
a Southside
home stopped
paying property
taxes.
The buyer filed
suit against the
owners for possession of the
property.
The buyer obtained judgment
for possession
and began possession sometime after.
After holding the
property in adverse possession
for three years,
the buyer filed
quiet title
action against
the previous
owners.
Property sold
to the state at
the Jefferson
County tax sale.
An individual
purchased the
tax lien from the
state, received a
tax deed and began paying taxes.
Source: The Prevention, Management, And Re-Use Of Jefferson County’s Tax Delinquent Property, Mary Elizabeth Evans, 2005.
March
2004
July
2004
Quiet title
order
entered.
Tax lien
purchaser
sold the property to a new
owner.
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THREE IDEAS FROM OTHER CITIES
Tackling industrial blight
YOUNGSTOWN Mapping a realistic future
o fight its industrial blight, Pittsburgh has a redevelopment authority that buys old sites, cleans them up and
sometimes acts as a nonprofit developer.
The city also provides support and investment for the
authority’s projects, and the state helps pay to clean contaminated land. Alabama has nothing similar.
The authority led the conversion of a mammoth factory of
coke ovens, blast furnaces and mills into the Pittsburgh Technology Center, an academic and research park developed with
two major universities.
Another steel plant, the former South Side Works, was converted to entertainment, retail, offices, housing, research, development and distribution. The authority also is transforming a former 238-acre riverside slag dump into a new neighborhood.
“It comes down to a political commitment to invest in your
community,” said Jerome N. Dettore, the Urban Redevelopment Authority’s director.
Birmingham is in the midst of its first, albeit modest, conversion. The former Trinity Steel site just west of Interstate 65
in Titusville was purchased in a partnership between the city
and the county for $2.6 million. Cleanup was estimated at
$100,000, a sum Trinity provided as part of the purchase.
The Jefferson County Economic and Industrial Development Authority has agreed to sell the bulk of the 27-acre site
to Wal-Mart, which offered $4.6 million. Wal-Mart has not yet
accepted.
Thomas Spencer
oungstown, Ohio, recently received national attention for
dealing with its shrinkage.
Once a steel powerhouse, Youngstown’s population has
dropped from 166,000 in 1960 to 82,000 today. In 2000, the City
Council launched what planners call a “visioning” process to attempt to align the city with its demographic reality.
“The first step was recognizing that we are a smaller city,” said
William D’Avignon, Youngstown’s director of community development and planning. Plan 2010 focuses on the downtown, the
corridors that lead into downtown and neighborhoods that still
have signs of stability.
Every property in the city was surveyed to determine what
neighborhoods were worth preserving. The city will not put rehabilitation money into depopulated areas, D’Avignon said. In
some neighborhoods, people will be encouraged to move and
city services will be curtailed.
“We are not talking about rebuilding neighborhoods and putting condos in there,” D’Avignon said. “Most plans aim high; it
was our intention to (be) .€.€. realistic.”
The city aggressively acquires abandoned properties. Those
in viable neighborhoods are sold to neighbors or developers.
Elsewhere, the city is accumulating property to turn it into green
space, forests or wetlands.
Despite the radical nature of the plan, the community has
embraced its aims. “Everybody bought into it,” D’Avignon said.
PITTSBURGH
T
Y
LOUISVILLE Amassing abandoned property
S
ome cities have come up with methods of circumventing
the lengthy process of reselling abandoned property. One
such tool is a land bank, which is a quasi-governmental entity that acquires abandoned properties and clears titles.
Louisville, Ky., created its land-bank program in 1989 when
the city, county, county school board and the state joined forces.
“The city responded to the difficulties in dealing with properties — particularly in the inner city — where the landlord could
not be found,” said Jeana E. Dunlap, Metro Louisville housing
program supervisor.
The program has been enormously successful, she said. Eighty
to 90 percent of Habitat for Humanity homes in Metro Louisville
were built on land-bank property.
Developers can purchase property from the land bank at the
tax assessment amount, which can be much less than market
value, Dunlap said.
Land banks are a keen concept, but to do something like that
here would take action at the state level, said Ken Knox, deputy
director of Birmingham’s community development department.
“If we had a streamlined process statewide to deal with bad
titles, that would be big in this city,” Knox said. “Short of legislative action, it’s a tough road.”
Robert K. Gordon
Thomas Spencer
FIGHTING A LANDSCAPE OF BLIGHT IN THE JONES VALLEY
INDUSTRIAL property
private housing
Residents struggle against
decay in older neighborhoods
By ROBERT K. GORDON
News staff writer
When the owner of a home
starts to let the property slide, there
is little public officials can do to
stop blight from creeping into a
neighborhood.
In Alabama, the property owner
is given every benefit of the doubt,
said Ken Knox, deputy director of
Birmingham’s community development department. A minimal
amount of work can stave off condemnation, and officials have no
authority to force an owner to repair a dilapidated home. As long
as a derelict property is boarded
up and secure, he said, it meets requirements.
“It’s incredibly difficult,” Knox
said. “If a parent dies and the children are spread out and no one
wants to come back, it’s far more
complex than what people think.
Someone sees a vacant house and
thinks, ‘Why isn’t the city doing
anything about it?’”
Thelma Smith lives with that
thought every day.
Her house on 18th Place Southwest sports fresh vinyl siding and
a groomed yard. Smith and a few
neighbors work hard to keep their
properties up.
The same can’t be said for the
rest of the block in Birmingham’s
West End neighborhood. Two
doors down, a house is boarded up.
Across from that is an overgrown
lot, full of trash and rusting shopping carts. Then there’s the vacant
duplex with busted windows.
“The abandoned houses are a
big problem,” Smith said. “People
have these properties, leave and
never come back to see about
them.”
Across much of the Jones Valley,
the housing stock skews heavily toward older homes. In Birmingham,
more than 76 percent of all singlefamily homes in the city were built
before 1970. And a higher than
typical number of those homes
are rented out — 41 percent of all
houses in the central city are occupied by renters, compared to a
state average of 25 percent and a
national average of 30 percent.
About four years ago, Knox
said, the city blanketed West End
and entered every vacant lot and
abandoned house into a database
with the idea of cleaning them up.
Of about 100 letters sent out to
property owners, about 20 were
returned indicating interest, Knox
said. Ultimately, the city bought
just four of those properties.
“Ownership is an issue,” Knox
said. Without a willing owner, there
is little the city can do.
There are also private efforts to
revitalize West End. Princeton Baptist Medical Center pays 5 percent
on the cost of a home if an employee buys in the neighborhood.
The program is six years old and,
so far, only one worker has taken
advantage of it. Charlie Faulkner,
Princeton’s president, said five or
six others are in the works.
“These neighborhoods have
been in decline for 25 years,”
Faulkner said, “but we believe in
loving your neighbor.”
The community also is putting
up a fight. The Arlington-West End
neighborhood was recently honored by Neighborhoods USA for its
efforts against blight.
Group works magic on abandoned factory sites
By THOMAS SPENCER
News staff writer
Birmingham’s landscape is dotted
with shuttered factories and debrisstrewn wastelands. Instead of seeing
hopelessness, though, people like
Warren Hawkins see opportunity.
Centrally located, a hub of railroads and soon at the conjunction of
four interstates, Birmingham has a
tremendous inventory of industrial
sites ripe for redevelopment, the way
he sees it.
“This city has a lot of capacity,” said
Hawkins, whose business acquires industrial properties in distressed areas
and rehabilitates them.
To get vacant properties around
Collegeville back into productive use,
Hawkins helped form the Collegeville
Business Association, which includes
companies such as Altec Industries,
U.S. Pipe & Foundry and Nucor Corp.
They came together to clean up and
beautify their own operations and
pressure neighbors to do the same.
They identified a “dirty dozen” properties that need cleaning and pressed
the city to start condemning dilapidated industrial properties.
“Our main focus is to eliminate
blight,” Hawkins said. “We’ve got to
get these properties cleaned up because people buy pretty packages.”
In less than a year, motivated by the
association’s efforts, sites representing
200 acres have been cleared, demolished or fenced. Entrances have been
spruced up and 215,000 square feet of
warehouse and manufacturing space
has been rehabilitated, Hawkins said.
He is quick to admit some selfish
motivations: He owns property, and
the more appealing the area, the more
likely he can land tenants.
Typical of historically black neighborhoods in Jones Valley born during
segregation, Collegeville was zoned
for blacks, put where whites didn’t
want to live, hemmed in by heavy in-
Ensley natives try to revive shuttered downtown
By ROBERT K. GORDON
News staff writer
E-MAIL: [email protected]
Park Place still finding its legs
as dwelling that blends incomes
News staff writer
Public housing was supposed to
be an answer to slums, but in many
cases, the projects themselves became blight, concentrating poverty
and the social ills that often accompany it.
Park Place — a mixed-income
development backed by a $35 million federal grant to replace the
Metropolitan Gardens housing
project — is Birmingham’s first
experiment in the nationwide rethinking of public housing, a U.S.
Department of Housing and Urban
Development initiative known as
Hope VI. The idea is to create communities appealing to both poor
residents and urban professionals.
So far, the new neighborhood
of three-story buildings of flats
and townhouses along tree-lined
streets has had no trouble attracting people who qualify for public
housing. But it has struggled to fill
the market-rate apartments.
As of June, the 174 fully subsidized apartments were full, with a
waiting list of more than 800. In a
second pool of 75 apartments, in
which rents are based on a scale according to the renter’s income, 38
were occupied. Of 146 apartments
renting at market rate, from $617 to
$1,030 a month, 51 had tenants.
Johnnie Smith, a 53-year-old
General Motors retiree, lives in a
market-rate apartment and gives
the new community high marks.
“I like it,” he said. “It’s quiet and
ain’t nobody sitting around looking
at you.”
Neighbors mingle without regard to income. “I can’t tell (who) .
. . is lower income or paying the full
rent,” Smith said.
Tom Kingsley, a researcher for
the Urban Institute think tank, said
the most successful Hope VI developments have tended to be in
urban areas with high demand for
downtown housing, such as Charlotte and Atlanta. In other places,
the projects have had the same
difficulties attracting market-rate
renters.
“We don’t have enough longterm experience to see how they
are doing,” Kingsley said. “My bottom line is, so far, so good.”
Regardless, he said, Hope VI
projects are better than the crimeinfested islands of poverty they replaced.
“Nothing in American social
policy has failed more than putting
all the low-income people in one
place,” Kingsley said.
Staff writers Thomas Spencer
and Toraine Norris contributed.
E-MAIL: [email protected]
E-MAIL: [email protected]
COMMERCIAL PROPERTY
public housing
By VICTORIA L. COMAN
dustry and on flood-prone land.
The neighborhood is cross-cut by
railroads that can turn a seven-minute drive downtown into a long waiting game. Air monitors consistently
register some of the region’s highest
levels of particle pollution.
To improve conditions, the association is pushing for long-promised road and bridge work to keep
residents from being trapped by trains
and to reroute truck traffic.
But as a tractor-trailer loaded with
concrete block groans through the
awkward turn onto 35th Street North,
Enoch Sims, 73 and retired from Alabama Power, isn’t optimistic.
“It’ll probably be a ghost town,”
Sims says. “They ought to buy these
houses and make it into an industrial
park. .€.€. When people get an education, they are not going to live here.
“And I can’t blame them.”
AN ICON OF BLIGHT
1956 NEWS FILE
Ensley’s Ramsay-McCormack tower, built in 1929, overlooked the massive Ensley Works steel mill until it closed
in 1979. The city of Birmingham acquired the building
in 1983, but plans for it never panned out. The 10-story
building towers over Birmingham’s west side, visible for
miles, and has stood empty since 1986. Though the Art
Deco building is structurally sound, experts say it would
cost millions of dollars to renovate and upgrade. There
has been no serious interest since 1998.
Robert K. Gordon
When Marquitta Spurling was growing up, downtown Ensley seemed to have everything — shops,
places to eat and little reason to leave the west Birmingham neighborhood.
Then things changed. The massive U.S. Steel Ensley Works closed in 1979. Businesses started shutting or moving, leaving vacant storefronts.
Small downtowns were the hearts of once-thriving places such as Tarrant and Bessemer, where
people lived, worked, shopped and played. But
when the jobs left, so did many of the businesses,
and Ensley illustrates the problem.
Spurling, 34, and her husband, Antonio, 35, were
born and raised in Ensley. They are trying to breathe
life into its downtown, buying eight buildings on
19th Street and Avenue E.
Recycled Wardrobe, a clothing store, is housed
in one. Antonio Spurling’s law office is in another.
A furniture store and a video game/movie store are
open. The Spurlings also own Ensley Live Entertainment, a banquet hall.
“This is home,” Marquitta Spurling said. “You
never want to see home go down.”
Slowly, progress is being made, said David Fleming, director of Main Street Birmingham, a nonprofit
under contract with the city to help revitalize depressed areas. A new chicken restaurant and a dollar
store (one just opened, the other coming soon) may
not sound exciting, Fleming said, but for Ensley it’s a
step forward.
“Places that were vacant are being cleaned up .
. . We have to think long-term,” he said. “You can’t
expect to turn these areas around in two years.”
There are bigger plans in the works, as well.
Growth around Interstate 20/59’s Ensley exit, a
main gateway, is renewing interest. Serra Honda is
relocating from Hueytown to Ensley Avenue, a move
keyed to the site’s accessibility and convenience to
downtown Birmingham.
A proposed $55 million project to build mixedincome housing on the site of the old Tuxedo Court
public-housing complex will go a long way in transforming 20th Street, Ensley’s main thoroughfare.
Merchants hope that a housing rebirth will trickle over into a renaissance for Ensley’s once-thriving
commercial district.
In the past year, seven new businesses have
opened, representing about $5.3 million in investment, according to Main Street, which organized
Ensley merchants into a collective.
“They’ve done some promotional things together to remind people that there are businesses in
Ensley,” Fleming said. “People don’t think that there
are still businesses here.”
One mainstay is Cotton’s Department Store, a
fixture for 85 years. “We just feel there is a need for
a family clothing store in the western area,” said
Harry Weinberg, whose wife’s grandparents opened
Cotton’s in 1922.
“We’re actively involved,” he said. “We’re not absentee landlords.”
He also looks forward to the day when 306 apartments, townhomes and houses rise where Tuxedo
Court once stood.
“One entity helps another,” Weinberg said.
T
BIRMINGHAM
ARE WE
FALLING
BEHIND?
BIRMINGHAM
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AT A CROSSROADS
The economy is a bright spot
in metro Birmingham’s story.
Jobs are diverse and plentiful,
wages increasing. Yet our
economic growth lags most
of the South, exposing some
underlying weaknesses:
a failure to work together
and build on our strengths.
AT A CROSSROADS
NEWS STAFF/BERNARD TRONCALE
Construction cranes have frequented the booming University of Alabama at Birmingham campus for decades. These tower above the Hazelrig-Salter
Radiation Oncology Facility near the North Pavilion, at right.
By JEFF HANSEN and SHERRI C. GOODMAN
News staff writers
M
etro Birmingham has one of the nation’s
strongest job markets.
Factories are booming, with metro
workers churning out products ranging from potato chips to cars. The unemployment rate has consistently remained under 5
percent since 1995, typically hovering between 3 and 4
percent. Paychecks are healthy, with the BirminghamHoover metropolitan area’s average annual pay coming
in at nearly $40,800, the eighth highest among 30 Southern metro areas.
In this view, Birmingham has all the earmarks of a
boomtown. The economy is healthy.
But there is another view, economic experts and even
the city’s corporate leaders acknowledge:
Birmingham’s economic growth for the past decade
lags far behind the South’s business capitals, and a growing list of major corporations born in the city have been
swallowed by mergers or moved elsewhere.
Strangely, metro Birmingham manages to win and
lose at the same time. Alabama’s largest urban area fails
to meet its full economic potential, area leaders say, because we:
. Under-invest in and undervalue our star economic
asset — the University of Alabama at Birmingham.
. Cannot recruit high-paying new companies in
the financial sector, because the state targets incentive
money at industrial manufacturers such as Honda, Mercedes-Benz or ThyssenKrupp, not the service sector.
See ECONOMY | Page 18
P U B L I S H E D
N
At the Innovation Depot, Vista Engineering’s Dustin
Nolen, left, and Cameron Robinson use this reactor to
make thin films of diamond.
S E P T E M B E R
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2 0 0 7
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BIRMINGHAM
AT A CROSSROADS
EMPLOYMENT, BY INDUSTRY
21.5%
19.3%
15.5%
16.1%
12.9%
12.9%
11.8%
13.1%
8.4%
Trade, transportation,
warehousing, utilities
Government
Percent of total employment
BIRMINGHAM
U.S.
The makeup of Birmingham’s economy closely mirrors the U.S. economy.
The diversity of jobs makes it less susceptible to the peaks and valleys of
economies dominated by a handful of industries.
Professional and
business services
Education and
health services
9.7%
7.6%
Leisure and
hospitality
6.1%
Financial activites
8.4%
4.4%
4.0%
Other services
2.4%
10.4%
6.6%
5.6%
2.2%
Information
0.6%
Manufacturing
SERVICES (84.5% in Birmingham, 83.4% in U.S.)
Construction
0.5%
Natural resources
GOODS (15.5% in Birmingham, 16.6% in U.S.)
Source: Michael Shattuck, Metropolitan Development Board, using U.S. Bureau of labor Statistics data
CORPORATE PRESTIGE AND PERCEPTION
Losses sting, but Birmingham has key strengths
By SHERRI C. GOODMAN
News staff writer
Mention Birmingham’s image in business
circles, and someone is bound to say residents
should worry.
After all, in the past four years, the Birmingham-Hoover metro region has lost three major
banks to acquisitions, Torchmark Corp. relocated its headquarters to Texas, and Saks Inc. left for
New York City. In 2003, Caremark Rx Inc. moved
to Nashville, and the HealthSouth Corp. accounting scandal left the metro area with a black eye.
Making matters worse, other Alabama cities to the north and south have been soaring in
terms of economic development. Mobile landed
the state’s largest industrial project ever, the $3.7
billion ThyssenKrupp plant. Huntsville will be
the site of a biotech research institute expected
to create more than 1,000 jobs, and Verizon has
committed to opening a call center there that
will employ 1,300 people.
“If you look at where the action is economically, it’s not here, it’s in those places,” said Dowd
Ritter, chief executive of Regions Financial Corp.,
referring to Mobile and Huntsville.
But David Bronner, CEO of Retirement Systems of Alabama, has a message for the metro
area and all its residents wringing their hands
over Birmingham’s place in terms of economic
vitality: Stop beating up on yourself.
“Birmingham has been successful. It just
hasn’t been within the property line,” he said,
referring to Honda’s Lincoln plant and the Mercedes plant in Vance. Together they employ
about 8,500 people.
“Mercedes intentionally located between
Tuscaloosa and Birmingham, because Birmingham has a real city, a real hospital, real depart-
ment stores,” he said.
And the metro area is adding jobs. In the past
four years, for instance, the new and existing
companies have created 30,000 jobs, said Larry
Holt, director of research for the Birmingham
Regional Chamber of Commerce.
And while the city has lost several corporate
bases, it is still home to one of the nation’s top 10
banks, Regions, which expects to employ 6,500
people by the end of next year.
That’s something cities such as Chicago,
Philadelphia, Dallas and Miami don’t have, said
David Sher, former chairman of the Birmingham
Regional Chamber of Commerce board of directors.
Regions’ contribution to the area economy
is significant. Beyond its employee base, in 2006
it spent $175 million in business with 1,100 area
vendors.
For some, figures like that underscore what
the city lost when corporate headquarters moved
elsewhere. It’s not just image, says Ritter.
“That’s a huge economic impact from just
having us here,” he said.
But Sher says maybe that black cloud has a
silver lining. Corporations are bought and sold
and can go away at any time. Lessening the city’s
reliance on corporate bases encourages a more
diverse economy, he said. In contrast, UAB, the
city’s crown jewel in terms of economic development, isn’t going anywhere, he said.
He recalled during the chamber’s trip to Charlotte in 2005, the chancellor of the University of
North Carolina at Charlotte began his presentation on UNCC’s economic impact by saying, “We
don’t have anything like UAB but .€.€.”
“Charlotte had a great story to tell,” Sher said,
“but they didn’t have UAB.”
IS ECONOMY FALLING BEHIND?
ECONOMY
From Page 17
. Lack a collaborative spirit that
has driven growth in Charlotte, Nashville and even Mobile.
“I think Birmingham has got to
change,” said Dowd Ritter, chief executive of Regions Financial Corp. “The
political leadership has got to want
to see this city move forward and not
keep the status quo.”
Good with the bad
While metro Birmingham has a stable and healthy economy, the growth
of that economy lags when compared
to other Southeastern cities.
Birmingham was 28th out of 30
metro areas across the South in the
average annual growth rate of its gross
metropolitan product, or GMP, from
1994 to 2004. GMP measures the size
of an economy, by adding together the
total market value of all final goods and
services produced in the metro area.
With Mobile’s capture of the $3.7
billion ThyssenKrupp steel plant this
spring, and Huntsville spending $330
million for a biotechnology park that
will employ 1,600, a mixed-use town
center and a four-star hotel, Birmingham even seems to be chasing other
Alabama cities.
In Mobile, “you see city, county and
business leaders — they all speak together,” said Ritter. “But here, it turns
into a turf battle.”
Recent successes, such as the opening of the Innovation Depot business
incubator partly supported by UAB and
the funding of the Railroad Reservation
Park, spur optimism that Birmingham
is building a bit of the collaborative
spirit that helped Mobile land ThyssenKrupp.
“Yes, you need more cooperation.
Yes, you have to get rid of corruption
in government. But look on the other
side of the coin,” said David Bronner, CEO of Retirement Systems of
Alabama. “You wouldn’t have Honda
or Mercedes without Birmingham. You
wouldn’t have one of the great medical
research centers of the world without
Birmingham.”
Lajuana Bradford, community development officer for Wachovia Corp.’s
Mid-South Region, says cooperation is
vital if the region is to move ahead.
“I don’t think we’re coming together
to tell the story,” she said. “If we’re not,
who is?”
One success story that has slowly
but steadily developed since the recession of the 1980s: Metro Birmingham
has moved away from its heavy manufacturing roots to become a broadbased economy that nearly mirrors the
nation’s as a whole. And such diversity
gives Birmingham a resilience to economic disruptions.
Invest in research
Charles McCrary, CEO of Alabama
Power Co., sees Birmingham’s future
in UAB.
“We ought to be knocking on UAB’s
door every day saying, ‘How can we
make you bigger, better, stronger?’” he
said.
UAB, already the state’s largest employer with 18,000 workers and $400
million a year in grants and contracts
for research, has symbolically reached
across the railroad tracks into downtown Birmingham. Its business in-
cubator has moved to the new Innovation Depot on First Avenue North,
and President Carol Garrison chairs
the Birmingham Regional Chamber of
Commerce.
But the university needs a massive
investment and its needs are changing
— most of its future growth will be in
research and related entrepreneurial
development rather than medical and
traditional educational buildings.
Garrison and Richard Marchase,
vice president for research and economic development, want to see
governments, businesses and philanthropies invest a half-billion dollars in
the next few years to recruit 150 star
researchers and build lab space for
them.
Dr. K. “Tony” Jones, the new chairman of UAB’s anesthesiology department, shows what this kind of investment will do.
Jones moved to Birmingham last
year from the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn., along with his wife and
their two children, who are in Vestavia
Hills High School.
He brought along two researchers, about $870,000 a year in research
funding, and has added four more
people to his research group.
As chairman, he also has money
to recruit other researchers, offering between $500,000 and $1 million
in start-up money apiece to prepare
space, get equipment and seed new
research directions.
Dr. Ursula Wesselmann, a world
expert on pain syndromes, is one of
several he is recruiting. She will move
to UAB from Johns Hopkins Medicine
in Baltimore in January, bringing more
than $650,000 a year in funding.
She is part of an effort to build a
center of excellence in pain treatment,
research and education, which will attract even more researchers and grant
dollars. She also will draw patients
with chronic pain from around the
world.
Jones called UAB’s $500 million
growth effort “critical.”
“Everyone at UAB understands
how important it is,” he said. “I think
Birmingham, Jefferson County and
the state will get a substantial return
on this investment.”
Barrier to recruiting
Ted vonCannon, president of Birmingham’s Metropolitan Development Board, has a knock-down, dragout kind of job. He tries to beat other
cities in the competition to lure corporations to the Birmingham-Hoover
metro area.
“We are in the most competitive
region — not just in the nation, but in
the world,” he said. “We compete with
Charlotte, Jacksonville, Nashville; not
Milwaukee, Des Moines or Buffalo.”
MDB often won in fights to lure
industrial projects. But Birmingham,
like many cities today, needs to land
higher paying financial jobs in banking, investment services, credit card
companies, insurance companies
and stock brokerages. It needs to grow
jobs in biomedical sciences, regional
or national distribution centers, or
other corporate headquarters or offices.
VonCannon finds himself losing
the fights for those jobs, because there
are few state incentives for those types
of businesses.
A recent MDB study shows how
Birmingham would lag behind Jacksonville, Fla., Atlanta or Charlotte
in efforts to land a new investmentcompany customer contact center
which would bring $32.5 million in
construction and 1,200 jobs paying an
average $45,000 a year, plus benefits.
Incentives looked like the deal
breaker, the study found: Florida
could offer $14.8 million, followed
by Georgia’s $12.1 million and North
Carolina’s $9.6 million.
The incentive package in Alabama?
$4.4 million.
“Lack of incentives can break the
deal,” vonCannon said.
VonCannon wants the Alabama
Legislature to draft new incentives
aimed at service companies, and also
expand existing incentives to include
service and non-manufacturing projects.
This legislation is critical to the future of the Birmingham area, vonCannon believes, and absolutely needed
for Alabama to succeed in the new
economy.
“That would allow Birmingham to
compete for a lot of projects that are
Birmingham’s future,” vonCannon
said. “White-collar, medical and biomedical.”
Until that happens, vonCannon
has to try to cobble together incentives, as he now is doing, to try to keep
a Birmingham non-manufacturing
company from moving to Nashville,
along with 225 jobs that pay an average annual salary of $85,000.
A collaborative spirit
Wachovia’s Bradford said no one
has taken the reins to lead the city’s efforts to reach its potential.
“This city is full of diamonds in the
rough and nobody is shining them and
showing them off,” she said.
Bradford, whose job requires her to
travel to Charlotte, Philadelphia and
other major cities, says Birmingham
shares their strengths. The difference is
the way they tell their story.
Johnny Johns, chief executive of
Birmingham’s Protective Life Corp.,
agrees the area needs a united voice
and message.
“The core challenge for us is the
fragmentation of governance and leadership,” Johns said. “No one can speak
for the greater community. When you
have issues, projects or challenges that
affect the whole MSA, it’s very difficult
to get all leaders to the table to discuss
them.”
Birmingham recently lost Red Diamond Inc., a company that had been in
the city for a century, because county
officials voted against selling property
to the company for a necessary expansion. The company, which wanted to
stay in Birmingham, is instead moving
its base and more than 200 employees
to Moody.
“You tend to form a circle and
shoot each other,” RSA’s Bronner says
of metro Birmingham. “You have
great potential. You have to somehow harness the potential. You have
to get them out of the circle and into
a straight line, and start shooting together.”
E-MAIL: [email protected]
T
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AT A CROSSROADS
University of alabama at birmingham
MOBILE
Focus on research
drives economy
Working
together
key to city
successes
By JEFF HANSEN
News staff writer
Simple math shows how a research
university can grow the economy, says
Richard Marchase, vice president for
research and economic development
at the University of Alabama at Birmingham.
It costs about $1 million to recruit a top researcher — money paid
not as salary but spent for lab space,
equipment and the transition of that
researcher’s laboratory group to Birmingham.
Think of that as seed money.
For that investment, the researcher
brings along eight, 10, 12 or even 15
members of the research group, along
with a continuing stream of grant and
contract dollars from outside sources
like the National Institutes of Health.
“Each researcher will generate a
million dollars a year — half of that in
salary — for as long as they’re here,”
Marchase said. And that doesn’t include the possible future gains from
patents, licenses or start-up firms.
Already Alabama’s largest employer, UAB is one asset — unlike corporations that could merge or move headquarters — that is certain to remain in
the city of Birmingham.
But UAB could be much more.
Marchase and UAB President Carol
Garrison want to raise and spend a
half-billion dollars over five to 10 years
to vault UAB to a higher plane of research.
That’s what they say it will take for
UAB to recruit and retain 150 top-level
researchers. The rough use of the $500
million, Marchase said, would be:
$150 million for the start-up recruiting funds for 150 researchers, $250
million for new laboratory buildings
and renovating older research buildings, $50 million for major equipment
purchases and another $50 million for
program initiatives.
Birmingham can learn from what
other states are doing.
A recent Arizona State University
white paper says Arizona’s competitor states are making “very substantial
investments to increase the research
capacity of their systems of higher
education. Arizona’s choice is simple
— invest or get left behind in the competition for economic prosperity.”
That Arizona State study said a
$185 million investment to build new
research space would:
. Immediately create $330 million in local economic impact through
construction jobs and $15 million in
tax revenue.
. Allow Arizona State to attract
and conduct new research totaling at
least $50 million a year, which would
produce an economic impact of $250
million each year.
At the University of Louisville,
where Garrison was provost and interim president before coming to
UAB, the state directed the school to
become a pre-eminent research university and gave $100 million between
1998 and 2003 to fund endowed chairs
for top researchers, said President
James Ramsey. The University of Louisville raised $100 million from private
donors for the required one-to-one
match.
Another $200 million from the
By SHERRI C. GOODMAN
News staff writer
NEWS STAFF/BERNARD TRONCALE
Carol Garrison, as UAB president, heads a university, with its medical
and research centers, that is Alabama’s largest employer. UAB, with
more than 18,000 faculty and staff, directly or indirectly accounts for
eight out of every 100 jobs in metro Birmingham-Hoover.
state’s so-called “Bucks for Brains”
program went to the University of
Kentucky, that state’s top research university.
Bucks for Brains money helped
the University of Louisville more than
double its endowed chairs to 121, triple its number of patents and licenses
and boost federal research funding
five fold to more than $74 million a
year.
After adding researchers, the university then needed more research
space. The Legislature provided $125
million to build a 300,000-square-foot
research building that will have five
floors of labs when it opens in 2009.
“That will be the biggest research
building in Kentucky,” said Ramsey.
Alabama is a slightly larger state,
in terms of the economy, than Kentucky, and UAB is its major research
university, with grants and contracts
from outside the state that total $400
million.
With investment, Marchase and
Garrison say, they can double that to
$800 million a year.
Georgia shows how investing in university research helps
By JEFF HANSEN
News staff writer
The Georgia Research Alliance shows what a state
gets in return for making major investments in university
research.
The GRA, funded privately since 1990, recommends a
portfolio of investments to
the governor for inclusion in
the yearly state budget. Investments target six research
universities.
Yearly funding has averaged about $30 million,
including $40 million this
year, said C. Michael Cassidy,
president and CEO of the
seven-employee alliance.
The GRA then feeds that
money toward three goals:
. Eminent Scholars,
permanent endowments of
$1.5 million each, which are
funded half by the GRA and
half by private money raised
by the university.
The result? Fifty-four
eminent scholars have been
funded, and those researchers have garnered $1 billion
in research grants. They have
created 1,500 jobs, and their
research has launched 25
companies.
. Research infrastructure
— buildings and equipment.
GRA money has helped fund
18 national Centers of Research Excellence.
The result? The centers
have attracted $600 million
in private investment into
Georgia and more than $1
billion in new grants.
One recent center grant
helped win $20 million from
the U.S. Department of Energy for energy research on
biofuels, with GRA pledging
$2.5 million to buy equipment.
. Launching new companies out of university research, and opening university labs to partnerships with
Georgia companies. The
GRA’s VentureLab program
helps bring management
talent to a start-up business
effort and offers multiple
rounds of funding as a company scales up in size.
“We do it at a much earlier stage than venture capital would,” said Cassidy.
“Venture capital can come in
later.”
The result? More than
125 start-up companies
have been launched, creating 3,000 high value jobs and
attracting $600 million in investments. There are more
than 100 partnerships with
Georgia companies, and six
major industries have been
recruited to the state with the
help of GRA investments.
four workers, four stories
Phebe Booker
FINDING A WAY UP
Eddie Smith
NEW FACE OF INDUSTRY
Public transit is a lifeline for many entry-level
workers and others trying to find a step up. Just
ask Phebe Booker.
The West End mother would drop her two
young children at day care at 6:30 a.m., catch one
bus downtown, and then another to the Virginia
College’s Homewood campus. Sometimes the bus
broke down.
But Booker was determined to break out of her
dilemma: She couldn’t find a decent job at decent
pay that she had the skills to perform near her
home in a tough inner-city neighborhood. Office
management classes offered a better life, and it
took a bus to get her there.
After earning her certificate, she was hired full
time as administrative assistant at Urban Ministry
in West End. At age 30, she learned to drive and
now has a car.
Booker considers herself among the lucky.
“I love my job,” she said. “I thank God for it.”
Jeff Hansen
MIKE ROSS
CORPORATE TURMOIL
Some of Birmingham’s best manufacturing
jobs are just outside the metro area.
Ask Eddie Smith. The Ensley High graduate left
a gritty job in Birmingham as a control operator
at the SMI Steel-Alabama mini-mill in 2000. His
new workplace is Honda in Lincoln. He represents
a fundamental shift in the region’s manufacturing,
from a steelmaking capital to a more diversified
economy.
The Honda job has given him added responsibility and income, but the start was hard. His
wife, Pamela, gave birth to their younger daughter
the night after his orientation. Smith then spent
eight months on the road, learning skills at Honda
plants around the world.
“The first thing I had to get was a passport,” he
said.
At Honda, Smith started as a welding robot
operator on a rotating shift. Promotions followed.
He now runs the Line 1 paint department, leading
344 people who paint Odyssey bumpers, bodies
and doors that glide by on a conveyor line.
The Smith family has moved to Trussville to get
better schools for their daughters, ages 7 and 12.
Jeff Hansen
Lajuana Bradford
YOUNG PROFESSIONALS
Like many parents, Wachovia Corp.’s Lajuana
Bradford wonders whether her child, who will
start college next year, will want to return to Birmingham.
Lauren Bradford, 17, an honors student at
Ramsay High, plans to attend the University of
Alabama. She talks about being a doctor or studying criminal justice, said her mother.
“I wonder what will Birmingham look like
when she finishes school,” Bradford said. “Will
it still be thriving and offer opportunities for upand-coming professionals?”
Attracting and retaining the best and brightest young graduates is a concern for business and
elected leaders as well. Bradford hopes area leaders consider the threat of brain drain as they work
to attract new jobs and grow existing industries.
“We need to have opportunities in jobs .€.€. that
will drive them to want to be here,” Bradford said.
Sherri C. Goodman
Mike Ross’ resume reads like a Who’s Who in Alabama regional banks. But only one of the three regional powerhouses that once employed him remains as mergers have roiled Birmingham’s financial workers.
In a three-year span, SouthTrust, once the state’s largest bank, and AmSouth, with deep roots in Birmingham, disappeared through mergers.
The loss of banks led to job cuts and a lot of soul searching among those employed in the financial services sector.
In the end, Ross — who started at AmSouth, worked for 15 years with SouthTrust and then joined Regions — made the
decision to work in Birmingham for an out-of-state bank.
“It was hard. I’ve been a headquarters employee forever,” said Ross, now Alabama president for Tupelo’s Renasant
Bank.
Ross thought he’d never leave SouthTrust. But his career plan changed when, in 2004, SouthTrust was bought by
Charlotte’s Wachovia Corp. Nearly 2,000 people lost their jobs. Ross and others started looking to rivals.
When Regions and AmSouth merged last year, Ross’ job changed, so he took the Renasant position.
“It’s been very chaotic for bank workers, to say the least.”
Sherri C. Goodman
When German steelmaker
ThyssenKrupp began looking at
north Mobile County as the site
for its $3.7 billion U.S. plant,
city and county officials in the
Gulf Coast community rallied
together to land the project.
They checked their egos and
differences at the door to land
the state’s biggest industrial
prize ever, says Mobile Mayor
Sam Jones.
“People here have accepted
that if we want to go anywhere,
we have to go together,” he
said.
That spirit of collaboration
has helped propel the Port City
in economic development over
the past decade. The city is
home to the state’s tallest building, the 35-story Retirement
Systems of Alabama Tower. Mobile was selected in 2005 as the
site for the European Aeronautic
Defence and Space Co.’s North
America’s engineering center,
which could create more than
1,000 jobs. And earlier this year,
it landed ThyssenKrupp, which
will bring another 2,700 jobs.
The string of wins has
spurred talk in Birmingham of
eventually being eclipsed by
the coastal town. In population,
the Birmingham metro area is
much larger than Mobile. But
in terms of buzz, Mobile may
be leaving Birmingham in the
dust.
“I’m extremely impressed
with how functional their communication is,” said Protective
Life Chief Executive Johnny
Johns. “They’re racially unified, Republicans and Democrats work hand-in-hand.
When there is something they
want to pursue, they move forward.”
Semoon Chang, an economist with the University of
South Alabama, traces the area’s
economic development success
back to the election of former
Mayor Mike Dow in 1989.
“That’s probably when the
atmosphere and environment
in terms of economic development started to change,” he
said. Chang describes Dow as
a visionary and a consensus
builder who approached the job
with business sensibilities. Dow
co-founded QMS Inc., a Mobile
printer maker later acquired by
Konica Minolta.
When David Bronner, head
of RSA, proposed building a
tower in downtown Mobile,
some property owners balked,
saying it would draw their tenants away, leaving empty floors
in existing buildings.
“A mayor not as progressive as Mike Dow” might have
backed off supporting the project to appease property owners, Chang said. But Dow didn’t
waver.
“It turned out to be an excellent building and a symbol
of progress for Mobile,” said
Chang. “It’s the pride of Mobile.”
Around the same time Dow
was elected, the city and county
both agreed to contract with the
Mobile Area Chamber of Commerce for economic development services.
“That’s key to the entire
partnership,” said Jones, the
city’s first black mayor who
also served for 18 years on the
county commission. “When
someone comes into the community, it helps if you can put
on a united front.”
Chang says the shared economic development arm has
“probably kept a lot of politics”
out of development efforts.
“It enables Mobile to have
one voice,” he said. “Hopefully,
it is a good voice.”
Another key to Mobile’s success is the vote of confidence
by RSA. The state retirement
fund has invested in the renovation of two historic hotels in
Mobile, the Riverview Plaza and
the Battle House Hotel. It was
also a partner in the city’s cruise
port construction, now home
to a Carnival Cruise Lines ship.
RSA’s total investment in downtown Mobile is estimated to exceed $300 million.
Bronner said he saw Mobile
as a city “at the edge of greatness” with strong political leadership.
“Mike Dow was that creature
that could get the old guard and
the new guard and everybody
else working together, but it
took him a number of years to
do that,” Bronner said.
“It’s going to take 10 to 15
years to make anything like this
jibe, and it takes constant leadership,” he said.
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AT A CROSSROADS
in our classrooms,
a learning divide
Birmingham students face
distinct disadvantages:
widespread poverty,
schools with limited
programs, outdated
equipment. Suburban
students thrive in
high-tech schools
with broad menus of
challenging classes.
Children — rich, poor, black
or white — don’t have an
equal shot in public schools.
Is that fair to them?
By MARIE LEECH
F
News staff writer
ive miles and a world of difference separate Gate City and
Crestline elementary schools.
At Gate City, in one of Birmingham’s poorest and
roughest neighborhoods, 26
fourth-graders cram into a
tiny classroom that looks decades behind
the times. Every student is black, and 92
percent of the school’s children live in poverty.
The window-unit air conditioner competes with the substitute teacher as she
leads students in vocabulary.
Only one of the three old computers at
the back wall works, but it’s so slow students don’t use it. The students have no
art or music classes, and while there is a
computer lab, it lacks a teacher and goes
unused.
These children are on one side of a glaring divide in metro Birmingham’s public
education. Students in the poorer, urban
areas, educators say, don’t get a fair chance
to succeed at school — and risk being left
behind in life.
A few miles down the road, Crestline
Elementary in Mountain Brook shows the
other side of the divide.
Eighteen fourth-graders spread out in
a classroom twice the size of the Gate City
room. Each child works on a laptop computer, typing short stories about where
they see themselves in 20 years, essays their
teacher will have published in a book.
See SCHOOLS | Page 21
NEWS STAFF/JOE SONGER
Fourth-graders work on their vocabulary assignment in a tiny classroom at Gate City Elementary
School, top, while fourth-graders at Crestline Elementary School type essays on their laptop
computers. The two classrooms show a glaring divide in metro Birmingham’s public education.
INSIDE
AN ATHLETIC
DIVIDE
The same inequities that exist in classrooms show up on playing
fields, too. Burdened by a lack of resources, a loss of athletes and
low participation, Birmingham high school sports programs
struggle to produce winning teams and college opportunities.
P U B L I S H E D
Read the stories on PAGE 23
N O V E M B E R
1 1 ,
2 0 0 7
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BIRMINGHAM
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A glaring divide in classrooms
SCHOOLS
From Page 20
The teacher speaks through a small
microphone hanging around her neck.
Her computer is linked to a 6-by-4-foot
jumbo screen at the front of the room,
with instructions for the day’s assignment aglow.
Every child in the class is white. None
is on the free and reduced lunch program, the federal government’s way of
measuring student poverty.
The children not only have art and
music classes, but they also started
Spanish and computer work in kindergarten, and learned to create PowerPoint
presentations in third grade.
NEWS STAFF/JOE SONGER
The difference between the two
classrooms is stark. But in metropolitan A fourth-grade student at Gate City Elementary writes her classroom assignment by hand while a fourthBirmingham-Hoover, it is common.
grader at Crestline Elementary types his assignment on a laptop computer.
“I find that kind of disparity reprehensible,” said Bryan K. Fair, a law proin 1995 in a political squabble over
fessor at the University of Alabama’s
which law firm to use.
School of Law, who studies academic,
“He would not change lawyers, so the
racial and economic disparities among
board fired him,” Corley said. “He got a
school systems. “We pay for it through
job as superintendent in St. Louis and
prisons and welfare. If we close the door
stayed there ... until he retired. Meanon education, you relegate people to a
while, we had to pay nearly $1 million to
lower standard of living.”
buy him out of his contract.”
Most suburban districts are light
The current board lacks vision and
years ahead of the Birmingham schools
long-term planning, Corley said.
— and the bar set by the state — in read“They need to reconstruct and reing and math.
configure the whole school system,” he
In Birmingham city schools this year,
said. “They’ve got way too many schools
74 percent of fourth-graders read at or
and it’s sucking the resources out of the
above grade level, compared with 99
system. There’s no question that Birpercent in Mountain Brook, 95 percent
mingham is too top heavy, too bureauin Homewood, 89 percent in Hoover and
cratic, has too many schools and doesn’t
82 percent in Jefferson County. The state
have the best teachers.”
requirement this year under the federal
Phyllis Wyne, a Birmingham school
No Child Left Behind law was at least 73
board member, agreed that the district
percent.
suffers from a lack of strong leadership.
Sixty-seven percent of fourth-grad“If we had the leadership we needers in Birmingham are proficient in
ed, someone who could help us put
math this year, compared with 98 perthe message out, then we might have
cent in Mountain Brook, 92 percent in
a group of parents who go to the City
Homewood, 88 percent in Hoover and
Council and say ‘I want you to raise our
68 percent in Jefferson County. The state
taxes so we can help our schools.’ Here
requirement is 67 percent.
you won’t get that,” Wyne said. “We don’t
There are select schools in Birminghave community buy-in. And someham that post high test scores, such as
times, we are our own worst enemy
Epic Elementary, W.J. Christian K-8 and
because we don’t respond to the public
Ramsay High, but those are magnet
when they do want to help.”
schools that pull the district’s best and
But some within the district are able
brightest students.
to overcome that handicap in ways
“So they’re meeting the criteria unsmall and large.
der the law, but where are all those other
Cedric Tatum, principal of South
pieces that make up a child’s educaHampton Elementary in Birmingham’s
tion?” said Deborah Childs-Bowen, asPratt City neighborhood, raised $18,000
sociate education professor at Samford
through private grants to supply all of
University. “Reading and math are critihis fifth-graders with hand-held comcal, but so are other pieces, like fine arts
puters, equipped with word processing,
and computer classes.”
PowerPoint, a dictionary and E-books
Educators say Birmingham and
(books on computer). The school also
other school systems in the industrial
added 200 desktop computers in classJones Valley — stretching from Tarrant
rooms and a computer lab.
through Bessemer — can’t achieve at the
Although 93 percent of the student
same level as the surrounding suburban
population at South Hampton is poor,
schools, which have more resources,
Tatum said he “never considered us a
better facilities, newer technology, more
poor school. . . . Technology is used evcollege-level courses and a wider array
eryday and it’s important for these chilof fine arts classes. The education, they
dren to be familiar with it,” he said. “I
say, is unequal.
make sure I have the academics covered
going
to
college,”
he
said.
“So
it
would
fourth-grader.
“The disparities are extraordinary.
with the funds we get and whatever I
be
nice
to
offer
them
a
vocation,
to
give
The
sheer
disparities
in
the
line
of
And yet in the 12th grade, we suddenly
have left over goes straight to the kids.”
them
more
choices
when
they
leave
thinking
between
the
two
schools
is
want all these kids to compete for pubhere.”
heartbreaking,
Childs-Bowen
said.
“You
lic and private colleges and scholarships
Five Birmingham high schools offer don’t know what you don’t know, so you
and there’s just no way they can,” Fair
The children, many of whom either
said. “They don’t have the writing skills, vocational training, such as computer can’t miss it.”
drop out before finishing school or gradanimation
at
Carver
and
culinary
train“The
inequity
is
bigger
than
I
can
exreading and training skills to succeed.
uate unprepared for the real world, are
. . . It’s hard to overcome a dozen years of ing at Wenonah and Jackson-Olin, but plain.”
the ones who suffer, said Henry Levin,
only
students
at
each
school
can
take
the
under-education.”
a professor at Columbia University’s
training.
The
district
can’t
afford
to
open
Limited resources suffocate the
Leadership problems intensify Bir- Teachers College.
natural ability and intelligence that all the programs to all interested students,
Black males have the highest dropmingham’s budget shortcomings.
children have, Childs-Bowen said. “If Mims said.
out
rate in the nation, Levin said, and 12
The
key
difference
is
locally
generated
The district has been through five
you took all those Gate City kids and
years of under-education also has harsh
money:
Birmingham
received
$2,363
per
superintendents
since
1996
and
Mims
put them in Mountain Brook with those
consequences.
types of resources, and the teachers pupil last school year in local tax funds. got low marks on his annual evaluation
“It has a tremendous negative impact
Suburban
school
systems
far
exceeded
in
July.
made connections to the life experiences
on
unemployment, health care, public
that:
Mountain
Brook
got
$5,602
per
stuProblems began long before Mims
that those Gate City kids have had, then
assistance, the justice system . . .,” Levin
dent
from
local
taxes;
Homewood,
$7,088;
arrived,
said
Robert
Corley,
director
of
those kids would be able to compete.”
Hoover, $4,692; and Vestavia Hills, $4,258. the Center for Urban Affairs at the Uni- said. “The crime rate also increases beThose districts not only have higher versity of Alabama at Birmingham, and cause they need to make money, so they
property tax rates, but the average home a Birmingham school board member get in with the wrong people.”
Even those who go into the workMiddle-class flight, first by whites and values in those areas are anywhere from from 1987 to 1997. Most of Mims’ time
force
out of high school have a difficult
now by blacks, has left the Birmingham three to six times that of Birmingham.
has been spent putting out fires due to
school system shrinking since its peak
“If we were getting $1,000 more per structural, financial and organizational time finding work if they aren’t properly
educated, said Donna Smith, human reenrollment of 70,000 in the early 1970s. student, it would equate to over $28 problems.
The district now has 28,393 students, 97 million and we would still be receiving
This spring the board fired 427 em- sources director for Alabama Power.
“We did a project in the spring where
percent of whom are black.
almost $1,000 less per student than the ployees and closed five schools, only two
In the past five years 7,000 students next closest district,” said Arthur Watts, of which were operating, to save enough we recruited 16 high school graduates
have left. Each year, another 1,000 move chief financial officer for Birmingham money to meet the state requirement from all over the state and sent them to
out. This year, more than 1,300 students city schools.
of a reserve account with one month lineman school for seven weeks,” she
left the district, adding to an exodus that,
The school system receives federal of operating expenses. That’s about $20 said. “They had to take a test at the end
by the 2008-09 school year, will take funds — more than any other district in million for Birmingham. Many of the of the course and we were able to hire
three people out of that 16.”
nearly $40 million in state funding away metro Birmingham — because about employees were later rehired.
All applicants for hourly jobs — those
from Birmingham city schools compared 80 percent of students live in poverty.
In 2003, the Birmingham school systhe 2001-02 school year.
But federal money is restricted to things tem fired 555 employees, closed nine in which a college degree is not necesThe state funds school systems based like teacher professional development, schools and reorganized eight others to sary — must take the test, Smith said,
and the failure rate is astronomical.
on enrollment from the previous school recruiting highly qualified teachers, and avoid state financial takeover.
“It’s definitely not the test; it’s the
year and allocates a certain number of class size reduction. Most of BirmingState auditors have long criticized
teachers and other school staff based on ham’s federal dollars can only be used to the district’s financial management. same test used by all utilities around the
that enrollment.
strengthen reading and math programs.
The system also has drawn attention for nation,” she said. “But they all focus on
However, the Birmingham system
Local funds can be spent any way a spending $2.5 million in travel expenses basic reading and math skills and that’s
spends far more on administration than school district wants. In Mountain Brook, and $3.1 million in legal fees and settle- where we are finding the gaps.”
Even the college-bound students
other local systems. Last year, the sys- one-third of the teachers are funded lo- ments in the 10-month period ending
tem spent $9.5 million on administrative cally, meaning the system can hire many July 31, far more per student than other have a hard time overcoming years of
under-education.
costs, 34 percent more than the larger more teachers than the state minimum.
metro systems.
According to data collected by the
Jefferson County school system spent.
Birmingham doesn’t have that luxury,
A few principals, teachers and other
This year, the Birmingham city school Watts said.
school staff have also been caught steal- Alabama Commission on Higher Edusystem lost 76 teacher and staff posi“We have a problem with funding,” ing money they’ve collected from chil- cation, 46 percent of Birmingham’s 563
tions. It has lost funding for 455 positions Fair said. “Local money comes from dren for fundraisers, extra-curricular students who went to Alabama public
since 2003.
property value and the homes in Moun- activities and field trips. As a result, the colleges in 2004 lacked basic skills in
The district doesn’t have the local tax tain Brook, Vestavia Hills and Hoover are district is performing school-by-school math or English and had to take remedial classes as freshmen.
base to make up the difference in fund- more valuable than those in Birming- audits.
By comparison, 16 percent of Hoover
ing, so educators are forced to cut pro- ham.”
There is little agreement on whether
grams, lay off employees and offer only
Yet Gate City Elementary Principal Birmingham schools can start providing graduates had to take remedial courses
the core courses required by law.
Vanessa Byrd is proud of her school.
an education comparable to that in the that year, and just four of 119 students
“We can’t offer a large number of pro“Of course we would love to have surrounding suburban districts, or on from Mountain Brook took remedial
courses.
grams,” said Birmingham schools Super- more resources, but I am proud of our how to do it.
Success in urban school systems is
intendent Stan Mims. “If I had additional human resources,” she said. “Our staff
Real change will require a “radical
money, I would have foreign language in has a love and commitment to this transformation,” said Jerome E. Morris, just as important for people in the subelementary school rather than waiting to school and the children.”
an education professor at the Univer- urbs, said Childs-Bowen. “It’s not about,
take French or Spanish in high school.
Some of the children at Gate City said sity of Georgia and a 1986 graduate of ‘Well, I got my child a good education.’
We’re all in this together.”
Also, I’d have more AP (advanced place- they didn’t see a need for computers in Birmingham’s Phillips High School.
“Just because you don’t see them toment) classes. I’d also have more rigor- education. “It’s not a subject, so it’s not
“A stable faculty and staff is crucial
ous math classes, like calculus.”
important,” said Elicia Person, a Gate to education, especially for children day,” she said, “doesn’t mean you won’t
Mims said he also would like to have City fourth-grader.
who are already on the cusp,” said Mor- see them tomorrow, whether it’s in your
a vocational school, like Shelby County’s
Crestline students said technol- ris. “You can create quality, top-notch community or your workplace.”
School of Technology, where students ogy gives them an advantage over those teachers and that creates stability.”
from all high schools in that county can who don’t use it in education. “Everyone
In Corley’s mind, things haven’t gone News staff writer Jeff Hansen
participate.
needs to learn how to use a computer in right since the Birmingham board fired contributed to this report.
“Let’s face it, not all of our kids are order to get a good job,” said Will Royer, a Superintendent Cleveland Hammonds E-MAIL: mleech@ bhamnews.com
Why is there a gap?
Who gets hurt?
Woes at the top
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Three ideas from other urban school districts
By MARIE LEECH and ANITA DEBRO
News staff writers
Birmingham isn’t the only urban school district struggling with how to provide a decent education to students in a challenging environment. Here is how three districts
have tackled the problems:
MOBILE
ATLANTA
CLEVELAND
A grassroots group of Mobile business, community,
city and school leaders started a campaign in 2001 to
reform the county school system through community
involvement.
Through a Yes We Can! campaign, community
members rallied the county to approve its first school
tax increase in 40 years, allowing the system to add
instructional programs and professional development
for teachers.
The Mobile Area Education Foundation has given
more than $18 million to invest in programs to close
achievement gaps among various groups of students,
and test scores have jumped sharply.
In 2002-03, just 27 percent of Mobile County
schools met state goals on standardized tests. In 200506, the number jumped to 83 percent.
In July, a Yes We Can! Birmingham campaign kicked
off with a meeting between Birmingham Board of
Education members, the Community Foundation of
Greater Birmingham, area businesses and city leaders.
Birmingham can benefit from a partnership similar
to the one in Mobile, said Carolyn Akers, the Community Foundation’s executive director.
The foundation is putting together a citizen advisory team made up of churches, nonprofit organizations,
community leaders, business owners and school officials that will hold meetings beginning early next year,
to help the community gain a voice in their schools.
Under the direction of Superintendent Beverly L. Hall, Atlanta schools
have increased test scores, graduation rates and attendance through an aggressive reform plan in the middle and high schools.
Atlanta’s school system “experienced declining enrollment and was in
the same quandary as we are because they were tearing down projects in
Atlanta and giving the parents vouchers to go elsewhere,” Birmingham Superintendent Stan Mims said.
Two years ago, Atlanta launched its high school transformation at Carver
High School, one of the worst-performing schools in Georgia, with just onethird of its students graduating.
Hall opened the New Schools at Carver, five small high schools on one
campus, each with its own principal, curriculum and student body. There’s
the Carver Early College, the School of Health, Sciences and Research, the
School of Technology, the School of the Arts and the School of Entrepreneurship.
The small schools at Carver worked so well — with a 50 percent increase
in enrollment, a 25 percent increase in the graduation rate and significantly
increased test scores — that the system broke two more high schools into
“small learning communities,” with programs ranging from engineering to
law.
Hall, superintendent since 1999, plans to transform the remaining six
high schools into theme-based small schools over the next five years.
At the middle schools, Hall is providing students with individualized instruction and smaller classroom settings.
This school year, Atlanta Public Schools is piloting a single-gender program that includes dividing one middle school into two campuses — one
for girls and one for boys. While it’s too soon to tell whether the single-gender academies are working, attendance at the schools is increasing.
Cleveland Metropolitan School District pins its hopes of
reform on smaller schools and specialized learning settings
such as single-gender academies.
The schools there have lost 24 percent of their students in
the last five years.
Cleveland’s mayor took over the school system in 1998,
and a chief executive officer, Eugene Sanders, has headed the
schools since July 2006 — the same time Mims came to Birmingham.
Sanders launched a five-year strategic plan that includes
four single-gender academies for kindergartners through
second-graders. The district plans to add an additional grade
to the single-gender academies each year until each school
serves students from kindergarten through eighth grade.
Like Atlanta, the district has taken four traditional high
schools and broken them into smaller schools in specialized
areas. Last year, The John Hay Campus was broken down into
three schools: The Cleveland School of Science and Medicine,
Cleveland School of Architecture and Design and the Cleveland Early College High School. Three more specialized high
schools are in the works for next year.
“We want to have kids taking steps into the post-secondary world, whether it be college or a career, while they are
in high school,” said Eric Gordon, chief academic officer of
Cleveland Metropolitan Schools.
Cleveland’s changes are too new to see results in tests, but
Gordon says parents, students and teachers have responded
well.
Statewide pre-K
deemed crucial
By MARIE LEECH
News staff writer
Joe Morton, Alabama’s state school superintendent, has often said he would forgo the 12th grade
if it meant he could put all 4-year-olds in a pre-kindergarten program.
Yet Alabama’s pre-K program serves fewer than
1 in 20 of the state’s 4-year-olds. Add in the federal
Head Start program, which serves only those below the federal poverty line, and the total number
of Alabama 4-year-olds in a public pre-K program
is still well under 1 in 5.
“Every year, there is a waiting list with between
600 and 900 children,” said Gayle Cunningham,
executive director of the Jefferson County Committee for Economic Opportunity, which administers the largest Head Start program in Jefferson
County. The program serves 1,431 children, ages
3 to 4. Most of those children will attend Birmingham city schools when they are 5.
The idea of educating children younger than 5
is nothing new; Head Start has provided preschool
for low-income children since the 1960s, and higher-income families have long invested in private
programs.
But kids whose families are above the poverty
line yet can’t afford private preschool are left behind, Cunningham said.
“There is a huge need here for pre-kindergarten,” Cunningham said, “and that need doubles or
triples for children from low-income families.¤.¤.”
That’s where the state needs to step in, Cunningham said.
Alabama’s pre-K funding allows for 131 sites.
Just four of those sites are in Jefferson County; two
serve Shelby County.
Other states see the value of early childhood
education: Florida, Oklahoma and Georgia offer
a universal, voluntary pre-K program to all 4-yearolds whose parents want it.
“The first five years of life are critical to a child’s
lifelong development,” said Linda Tilly, executive
director for the nonprofit advocacy group, Voices
for Alabama’s Children. “Our goal is that every
family who wishes to enroll their child in a quality
pre-K program may do so.”
Private schools
offer options
By ANITA DEBRO
News staff writer
There are more than 400 private schools
throughout Alabama, educating about 73,100
children, according to the latest data from the
National Center for Education Statistics.
In metro Birmingham, some of the largest,
places like Briarwood Christian’s K-12 school and
John Carroll Catholic High, count their students
by the hundreds. But many private schools have
fewer than 100 students and specialize in very
small class sizes.
Crishuana Vasser of Birmingham’s East Lake
sends her children — ages 14, 12, 7 and twin 6year-olds — to Cornerstone School, a private
Christian school one block from Woodlawn High,
her alma mater.
After sending her children to public schools in
Birmingham and Tarrant and then homeschooling them, she decided on Cornerstone, where
she pays $350 a month in tuition based on her
income. Cornerstone enrolls about 245 students
from kindergarten through eighth grade in two
locations.
Vasser said she likes the intimate setting and
feels her children are thriving.
Deloris G. Norman, a former educator with
Birmingham City Schools, said she opened the
John B. Norman Christian Academy nearly 10
years ago to educate low-income students in
West End.
The school, named after her father, is an extension of the Rivers of Living Water church and
serves third- through eighth-graders. It follows the
state’s course of study, but the 45 students also take
classes in etiquette, cooking and creative dance.
A small student body has multiple benefits,
Norman said.
“We get students who have had discipline
problems or other problems in the classroom,”
she said. “Over time, I have seen miraculous
changes in them.”
Where are they now?
We caught up with some Birmingham City Schools valedictorians
and asked them to reflect on their education. Here’s what they had to say:
Parental
involvement
a key to
success
TERRA MOODY | Ensley High School, Class of 2003
By ANITA DEBRO
Age: 22
College: University of Montevallo
Degree: B.A., communications.
What are you up
to now? Earning a
master’s degree in
communications
studies and a Ph.D. in
information sciences
in a dual-learning program at the University of Alabama. She hopes to one day study how television
Educators say academic success starts at home and parental
involvement can help make a
good school better.
Glen Iris Elementary School
Principal Michael Wilson appreciates all parents who take
the time to attend PTA meetings — sometimes more than
200 parents show up, he said.
But Wilson said he would like to
know that those same parents
supporting the Birmingham
school are taking the time to
read to their children at home
and check their homework.
“That’s what makes the difference,” Wilson said. “If I knew
100 percent of my parents
checked homework, that would
be great.”
While Wilson is pleased with
PTA participation at Glen Iris,
he said meetings at his former
school, Whatley Elementary,
would draw only 20 parents.
Heather Weiss, founder and
director of Harvard University’s
Family Research Project, said
there is a clear link between parental involvement and a child’s
success in school.
In a 2006 study of ethnically
diverse, low-income students,
Weiss’ group concluded that as
parents became more involved
in a child’s schooling, the child’s
literacy performance improved.
Mike Melvin, principal of
Crestline Elementary School in
Mountain Brook, said 100 percent of the school’s parents and
staff are involved in PTA.
“Parents here actually come
in before their child starts kindergarten to talk to me about
their education, and that’s not
true everywhere,” Melvin said.
The school’s PTA has 47 committees, ranging from a committee for field day to music to
the school newsletter. “I’ve been
a principal in Auburn, Jackson
County, Miss., and Biloxi, Miss.,
where you almost had to beg
parents to become officers of
the PTA,” he said. “Here, it’s considered an honor and a privilege.”
News staff writer
programming affects minorities.
What was your experience like attending Ensley?
“We were a tight-knit class. I felt like there was an
expectation that we succeed there. A lot of teachers
stressed that we needed to do well.”
Did you feel like you were prepared for college when
you started Montevallo? “Yes. I never felt intimidated. I had a good foundation starting from elementary school. I did get some strange looks when people
found out I graduated from Ensley High School. But
I feel like it doesn’t matter where you come from, it’s
about having a zest for learning.”
NATHAN PUTMAN | Huffman High School, Class of 2002
Age: 23
College: University of Alabama
Degree: B.S., marine science and biology.
What are you up to now? Working on a Ph.D. in
the Evolution, Ecology and Organismal
Biology Department
at the University of
North Carolina at
Chapel Hill. His work
centers on studying
how environmental
factors shape the biology of sea turtles.
Do you feel like you got an education comparable
to that of students who attended a suburban school
district in Birmingham? “I feel like my education
at Huffman was much more useful and thorough
compared to friends of mine who attended suburban schools. Sure, there may have been more AP
courses and nicer buildings at over-the-mountain
schools, but does that determine the quality of your
education? ... Students don’t need to be spoon-fed
from kindergarten through high school. ... Huffman
taught me that I was personally responsible for my
education.”
Are there any changes or improvements you would
like to see made within Birmingham City Schools so
that students get a better education? “While I was in
high school, an enormous amount of time was wasted
with the graduation exam. ... While I was at Huffman,
only one AP course was offered (literature).”
ANGELIQUE TURNER | Carver High School, Class of 2003
Age: 22
College: Samford University
Degree: B.S., biochemistry
What are you up to
now? Attending the
Auburn University
School of Pharmacy.
What was your experience like attending
Carver? “I had good experiences. I had teachers
who cared about me. They wanted me to succeed. I
was very active in sports and other things. I think it
is a really good school.”
Did you feel like you were prepared for college
when you started Samford? “No. I was not prepared. Samford and especially the science classes
there were more challenging to me and I struggled
my first semester. We covered more material in a
week at Samford than we covered in a year in high
school. I went from the top of my class at Carver to
being an average student at Samford.”
Anita Debro
On the Web: Full comments from the valedictorians are available at
blog.al.com/bn/crossroads
E-MAIL: adebro@ bhamnews.com
Good schools drive real estate market
By ANITA DEBRO
News staff writer
When Lee Ellen and Derek Sharp started
looking for a new home, they put what many
couples with children put at the top of their
wish lists: Good schools.
They’re settling in Vestavia Hills.
“We just really liked the school system,”
Lee Ellen Sharp said. “We looked at Homewood, too, but you get more house for your
money in Vestavia Hills.”
The Sharps have a 5-year-old daughter
who will attend kindergarten at Vestavia Hills
East next year and a 2-year-old son. They
moved from Birmingham’s Forest Park.
For suburban cities such as Vestavia Hills,
Hoover, Homewood and those in Shelby
County, successful schools have boosted the
cities’ property values and populations.
About 27 percent of homebuyers consider
schools while looking for a home, according
to a 2006 National Association of Realtors
survey.
“Good schools are an amenity, particularly
for families,” said Jim Lawrence, president of
the Birmingham Association of Realtors. “And
good schools are typically one of the factors
that drive up property values.”
Ask Anna Frances Bradley, the Sharps’ real
estate agent.
Bradley mainly sells bungalows in the
Edgewood area of Homewood. Most of her
clients are single, but many buy there because of the schools.
“Either they know they will have a family some day and they want to stay, or they
buy knowing that their property values will
increase because of the school system,” she
said.
Vestavia Hills parents have come to expect an array of advanced placement classes,
ranging from physics to art.
“Those are the kinds of things that are
pulling people in to our system,” said Mary
Lee Rice, a Vestavia Hills city councilwoman.
Schools are one reason Shelby County has
been Alabama’s fastest growing county since
1990. Shelby’s population rose from 144,557
in 2000 to 178,182 in 2006.
“I don’t think that there is a city or community in Shelby County that would have grown
as much and prospered if we did not have
these schools,” said Steve Martin, a school
board member.
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ON THE FIELD,
AN ATHLETIC DIVIDE
Faced with lack of money and low participation, Birmingham high school sports programs
struggle to produce winning teams and college opportunities.
It’s a lot easier in the suburbs, where many top athletes prefer to play.
TOP: SPECIAL/RICK ZERBY; ABOVE: NEWS STAFF/FRANK COUCH
Birmingham city school teams don’t get the fan and booster support that suburban teams do. In top photo, the West End stands are sparse before a
September football game at Lawson Field. Above, Hoover vs. Vestavia Hills at Regions Park packed ’em in.
By SOLOMON CRENSHAW JR. and JON SOLOMON
T
News staff writers
he scoreboard told only part of the story.
Bessemer’s Jess Lanier High beat
Birmingham’s West End 45-19 in a Thursday night football game at Lawson Field
in September. Lanier fans crammed their
side of the stadium. On the other side,
fewer than 200 people showed up, including the band.
The meager following for West End is just one sign of
where high school athletics stand in Birmingham City
Schools. The system that decades ago set the pace for
athletic success in the state is more likely to lose than
win when its teams face schools from surrounding suburbs.
Beyond victories and defeats, the current state of
Birmingham prep athletics is costing its residents opportunities and hope.
Some coaches and parents assert that college athletic scholarships are less likely to go to Birmingham
P U B L I S H E D
students than their suburban counterparts because of
the city’s reputation of poorer academics, training and
resources.
Also missing are the positive feelings and unifying
bond that athletic success can bring to a school and
community. Low morale can prompt athletes to leave
the system, and as the enrollment drops, funding for
the school system falls, as well.
Birmingham school board member W.J. Maye, the
chairman of the school system’s athletics committee,
spoke bluntly about city teams on the field: “We are terrible. There was a time we were the system people didn’t
want to play. Now everybody puts us on the schedule so
they can have a win.”
The city’s only state titles in the past 14 years — nine of
them — have come in boys and girls basketball. During
that period, teams in the growing Birmingham suburbs —
where the city’s nine high schools are outnumbered more
than 3-to-1 — have captured 193 state titles in 21 sports. A
glaring divide on the field.
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A glaring divide on the field
ATHLETICS
From Page 23
Coaches, parents and administrators point to several obstacles
facing Birmingham’s high school
athletics program, especially in
comparison to suburban systems:
. Lack of resources, such as
money, facilities and large booster
clubs.
. Low morale, lack of fan support in some cases, and a perceived
lack of cooperation from administrators.
. Lack of a good feeder program
from middle schools.
. Lower quality of coaching in
several sports.
. The flight of quality athletes
to suburban systems.
. Low student participation on
teams.
“It’s on the bottom,” retired
Ramsay boys basketball coach Willie Scoggins said of the state of Birmingham athletics. “It was better in
the ‘60s than it is now and you didn’t
have as much to work with (then).”
“We ain’t got nothing but football
and basketball,” Parker fan Carlton Woods said. “Baseball, we get
slaughtered in that. We ain’t got the
batting machines and all that kind
of stuff the county schools have.”
The city’s issues have reached
the point where “it’s not a question
of why kids run away,” said Gene
Edelman, a retired Birmingham
teacher and member of the system’s
athletics committee, “it’s why don’t
more run away?”
Athlete exodus
Dennis King began his high
school football career at Birmingham’s Huffman High. He ended it
at Hoover High, a nationally-recognized program that has won five of
the past seven 6A state championships and has sent many students
to college on athletic scholarships.
Dennis Davis, King’s father, said
his son transferred in part because
the family saw differences between
the schools in academics and athletics.
“He liked the way the (athletics)
program was run at Hoover over
Huffman High School,” Davis said.
“Huffman didn’t have the facilities
that Hoover has. Really, none of the
city schools have the facilities that
Hoover and Spain Park have.”
George Moore, the Birmingham
school system’s athletics director, said part of the city’s challenge
stems from its loss of athletes to the
suburbs. The exodus is prompted
by better environments for athletics, academics and safety, he said.
“If we had all these key athletes
who are going to some of the outlying school districts, you would see
that our program would look a lot
better,” Moore said.
He and others raised questions
about whether departing athletes
are legally transferring. Some city
coaches, parents and administrators say they believe their athletes
are being illegally recruited away by
people in other communities.
“That’s what they do,” said Maye,
the athletics committee chairman.
“They recruit them in the seventh
and eighth grade so they have them
in high school.”
Some athletes leave because
they think the suburbs will provide
them with a better stage for getting
an athletic scholarship to college.
Birmingham has recently produced
some elite college football players,
such as Alabama’s Andre Smith and
Vanderbilt’s Earl Bennett, but there
aren’t large numbers.
Dabo Swinney, an assistant
football coach at Clemson who recruits the state of Alabama, said he
has seen fewer city players that he
wants to sign in the past few years.
Swinney, who comes from the
Birmingham area and played and
coached at the University of Alabama, said the city’s facilities and
the academic resumes for individual players fall behind other urban
cities.
“I think they’ve made some improvements, but there should be
more,” Swinney said. “I look at some
of the schools there and what they
have, and it’s just a shame. Those
kids deserve better. There are some
very prideful schools within the city
that have done a tremendous job
without as much.”
It’s not just football where city
athletes are losing opportunities.
Edgar Welden, the founder and
president of the Birmingham Ath-
letic Partnership, said city athletes
in many sports are missing out on
college scholarships because they
don’t have the same resources and
opportunities to learn fundamentals and get seen by recruiters.
BAP, a nonprofit corporate foundation created in 2002 to aid city
athletics, is trying to create better
exposure for athletes by staging
clinics and purchasing video equipment to send footage of athletes to
college recruiters.
“Basketball has the AAU system,
but the system is not there in other
sports where we should be excelling, track, volleyball, softball and
baseball,” Welden said. “We’ve got
the athletes who could excel, but
they have not had enough extra opportunities.”
Inability to even offer some
sports adds to the missed opportunities. In the Birmingham system,
Huffman and Ramsay provide the
most sports, with 10 each. Twelve
of the 13 high schools in the Jefferson County system offer more than
10 sports, including Clay-Chalkville
and Gardendale with 19 each.
In sports that do exist, a lot of college coaches “won’t recruit certain
kids because they weren’t taught it
a certain way,” Moore said.
Some Birmingham coaches say
they don’t have the tools — in particular, weight equipment — to train
their athletes. They also complain
that they aren’t afforded the time
in their schedules to sufficiently
prepare for practices and games as
coaches at suburban schools do.
Many of Birmingham’s high
schools are housed in buildings
that are several decades old and
lack amenities that newer suburban
schools have.
“It’s not a matter that we don’t
have as much as other people. It’s
that our money doesn’t go anywhere,” said Edelman, who frequently points out athletic short-
comings at board of education
meetings. “Have you seen the
weight room out there at JacksonOlin? That’s why (football coach
Michael) Clisby takes his team to
Ensley to do his workouts. It’s minuscule.”
Ensley High stopped operating two years ago. Wenonah High,
which opened this year, has no
weight room.
Birmingham Superintendent
Stan Mims says the difference begins with dollars.
“They have more money,” said
Mims, who recently completed
his first year. “We just don’t have
the funds. The suburban districts
usually find people who come and
sponsor them.”
Boosters less help
The base supplemental pay
that coaches receive is comparable
between the Birmingham and Jefferson County systems. A Jefferson
County high school head football
coach with 12 or more years of experience, for instance, gets $7,171.
A Birmingham high school head
football coach gets $6,500 for 15 or
more years.
One major difference: Jefferson
County schools typically can better
reward coaches through supplements from their booster clubs.
Moore said each Birmingham
high school has an athletics booster
club, but not all function as well as
he would like. The most participation comes from Jackson-Olin and
Huffman, he said.
Basketball is the biggest draw
and most successful sport in the
city, and it shows in the coaches’
pay. Birmingham head basketball coaches’ supplements range
from $5,000 to $6,500, more than
Jefferson County’s, which range
from $4,000 to $5,800. Birmingham awards an additional $4,000
to coaches in any sport who win a
state championship, and $2,000 for
state runner-up finishes.
Lately, however, city coaches
have felt anything but rewarded.
All high school and middle school
coaching positions were vacated
during the summer and coaches
had to reapply.
With the basketball season starting last week, Birmingham does
not have its fulltime coaches under
contract yet. A number of basketball coaches declined to coach their
teams without a contract.
“It’s a shame for the second time
this year (including the fall season)
the actions of the athletic director
and others have put the sports program in turmoil,” Edelman said.
In an interview this fall, Moore
acknowledged the mass coaching
removals and rehires can “destroy a
coach’s morale” but believes coaches should not feel threatened.
“Our coaches would be the first
to say certain schools are not doing
what they need to do in order to be
winning,” Moore said. “I think nonrenewals can be a positive. We need
to have something out there where
we keep our coaches accountable.”
Moore said the timing of the
non-renewals last summer was not
good and won’t happen again. Most
coaches, with the exception of some
spring sports, will know their status
by April of each year, he said.
Principals hire their own coaches, and sometimes they make those
hires based on classroom abilities
without consideration of coaching
knowledge, Moore said.
The motivation to coach merely
for extra money is a “big problem”
in some sports, Moore added. As an
example, he recalled a woman hired
by a principal as a middle school
baseball coach who explained she
would learn about the sport on the
Internet.
Since Birmingham’s most recent
state title in baseball, by Huffman
in 1982, six suburban schools have
combined to win 17 state baseball
titles.
Huffman baseball coach Demetrius Mitchell expressed exasperation at the lack of fundamental
skills taught in the city. One team,
he said, once recorded 39 stolen
bases in one game.
“Some teams don’t record 39 stolen bases in one year,” Mitchell said.
“They’re stealing with no thought of
strategy.”
Mitchell’s complaints go beyond
the lack of fundamentals. Mitchell,
who has been suspended by Moore
in the past, said he would grade the
city athletics department’s support
as a D or D-minus due to a lack of
stability and cooperation.
“Because some people have
been in the system 15, 20 years,
they’re not doing anything,” Mitchell said. “They want other people
that are young, energetic, enthusi-
astic about their craft to do nothing,
as well.”
Former Wenonah Athletics Director Henry Pope said Moore is doing the best he can, considering he
must yield most of his authority to
the school board.
Middle school
Birmingham’s issues start well
before the athletes reach high
school. Mims, the superintendent,
said the key to improving the city’s
athletic fortunes is to improve middle school sports.
Some coaches say the teaching
process is hurt by the feeder system
that brings athletes from middle
schools. The enrollment zones of
middle schools are fragmented,
sending teammates from one middle school team to as many as three
high schools.
“If you’ve got a middle school
that’s going to Spain Park, everything that they’ve got on that football team goes to Spain Park,” West
End football coach Jim Holifield
said. “Over here, I might get two
players, Parker gets three or
four and Wenonah gets three or
four. You’re diluting everything.”
Moore said he has attempted
to hold clinics at middle schools
to improve the fundamentals, but
high school coaches want no part of
it. The coaches don’t want to teach
an athlete who one day beats their
team on a Friday night, he said.
Carolyn Cobb, the president of
the Birmingham school board, said
coaches shouldn’t blame the feeder
system.
“Whatever school they’re coming from, they (coaches) still have a
responsibility of teaching and training,” Cobb said.
Mims said the issue of feeder patterns is a problem and the system’s
athletics committee will study it.
Several coaches say they are further handicapped by low athletic
participation, particularly compared to the schools they compete
against.
A survey by The Birmingham
News found that on average Birmingham high schools have 192
athletes and a student body of 902,
while Jefferson County averages
278 athletes and a student body of
998. Students who play multiple
sports were counted more than
once.
About three years ago, Holifield
wrote a message to himself on the
blackboard in the coaches’ office:
“Against All Odds.”
“Even though we don’t have all
the things that all the other schools
have, we’re still gonna fight, we’re
still gonna struggle, we’re never
gonna give up,” he said. “We’re gonna fight against all odds.”
EMAIL: [email protected]
‘I think (urban schools) have made some improvements, but there should be more. I look at some of the schools there
and what they have, and it’s just a shame. Those kids deserve better.
There are some very prideful schools within the city that have done a tremendous job without as much.’
Dabo Swinney, an assistant football coach at Clemson who comes from the Birmingham area
and played and coached at the University of Alabama and now recruits the state of Alabama.
T
SPORTS
Sunday, November 11, 2007
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The Birmingham News j 17C
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NEWS STAFF/LINDA STELTER
NEWS STAFF/MICHELLE WILLIAMS
A Ramsay High School cheerleader celebrates after the Ramsay girls score during the
game against Fairfield .last Tuesday.
While Carver’s enrollment ranks third-highest among city high schools with just under
1,000, about 30 players dressed out for preseason football practice.
RAMSAY HIGH SCHOOL GIRLS BASKETBALL
CARVER HIGH SCHOOL FOOTBALL
Rams continue to hit
goals on, off court
No wins, but players
never quit trying
A city team succeeds A city team struggles
By RAY MELICK
News staff writer
The gym looks like every other high school
gym around the city of Birmingham, with its
well-worn hardwood floor surrounded by
creaky, fold-up bleachers and its thick, stale
air.
Yet this gym differs from the others because
it is home to the Ramsay Rams, winners of the
past four Class 5A girls basketball championships.
In a city whose sports teams often lag behind in finances, facilities, equipment, support and coaches, basketball is a near-perfect
sport. All a school needs is a gym, a ball, and
one coach, unlike sports such as football that
require special equipment and huge fields
and large coaching staffs. And kids can play
basketball year-round, anywhere they can
find a hoop.
Ramsay’s facilities are not better than at
other schools, and the coaches are not better
paid. The athletics budget comes entirely
from ticket sales and concessions.
So why the success?
Wenonah girls coach Emanuel “Tub” Bell,
whose teams dominated girls basketball in the
city until four years ago, says it’s the coach,
Robert Mosley.
“He turned that program around,” Bell said.
“He knows what he’s doing. He runs a tight,
disciplined ship. . . . Sure, he got a couple of
really good players. But he made them successful with his discipline, his tactics, and
having smart kids.”
Magnet school
The 32-year-old Mosley played high school
basketball at Leflore, under legendary coach
J.D. Shelwood. He studies the game constantly, working camps in the summer and
“borrowing” from other coaches.
“I don’t have a lot of interests,” Mosley
said. “I’m married, I go to church, and basketball — that’s all I do.”
Good players certainly help. Samone Kennedy and Katherine Graham, who arrived at
Ramsay at the same time as Mosley five years
ago, led the Rams to a four-year 128-13 record, and have now taken their games to the
University of South Carolina and LSU, respectively.
Kennedy was zoned for Woodlawn. Graham
lived in the Huffman zone. Both could go to
Ramsay because Ramsay is a “magnet”
school, open to about 160 freshmen a year
from the Birmingham school district who can
pass the entrance requirements.
“If you give me the pick of all the students
in the city of Birmingham, I would win
20-plus games every year,” said Birmingham
City Schools Athletics Director George Moore.
“. . . That’s no slight on the coaches. The
coaches are doing an excellent job. But for the
most part, they get to pick and choose and all
those other schools don’t.”
But, said Mosley, “the school takes the first
160 that qualify, and then those 160 have to
maintain a 2.5 grade point average while they
are here or they have to go back to the school
where they are zoned. The truth is, good athletes don’t always excel in the classroom. And
a lot of very good athletes want to come here
but don’t qualify.
“And even if we do get them, the curriculum is all honors or AP (advanced placement). You can’t hide kids in classes where
you know they can pass.”
Ramsay Principal Jeanette Watters said, “I
don’t recruit athletes. I recruit students. There
are no exceptions.”
Ramsay, which does not have a football
team, has a parent booster club that works
basketball games and concession stands. The
parents are typically more involved — in athletics and academics — because they consider
education a priority and they value having
their children at Ramsay.
“When you get that kind of talent, plus
smart kids who come from good backgrounds
— that’s a winning combination,” Bell said.
Demanding accountability
Knowing the pressure his players are under
to stay at Ramsay allows Mosley to establish
what he sees as the foundation to his team’s
success: accountability.
“I’m accountable,” Mosley said. “The assistants are accountable. The kids are accountable, not just on the court but in the classroom. We hold them accountable for
everything: the way they carry themselves, the
way they dress, their grade point average.
“And about the only reason we allow a kid
to miss practice is for tutoring.”
The Ramsay team learned Mosley was serious his first year, when he benched his team’s
best player, Rutgers University signee Sammeika Thrash, for the first three games of her
senior season for missing three practices.
“You don’t miss practice,” said Kennedy.
“We knew that. That wasn’t true everywhere. I
had a friend at Woodlawn. I asked her, ‘Why
aren’t you at practice?’ She said she didn’t feel
like going to practice.”
Mosley can demand because his players are
used to meeting demands.
“These kids are accustomed to achieving, or
they wouldn’t be here,” he said. “Our kids are,
by nature, competitive in everything they do
— academically as well as athletically.
“The big thing is, we don’t make excuses.
We can’t give our kids a reason not to succeed. So we take care of what we’ve got, instill
pride in what we have, and try to take advantage of what we have instead of worrying
about what we don’t have.”
E-MAIL: [email protected]
By ANDREW GRIBBLE
News staff writer
Carver High School Athletics Director Alvin
Moore watches his 11 a.m. gym class walk
laps around one of the school’s two gymnasiums.
It’s midway through August and the Carver
football team has yet to play a game, but the
33-year veteran of Birmingham City Schools
knows it’s going to be a tough year. The 50 or
so kids walking around him this day are
nearly twice as many as the squad that took
the field for its 42-0 season-opening loss to
Wenonah and wrapped up its season with a
47-0 loss to Parker.
At Carver, playing football ranks behind
other interests. “You see that kid over there,”
Moore said, pointing toward a student large
enough to play nose tackle. “He’s in the
band.”
In between the bookend losses to its innercity rivals, Carver faced some of the best
teams in Alabama week after week in Class
6A, Region 6.
Composed mostly of affluent Birmingham
suburbs, Region 6 has been dubbed by many
fans and writers as the toughest football region in the state. Some teams in the region,
such as Vestavia Hills, are forced to dole out
duplicate numbers because their roster size
cracks the century mark.
“When you pull up in one bus and the
other team pulls up in four,” Moore said,
“that’s a problem.”
Tough to watch
Interim coach BeShaw Smith sums up the
biggest problem with Carver’s football team
matter-of-factly.
“Who wants to be surrounded by losers?”
Smith said. “Not saying that we are losers, but
who is going to say “They lost all their games,
so I want to play for them?’ ”
It’s been decades since Carver ranked
among the elite in high school football, but
the problems began to mount in 2004 when
the school was bumped up from 5A to 6A, the
state’s largest classification, and were compounded two years later when the school
moved to Region 6.
The Rams have gone 2-18 since joining Region 6. Their lone win in the region, and only
one this season, came from a forfeit victory
over Hoover. Excluding the Hoover forfeit, opponents outscored the Rams 487 to 10 this
season.
“We’ll start a game out all right,” junior
safety Jeremy Howard said, “but having everybody playing both ways (offense and defense)
kills us.”
Senior quarterback Ashton Gaither said that
kids in the school “don’t have as much inter-
est in football as they do other sports,” such
as basketball, which will draw more than 50
boys to tryouts. That’s even though Carver’s
enrollment ranks third-highest among city
high schools with just under 1,000.
Joe Nash was a member of the Carver football team that played Dothan’s Northview in
the 1981 Class 4A championship game at Legion Field. Nowadays he sits in the stands as
his son Joseph plays for the current Rams
squad. He admits it can be tough to watch.
“Kids love to be with a winner,” the elder
Nash said. “If they ain’t with a winner, they’ll
move on. They’ll move on to Hoover, to Erwin, to Huffman. It’s happening right now.”
Tedarius Brown, for instance, led the Rams
in 2006 as a promising freshman quarterback,
but transferred to Erwin before the start of the
season.
Coaching carousel
Carver was handicapped this season in
ways other than numbers.
While players at Spain Park and Hoover
participated in 7-on-7 passing camps this
summer, the players at Carver still didn’t
know who would coach them.
Coach Jackie Hurst had been fired after
spring practice earlier in the year; Moore cited
a 49-point loss to Bessemer’s Jess Lanier in
the spring game and a lack of “preparedness.”
In August, when schools all across the state
were in the thick of two-a-days, interim coach
Phillip King took a leave of absence after the
death of his brother. Smith took over as interim coach and King never returned. By season’s end, Carver still didn’t have an official
permanent coach.
Principal Darrell Hudson said his search
has been delayed and limited because he has
been allowed to search only within the system
due to a systemwide reduction-in-force plan.
When he can, Hudson said, he will launch a
“nationwide search.
“We’re looking for a coach to completely rebuild the program,” Hudson said.
Including King, the Rams have had four
head coaches since 2004.
Mike Vest of the Birmingham Athletic Partnership said that despite many obstacles, he
sees a lot of pride within the football team.
“I see these kids coming back every Friday
night trying to play, trying to win, trying to
run the plays and trying to score,” Vest said.
“These kids are going to look back and be
proud that they didn’t quit.”
Even in their final game of the season, midway through the fourth quarter and down by
47, the Rams mounted a drive deep into Parker territory before stalling.
“The group I got here considers themselves
winners,” Smith said, “because they’re still
here.”
E-MAIL: [email protected]
BIRMINGHAM ATHLETIC PARTNERSHIP
City coaches often turn to main corporate donor
System AD wants
more self-reliance
By JON SOLOMON
and SOLOMON CRENSHAW JR.
News staff writers
The Birmingham City
Schools athletics department
wants its major donor to take
a lesser role in funding daily
operations and focus on paying for larger projects.
Birmingham Athletics Director George Moore wants
the Birmingham Athletic Partnership (BAP), a nonprofit
corporation that has helped
fund city athletics since 2002,
to change its focus to allow
the city to become more financially self-reliant. BAP is
willing to do that, but for now
it often is the first option for
coaches seeking equipment or
supplies due to the school
system’s bureaucracy and reduced funding.
BAP is also the first option
for many corporations that
want to donate to city athletics. Edgar Welden, the
founder and president of BAP,
acknowledged that corporations which donate money to
BAP do so partly because of
media reports that many state
audits have found problems in
the school system’s bookkeeping. A 2005 audit, for instance,
showed unaccounted gate
receipts.
“This isn’t about lack of
trust,” Welden said. “This is
about the difference between
business and government.
They would like to give money
to a business person as opposed to a faceless government agency.”
Moore said that while he
appreciates donations to and
from BAP, “before BAP was
ever in existence, we had athletics in the city of Birmingham.”
BAP officials and Moore say
their comments should not be
interpreted as criticism of the
other. Both sides say they
need to maintain their relationship to help students.
BAP has purchased more
than $350,000 worth of equipment and other items for city
schools since its inception.
NEWS STAFF/BEVERLY TAYLOR
Edgar Welden, founder and president of the Birmingham
Athletic Partnership, and Mike Vest, BAP executive
director, pose at Ramsay High School with a new soccer
goal purchased by BAP. The old one is behind them at left.
BAP also pays for camps, clinics and media events.
Without BAP, Birmingham
athletics “probably would
have folded a long time ago,”
said Shades Valley football
coach Curtis Coleman, Huffman’s former coach. “They’re
providing not only the financial support, but the moral
support.”
Huffman baseball coach
Demetrius Mitchell said he
wishes BAP Executive Director
Mike Vest or Welden was the
city’s athletics director.
“What’s the point of even having an athletic director if BAP
is doing what it’s doing?”
Mitchell said.
Vest and Welden said they
have no interest, nor the capability, to run the athletics
department. But Mitchell’s
question raises an issue
Moore has been fighting:
Some coaches simply bypass
the athletics director’s office
and go directly to BAP.
“Sometimes we get so many
coaches’ requests, it’s overwhelming,” Vest said.
Ten corporations are donating $25,000 a year for four
years to BAP, which then purchases items for schools based
on requests. The requests
from coaches are supposed to
be approved by their principal
and Moore, but that doesn’t
always happen, Moore said.
“We need to look at our resources first at the school
level, then look at the district,
and then after that, we can
look at BAP,” he said.
Vest said BAP used to be the
last resort for coaches seeking
help, but now seems to be the
first. He instructs coaches to
have their requests properly
approved. The system is improving, he added.
In essence, Vest said,
coaches rely on BAP because
it has become the booster
club for all city schools.
“You go to Hayes High
School and you try to go fundraise across the street at the
hair shop, or go down to the
little gas station down the
street — nobody gives them
anything,” Vest said.
BAP had a surplus of
$173,741 in 2006, with
$340,590 in revenue and
$166,849 in expenses, according to its most recent 990
form.
In the future, Moore said,
he would like BAP to renovate
the track at Lawson Field and
help to one day create an athletic complex.
Welden is concerned about
future giving to Birmingham
athletics, especially as current
donors get older.
“We tell these kids, ‘The
main reason we’re doing what
we’re doing is somebody cares
about you and wants to give
you all these opportunities.
We want you to remember
when you go to college, don’t
forget about the kids you left
behind.’ ”
E-MAIL: [email protected]
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CAN WE COME
TOGETHER?
NEWS STAFF/BERNARD TRONCALE
Over the past year, The Birmingham News has explored critical
challenges that face metropolitan Birmingham-Hoover — race
and trust, fragmented government, inner-city crime, blight in our
industrial core, uneven economic growth, disparities between urban
and suburban classrooms. People across the area agree:
On each of these fronts, leadership is key to progress. Can someone
or some group craft a vision that leads our communities forward?
Thirst for leadership
sets stage for change
By JEFF HANSEN, SHERRI C. GOODMAN and THOMAS SPENCER
News staff writers
I
t took one change — a new mayor — to set in motion plans
for the Birmingham region that had been stalled, launch
conversations that had been avoided and stir hopes that
had drowned in cynicism.
People from Vestavia Hills to Fairfield, from corporate
headquarters to call centers, saw that change from a two-term
incumbent to a charismatic and controversial leader as a catalyst to the region’s quest to move forward.
The thirst for change that showed itself in Birmingham’s
mayoral election also unleashed a quest for collaboration and
cooperation that reaches beyond the city limits and across the
metropolitan area. People are starting to talk across long-standing divides in a region that has drifted for a generation.
They talk about leadership — not a single person, but a vision that aims to move the whole community forward, across
city limits and county lines, a broad coalition of political, business, philanthropic and religious leaders.
Otherwise, U.S. Rep. Artur Davis said, metropolitan Birmingham-Hoover will continue to be a place where we have “ceased
to think of ourselves as living in one community .€.€. ceased to
think of ourselves as a people with a vast common ground, and
we have gotten more and more settled and focused on our differences.”
Now is a moment, Davis said, when leadership has the opportunity to forge a better common future.
RESIDENTS SPEAK OUT
People across metro BirminghamHoover have definite opinions on
our region’s strengths and challenges,
and on its leadership. In researching
this installment of Birmingham at a
Crossroads, reporters for The News
interviewed 114 people from all walks
of life in Jefferson and Shelby counties.
Read News staff writer Tom Gordon’s
account of what they have to say,
beginning on PAGE 27, and read a
sampling of their comments on
PAGES 27-28.
ONLINE
READ THE INTERVIEWS
Complete interviews
with each of the 114
Jefferson and Shelby
residents can be
found on al.com, the
online home of The
Birmingham News, at http://blog.
al.com/bn/crossroads
See LEADERSHIP | Page 28
P U B L I S H E D
D E C E M B E R
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AT A CROSSROADS
Metro area
seeks vision,
cooperation
By TOM GORDON
News staff writer
Improving education, managing growth,
curbing crime and finding better ways to transport people and goods are ongoing challenges
for the leadership of any metropolitan area, including Birmingham-Hoover.
But it is even more difficult for BirminghamHoover leaders to launch effective efforts to
meet the challenges when the area’s many communities and governing bodies are unable or
unwilling to cooperate, communicate or share
a common vision on the problems they have in
common.
Such was the assessment of about half of the
114 area business and political leaders, health
care providers, law enforcement officials and
other residents interviewed over the past month
by reporters for The Birmingham News.
“Until we all cooperate regionally for the good
of all and stop protecting our little kingdoms,
things are not going to improve,” said Randy
Christian, spokesman for the Jefferson County
sheriff’s office and a north Shelby County resident. “That will take the checking of egos at the
door, rolling up sleeves and getting to work. Our
leaders have to be vested in the community as a
whole and leave personal agendas behind.”
“We’re a diverse people, but every other city
is, too, and to unify among the different areas
would be, I think, the biggest challenge our leaders face,” said Angela Acton, president of the PTA
at Vestavia Hills Elementary Cahaba Heights.
When asked to rate the quality of area leadership on a scale of 1 to 10, well over half of those
interviewed gave scores of 5 or higher, and nearly
half of the interviewees listed new Birmingham
Mayor Larry Langford or Hoover Mayor Tony
Petelos as the area’s most effective leader.
But many of those who had praise for Petelos and Langford — as well as more than half
of the more than 30 people interviewed who
gave area leadership or the leadership of one of
its governing bodies a rating lower than than 5
— said greater cooperation, either voluntarily or
through some formalized structure, would improve the area’s ability to solve its problems.
“Politically, I think there are a lot of good
individual leaders,” said Vestavia Hills Mayor
Charles “Scotty” McCallum, a former president
of the University of Alabama at Birmingham.
“But what has not happened is they have not
come together and started to work as a group,
and I hope that will come to pass.”
“Our lack of a metro government is a huge issue,” said John Hardin, a commercial real estate
broker who works in Birmingham and lives in
Homewood.
Paul Spina, 24
Birmingham,
Law student
and law clerk
On the most
important quality
in effective metro
leaders:
Reporters for The Birmingham News fanned out across the Birmingham-Hoover metro area
to ask residents how they think the area’s leaders are performing and to see what areas they
see as requiring the most effective leadership. More than 100 people participated. Here is
some of what they had to say. Read the full interviews at http://blog.al.com/bn/crossroads
Mary Hall, 65
BIRMINGHAM, Retired physical therapist
On the metro area challenge that most needs effective leadership:
“They need
to stick by
their guns.”
“Young people with families are moving out (of
Birmingham) for better school systems. We need
to figure out a way to make them stay by
improving the system.”
Vi Parramore, 59
leeds, president of the Jefferson County
American Federation of Teachers
On how the metro area can improve the quality of its
leadership:
“We need a group where we bring
them all together
— the CEOs of
business, leaders
of organizations,
elected officials,
politicians. . .
People have got to stop thinking
about their own turf and start
thinking collectively.”
Randy Christian, 49
NORTH SHELBY COUNTY, Spokesman for
Jefferson County sheriff’s office
On the issue most needing effective leadership:
“I believe that if the (Jefferson) County
Commission and City of
Birmingham can begin
the process of cooperation
and show what an impact
that can have, the rest will
fall in line. If that doesn’t
happen, we are in for more of the same. If
Birmingham doesn’t get it right,
Hoover will continue to become the
bell cow of the region.”
Mary C. Childress, 71
Birmingham,
Semiretired caregiver
Isabel Rubio, 42
Birmingham, Executive director
of the Hispanic Interest Coalition of Alabama
On the biggest obstacle to leadership in the metro area:
“I think it’s really easy for folks
who don’t live in the city limits
of Birmingham to, at the end of
the day, just say ‘You know,
I’m going home,’ and, ‘You
know, I don’t really have to
worry about this ... ’ ”
Integrity cited as key
From Montevallo to East Lake, from Vestavia
Hills to Grasselli Heights, men and women of all
ages, races and occupations cited honesty, trustworthiness and integrity as the most important
qualities they want from an effective leader.
But many also expressed a desire for leaders
with vision and an ability to unite others behind
that vision.
Bobby Pierson, a health and drivers education
teacher at Montevallo High School, described
that quality as “the ability to get people to the
negotiating table and work toward benefiting the
region.”
“This takes patience and being able to ignore
personal attacks,” Pierson said.
“You can be as courageous as you want,” said
Dennis Pantazis, a lawyer from Vestavia Hills.
“But if you’re offensive to people or don’t have the
ability and integrity to communicate with credibility, then you’re not going to get your .€.€. agenda
moving.”
A leader “needs to bring all of the areas together,” said Dr. Allan Goldstein, a pulmonologist
and Mountain Brook resident. “He needs to put
politics second to what the people need. And he
has to understand this is 2007 and in order to use
tax money wisely, we have to have a metro government. And you’ve got to find somebody that
is capable of getting the other people to listen to
that.”
Many comments were coupled with optimism, sometimes guarded, about Langford and
the speed with which he is pushing his agenda.
WHAT YOU TOLD US
That agenda involves cleaning up city neighborhoods, and tax and fee increases to help fund a
new stadium, improved mass transit, scholarships and other projects.
“He’s already done things that need to be
done that should have been done a long time
ago,” said Cassandra Maria Morgan, a nail technician who lives in East Thomas.
“Whether all of his plans or some of his plans
work, at least we have someone trying to make a
difference,” said former Birmingham City Council member Pat Sewell, who lives in Leeds.
“For the short amount of time he’s been in
office, it seems like things seem to be progressing,” said Pelham real estate agent Harold Reynolds. “I don’t know if he’s getting the cooperation
of others. When he says he’s going to do something, he does it.”
Petelos, whose city has boomed while Birmingham has lost population and businesses,
drew kudos because of his style and ability to
look beyond the boundaries of his growing community.
“He has really taken steps to start dialogue
with other communities,” said Bessemer eco-
On the metro area challenge that most
needs effective leadership:
“Transit, transit,
transit. I ride the
transit. It needs
improving in a hurry.”
REPORTERS WHO DID THE INTERVIEWS
News staff writers Kim Bryan, Walter Bryant, Mike
Cason, Michele Collins, Victoria Coman, Malcomb
Daniels, Anita Debro, Stan Diel, Keysha Drexel, Liz
Ellaby, Greg Garrison, Robert Gordon, Jeremy Gray,
Patrick Hickerson, Russell Hubbard, Dawn Kent,
Marie Leech, Wayne Martin, Laura W. McAlister,
Rahkia Nance, Toraine Norris, Lisa Osburn, Bill Plott,
Tiffany Ray, Carol Robinson, Anne Ruisi, William
C. Singleton III, Brannon Stewart, Erin Stock, Kelli
Hewett Taylor, Marienne Thomas-Ogle, Anna
Velasco, Val Walton, Nancy Wilstach and Barnett
Wright contributed to this report.
nomic development specialist Jeff Traywick, who
lives in Hueytown. “That is lacking in the Birmingham area.”
“He is someone who understands the bully
pulpit of leadership,” said Birmingham blogger
Andre Natta. “He does not overly control the situation but steps in when he needs to and gives a
nudge when needed.”
While Langford and Petelos were cited most
often in the survey, others lauded several times
for their leadership or cited as trustworthy included Alabama Power CEO Charles McCrary;
Jefferson County Commission President Bettye
Fine Collins; U.S. Rep. Artur Davis, D-Birmingham; McCallum; and state Sen. Jabo Waggoner,
R-Vestavia Hills.
Lakeshore Foundation President Jeff Underwood was among those who cited Petelos and
Waggoner, saying “they were trying to address
metropolitan and regional needs.” But Underwood also said metro-area needs, or at least those
in Jefferson County, could be better addressed if
there were a leader in place “accountable to most
of the voters.”
“I think that alone would address problems
that cut across all of our current jurisdictions,”
Underwood said. “I think an elected county executive or an elected county president .€.€. also
would be such a significant elected position
within our metropolitan area that it would also
attract people who have more of the leadership
qualities that we need.”
STRENGTHS AND WEAKNESSES
Metropolitan Birmingham-Hoover faces serious challenges that area leaders say must be addressed. But it also has key strengths that could help move the region forward.
WEAKNESSES
. A distrust of people who are different
from us, a general distrust of government and a fear that other groups in the
area only want to benefit at our cost.
Leader after leader says distrust blocks
cooperation, leaving us unable to agree on
and fix the important problems that face
the metro area.
“We need a mayor of Birmingham who will
sit down with all of the other metro mayors, commissioners and business representatives and ask the question, ‘How can we
help each other?’” architect Jeremy Erdreich
said. “What issues can we find common
ground on?”
. Too many separate governments and
school systems in the metro area. These
also stymie effective cooperation, but
consolidation is unlikely. Possible improvements include a Jefferson County Commission president elected countywide or a
professional manager for Jefferson County.
Besides that, leaders say, we need to improve communication across the metro
area.
State Sen. Jabo Waggoner, R-Vestavia
Hills, encourages regional unity by hosting
STRENGTHS
monthly meetings for Jefferson County
elected officials. In 2008, he plans to invite
officials from the seven-county metro area
to quarterly meetings.
. Blighted housing, violent crime and
poor-performing school systems that are
concentrated in the older cities of Jones
Valley, from Bessemer to Tarrant. Leaders see no easy solutions to these burdens,
but solving them is crucial. They stress that
everyone in metro Birmingham must realize
that these problems exist and affect the
entire community.
“There is a failure of the region taking collective ownership of problems,” said Joe
Farley, former head of Alabama Power.
It takes a combined effort by government,
business and philanthropic leaders to tackle
such large problems, said Kate Nielsen,
president of The Community Foundation
of Greater Birmingham.
. Inaction. The weaknesses of metro Birmingham too often have left leaders at a
dead-end, unable to move forward.
“We have slowly dug into an acceptance of
a stagnant status quo,” said U.S. Rep. Artur
Davis, D-Birmingham.
. People. Leader after leader points
to the people of metro Birmingham as
one of its greatest strengths.
We are generous, they say. We have
weathered adversity, and that has
made us stronger. We are diverse, passionate and support the community.
We are capable and friendly. We love
our community.
“We often complain that the nation,
and the world, still has the opinion
of Birmingham as a backwards, racist
place that does not value minorities,”
Erdreich said. “What if we instead
collectively decided to promote the
entire metro as a haven for diversity?
... Just think of what it would mean for
public relations, and business investment, if we became known as the
‘Tolerant City.’”
. The economy. The metro economy
is diverse, which keeps it stable
despite downturns in the business
cycle. The University of Alabama at
Birmingham, Alabama’s largest employer, is a huge economic engine and
the region’s No. 1 asset. The economy
is also strong in finance, engineering,
insurance and manufacturing.
A large number of privately owned
companies take leading roles to help
Birmingham advance. And the city of
Birmingham leads the state with its
convention center and airport.
Leaders say we have an opportunity
to invest in, and build upon, the area’s
economic strengths, particularly UAB.
“Birmingham has been .... the economic and cultural center of the state
for the last 50 to 100 years,” Gov. Bob
Riley said.
. Philanthropy. Birmingham philanthropies are models for the nation,
both in terms of financial support
from the community and efficient, effective operation.
United Way of Central Alabama exceeds those of Charlotte, Raleigh,
Memphis, Atlanta, Jacksonville, Nashville, Tampa, Richmond and Miami
in dollars raised as a percentage of
disposable income and in per capita
corporate giving. The Community
Foundation of Greater Birmingham
ranks in the top 100 of more than 700
U.S. community foundations in total
assets, gifts received and grants paid.
Individuals such as Lucille Beeson,
who set up a $150 million trust for
13 charities, and the businesses and
foundations that recently raised $15
million for the Railroad, Red Mountain
and Ruffner Mountain parks initiative,
show the depth of metro BirminghamHoover generosity.
“The spirit of giving is one of the jewels of this community,” said Samuetta
Nesbitt, senior vice president of communication for United Way of Central
Alabama. “It’s one of the things we
need to brag about more.”
. Amenities. Beautiful location,
Southern hospitality, good size, pleasant neighborhoods and fine suburban
schools. A tremendous arts community, varied dining opportunities and
an increasingly strong downtown.
Efforts are under way to improve
amenities: the Three Parks Initiative,
especially Railroad Park between UAB
and downtown; a domed stadium; and
an expanded art museum.
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Lauren Simpson, 23
Hoover, Freelance writer
On the most important quality
an effective leader should have:
Alberto Barnette, 37
HOOVER, BUSINESS OWNER
On why he trusts Birmingham Mayor Larry Langford:
“Sometimes these guys get voted in, and
you never hear again about what they said
they were going to do. He’s taken
“We need a leader
who’s not
a figurehead but
action already. Folks are out there
cleaning up, cutting grass.”
who’s willing to get
his hands dirty.”
LEADERSHIP
From Page 26
“What we have to have,” he said, “is this: a
sense that we are linked to each other in a very
fundamental kind of way.”
Start at the core
Many area leaders publicly and privately
have been crying for someone to get things
moving. Key to that is the leadership of the core
city, where many of the region’s greatest challenges exist.
The city of Birmingham has lost more than
111,000 residents since 1960 — the steepest
decline of any major city in the South other
than hurricane-ravaged New Orleans — and
the metro area lags its Sunbelt neighbors in
economic and population growth. It’s a region
divided between people living in pockets of
prosperity with good school systems, high incomes and fine homes and pockets of poverty
plagued by high crime rates and a lack of jobs,
struggling schools and decaying neighborhoods.
In just a few weeks, Birmingham’s new
mayor, Larry Langford, has increased sales
taxes and doubled business license fees to create money to pay for a domed stadium, an idea
that had languished for 14 years until Langford’s election. He has promised support for a
Railroad Park amphitheater, proposed razing
Boutwell Auditorium to dramatically expand
the Birmingham Museum of Art and secured
laptops, designed for Third World children, for
Birmingham schoolkids.
Such initiative inspires people such as Mike
Warren, the former chief executive of Energen
Corp. who in January 2008 takes over as head
of Children’s Hospital. Warren believes the excitement surrounding Langford could lead to
broader successes.
Dowd Ritter, CEO of Regions Financial
Corp., said a change in leadership creates opportunity.
“We need to work together for the betterment and advancement of the city and not just
for self-interest, which historically has caused
things to stall,” Ritter said. “If you reflect on
what’s happened in the last few weeks, I can’t
remember a time when I’ve seen more excitement, enthusiasm and interaction. And people
are all on the same page. That’s what leadership is all about.”
Metro Birmingham has a “pent-up desire
for progress,” Alabama Power Chief Executive
Charles McCrary said. “We are spring-loaded
for progress. People are ready to move forward.”
But, McCrary added: “A leader is not one
who forces you down a particular path. A
leader shines the light down a dark path (and
inspires) enough confidence to go down that
dark path.”
CAN WE
FIND
a UNIFying
VISION?
Jonathan Miller | rabbi, temple Emanu-El
“People who ‘have’ have to be made
to see that it’s in their self-interest to
better those who don’t have. People
who ‘don’t have’ have to be able
to trust those who do have.”
U.W. Clemon | U.S. District Judge
“Many of the leaders in the city of
Birmingham question the motives
and the aspirations of the suburbs
and their leaders. And likewise,
the suburban areas have
what seems to be an abiding discomfort with
Birmingham and its leadership.”
bob riley | GOVERNOR OF ALABAMA
“Birmingham . . . should have
no peer. But in my four-plus years
here . . . the major stumbling block
we have had . . . is an unwillingness to
cooperate as a region.”
Sold short
Many area leaders say metro Birmingham
has been selling itself short, and that is part of
our leadership gap.
“We think too small,” McCrary said. “We’ve
lost confidence that something great can be
achieved.”
Bob Corley said Birmingham also thinks
too late.
“Too often we wait until the crisis point
and then react, rather than being ahead of
the curve,” said Corley, head of the Global and
Community Leadership honors program at the
University of Alabama at Birmingham. “That’s
different from Charlotte, Nashville, Atlanta.
Birmingham is always behind the curve. The
role of leaders is to get ahead of the curve.”
U.S. District Judge U.W. Clemon said mutual distrust among metro community leaders
hobbles Birmingham.
“Many of the leaders in the city of Birmingham question the motives and the aspirations
of the suburbs and their leaders,” Clemon said.
“And likewise, the suburban areas have what
seems to be an abiding discomfort with Birmingham and its leadership.”
Clemon said much of that distrust is “historical, arising from the ugly fact of racial segregation. The barriers that were created then
still remain in the minds and the mind-set of
the people who live here.”
Failed leadership has left metro Birmingham trailing Mobile and Huntsville in areas
such as economic development.
“If we could ever get the metropolitan area
of Birmingham to agree that it is going to go out
and recruit as a region, forget about municipal
lines and county lines and just see itself as one
entity, then I think they can be competitive
with anyone,” Alabama Gov. Bob Riley said.
“We see places like Mobile now going out
into a six-county area setting up an economic
development group that funds these efforts.
Northwest Alabama is now doing the same.
“Birmingham should not only be able to
compete,” Riley said. “It should have no peer.
But in my four-plus years here .€.€. the major
stumbling block we have had in every single
project we have had up there is an unwillingness to cooperate as a region. We couldn’t get
them on the same sheet of music, let alone get
them to sing with any sense of harmony.”
tant past — Joe Volker and the Rev. Fred Shuttlesworth — are often cited as having vision
to tackle what seemed to be insurmountable
problems. For Volker, it was creating an urban
university to give new life to an aging steel town
exhausted by racial strife. For Shuttlesworth, it
was bringing an end to segregation.
Volker started with just a few satellite classrooms of the University of Alabama and its
nearby medical school. “We would do Birmingham a great disservice,” he said at the time, “if
we dreamed too little dreams.”
Birmingham at the time was the largest city
in America other than San Antonio without a
four-year public institution of higher education, according to the University of Alabama at
Birmingham history “Building on a Vision.”
Volker used urban renewal money to expand the university by 45 blocks and was the
first president when UAB became the four-year
university and research center he had dreamed
of. He also recruited and nurtured the next two
UAB presidents, Richardson Hill and Charles
“Scotty” McCallum.
Now Alabama’s largest employer, UAB is the
new economic heart of what had been an aging industrial city.
Shuttlesworth had an equally large vision
— racial justice: a Birmingham where children
learn together, bus riders sit where they wish,
and everyone has a chance to get decent jobs.
He had been galvanized when he saw newspaper headlines of the U.S. Supreme Court’s
decision to outlaw school segregation in 1954.
That day, he told The Plain Dealer of Cleveland,
was second only to the day he became a Christian.
“I felt like I was a man,” he said. “I felt like I
had rights.”
Shuttlesworth became a social activist and
a leader. He accepted the worst that Birmingham could deliver — bombs, beatings, injury
and threats. He vowed to “kill segregation or be
killed by it.”
Shuttlesworth led with personal courage
— receiving a savage beating when he tried to
enroll his two daughters in a white elementary
school — but also created and led civil rights
organizations that channeled a massive civil
disobedience movement.
‘I felt like I was a man’
‘Ripe for change’
What can visionary leadership achieve?
Two leaders from Birmingham’s not so dis-
Birmingham today needs similar greatness
of vision, many area leaders in government,
business, philanthropy and religion said in recent interviews.
Voters seem to share that thirst, as shown
by the stunning Birmingham mayoral vote in
October.
As Davis, the congressman, noted: “Ninetytwo percent of the people in Birmingham voted for a choice other than the incumbent .€.€.,
and 80 percent wanted something different
(Langford or runner-up political newcomer
Patrick Cooper) from the folks who are in city
government now.”
Davis said the election showed “.€.€. a climate ripe for change. It also suggests to me a
climate filled with skepticism and cynicism.”
In his first five weeks as mayor, Langford
reached out to mayors of surrounding cities,
business leaders and civic groups, urging six
steps to get Birmingham on track:
. Replace inaction with action.
. Turn away from a black/white view of
the city.
. Cooperate.
. Remember that we compete against other metro areas every day.
. Develop a can-do attitude.
. Understand — wherever you live — that
your destiny is tied to the city of Birmingham.
Former Bank of America Vice Chairman
James H. Hance Jr. has said U.S. cities with the
greatest momentum and long-term success
share a list of “civic personality traits” that resembles Langford’s list.
Thriving cities, he has said, all have a sense
of civic urgency, a long-term perspective, and
a real and functioning public-private partnership to sustain high-impact, large-scale projects. They have a “can-do” attitude of informed
optimism and justified confidence.
Hance describes such a city as “the unique
product of the dreams and hopes of its leaders combined with a handful of sound guiding
principles.”
Different day and age
Leadership today is different from leadership in Volker’s and Shuttlesworth’s day.
The old model of civic leadership was a
small number of business leaders who would
get together and call the shots — “The Phoenix
Forty” in Arizona, “The Vault” in Boston, “The
Group” in Charlotte, “The Bishops” in Hartford.
The new model of civic leadership, the noted urban expert Neal Peirce said, is groups of
voices that are much more diverse. Organizations such as the Tampa Bay Partnership, the
San Diego Dialogue and the Sierra Business
Council tackle broad agendas for their metro
areas and regions. The same is occurring in
Silicon Valley, in Chicago, in Minneapolis-St.
Paul and in Houston.
Metro Birmingham leaders say the region
will develop 21st-century leadership only
when it finds a common vision, learns to cooperate and begins to fix a terrible gap between the haves and the have-nots.
“This community has a lot of untapped
potential,” said Jeremy Erdreich, principal of
Erdreich Architecture. “We have been in need
of progressive leadership — both private and
public — that can agree on common goals in
order to tap this potential.”
Erdreich suggests a monthly roundtable involving business leaders and mayors of major
cities in Jefferson County, steps that Langford
has begun.
“The mayor of Birmingham must set the
tone for regional cooperation,” Erdreich said.
“A balkanized, ‘go-it-alone’ approach is what
makes our metro lag behind Nashville, Charlotte and, increasingly, Mobile and Huntsville
when it comes to unified efforts to attract jobs,
receive state and federal dollars, and develop a
positive public face.”
Pastor Danny Wood of Shades Mountain
Baptist Church in Vestavia Hills put it this way:
“Our greatest challenge is everyone coming
together with a single vision and focus.”
“One person cannot carry Birmingham on
his shoulders,” McCrary said.
The city of Birmingham and UAB are beginning to share a vision of working together
in partnership to improve life in Birmingham,
said UAB President Carol Garrison.
“Whatever moves Birmingham forward
moves UAB forward,” she said, “and whatever
moves UAB forward moves Birmingham forward. We really need to be in lockstep.”
‘Ask a simple question’
Perhaps the greatest challenge to leadership — say Davis, retired Alabama Power head
Joe Farley and Rabbi Jonathan Miller of Temple
Emanu-El — is a chasm between the poor and
the well-off. Miller calls it a spiritual failing.
“There is a lack of desire for the haves and
have-nots to help each other,” Miller said.
“People who ‘have’ have to be made to see that
it’s in their self-interest to better those who
don’t have. People who ‘don’t have’ have to be
able to trust those who do have.”
All people of the region are linked, Davis
said.
When a Mountain Brook resident said he
didn’t think Birmingham city school problems
affected him, Davis replied, “The next time
your grandparents are in the hospital at UAB,
talk to the people that come in to draw the
blood.”
“Talk to the people that come in to take the
X-rays and read the X-rays. Talk to the people
who prepare the specially prepared food.
Talk to the people who come in to change
the sheets. And ask them a simple question:
‘Where did you go to high school?’”
The likely answer, Davis said: “Parker, Phillips or one of the many other schools in the
Birmingham system.”
Birmingham city crime and struggling
schools matter for everybody, said the Rev.
John E. King Jr. of Trinity Baptist Church. “It’s
not just a Birmingham problem, or a Hoover
problem, or a Homewood problem. It affects
us all.”
Using area’s strengths
Metro Birmingham has strengths that
leadership can use for change.
“Enormously talented and bright people,
many of whom have come from other places,”
Corley said.
“People here are wonderful people,” said
Miller. “They are value-oriented. The quality of
life for those who ‘have’ is unsurpassed.”
Clemon sees good hearts: “Our strength is
that we love our community.”
Ann Florie, executive director of Leadership Birmingham, said another transformation will be needed if Birmingham is to find
that success.
“We have an unwillingness to face the truth
about what needs to take place,” she said. “We
have to be very honest about the situation
we’re in.”
Kate Nielsen, president of The Community
Foundation of Greater Birmingham, believes
it takes combined efforts by leaders in politics,
private philanthropy and business to make
a difference. She sees gains from raising the
stakes.
“We need to challenge ourselves to think
big,” Nielsen said. “I think people step up to
big opportunities. I think that’s what business
wants, I think that’s what private philanthropy
wants.
“We want transformation. We want success.”
News staff writer Charles J. Dean contributed
to this report.
E-MAIL: [email protected],
[email protected],
[email protected]
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COMMENTARY VOICES
Growth in South
makes Shelby pale
Perhaps you saw the first segment of
The Birmingham News’ special report
“Birmingham at a Crossroads” earlier this
month.
It was striking in several ways. Most
notable to me were numbers indicating
growth in suburban Birmingham has been
more an illusion than honest-to-goodness expansion. It’s not healthy growth, for
the most part. It’s just people fleeing the
challenges of the city to rush toward the
generica of the suburbs.
That’s not growth but rearrangement.
Or worse. It’s like that carnival game
Whack-a-Mole.
The U.S. Census Bureau today released
numbers that support that idea. Alabama,
by comparison to other Southern states, is
standing still.
Of the 100 fastest-growing counties in
America between 2000 and 2006, none are
in Alabama. Even Shelby County, the state’s
poster child for suburban sprawl, failed
to make the list. Shelby is a rapidly growing county by Alabama standards, having
expanded by 23 percent since 2000. But
that growth doesn’t even register on the
national radar.
It’s stunning to look around the South,
where real growth is bringing serious
change, for better or worse. Almost twothirds of the nation’s fastest-growing counties are in the South.
They’re just not here.
Look east to Georgia and you’ll find 16
of the fastest growing counties, with most
sweeping outward from Atlanta. All are
growing faster than Shelby. Four are growing twice as fast.
Florida and Texas each have 13 counties in the top 100, while Virginia has eight,
North Carolina five, and Kentucky and
Tennessee three each. Even Arkansas, Mississippi and West Virginia have a county on
P U B L I S H E D
My colleague, microbiologist-turnedthe list.
reporter Jeff Hansen, has taught me much
That even Shelby County can’t carry Althrough the years.
abama’s torch is both good news and bad.
The basics of supersaturated solutions.
If you’ve spent any time in Wal-MartThe joy of an elegant “if” function in daand Olive Garden-lined metro Atlanta in
tabase analysis. He even clued me in to a
recent years, you know it’s not utopian. So
long-form writing technique
rather than looking at the Bircalled “the ladder of abstracmingham area’s lack of growth
tion.” Done deftly, it lets a writer
as stagnation, some think of it as
scurry nimbly from specific to
opportunity.
general and back again.
Tom Maxwell, of the Regional
He’s a Renaissance guy. But
Planning Commission of Greater
as I read the story Hansen and
Birmingham, said the desire to
staff writers Tom Spencer and
avoid the mistakes of Atlanta’s
Sherrel Stewart wrote for Sununrestrained growth should be a
day’s News — an installment
goal for the Birmingham area.
of the “Birmingham at a CrossMaxwell spent parts of his
roads” series pegging “distrust”
John Archibald
youth in Atlanta suburbs. He has
as an element in the region’s
seen “Atlanta’s sprawl consume
Archibald is the metro
failure to launch — I thought of
the rural north Georgia countryanother Hansen credo.
columnist for The Birmingham
side,” he said. He wonders why
If you want to solve a group
anyone would want Atlanta’s
News. His column appears
problem, you’ve got to first agree
version of suburbia.
Sundays, Tuesdays and
on a common vocabulary, he
“The Birmingham area can
says. That’s why scientists take
Thursdays in Local News.
and should do better,” he said.
time to name things before they
I know he’s right. I’ve paid
He can be reached at
get down to business. It’s hard to
attention as Atlanta ripped
[email protected]
understand — much less trust
through Forsyth and Cherokee
— people when you can’t comand Dawson counties and all the
municate.
way up to White County in the rural north
Residents across the BirminghamGeorgia mountains. It’s not pretty, unless
Hoover metropolitan area clearly are not
your idea of tranquillity is an endless string
reading from the same page. It’s no wonder
of strip malls and traffic jams.
why. They come from seven counties, from
As yet, the Birmingham area has not
dozens of municipalities and at least two
had the chance to show it would do better.
major cultural backgrounds. They do not
If U.S. 280 is an example, it would not.
come to the table with the same goals,
Birmingham-area residents always say
the same expectations or the same shared
they don’t want to be Atlanta, and I get
experiences. They do not speak the same
that. Growth for the sake of growth can be
language.
bad.
The first step toward breaking down the
But our rearrangement may be worse.
distrust that tears at the region on so many
We’re becoming generica just like Atlanta,
levels is to agree on a vocabulary. That
only without the economic and cultural
means eliminating the code words, killbenefits new residents can bring.
M A R C H
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Birmingham’s future
important to region
Charles McCrary brought the conversation out of the back rooms and into the
public parlor.
Don Logan spread the word.
Gov. Bob Riley put the discussion on the
political agenda.
Now it is time for all of us to join the
discourse about the future course of our
Birmingham metropolitan area. That is our
hope and our invitation as The Birmingham News begins what will be a continuing
look at Birmingham at a crossroads. The
reporting in today’s paper is designed to
provide the information and impetus for
robust community debate.
The issues we face are familiar to most
of us, although some of the specifics may
be surprising. Our look at these problems
is not intended to discourage, but rather
to encourage us to address them together.
For all our differences, we are an interlocked and interdependent community.
We will have to find our answers together.
Small groups have been meeting
around our area in the past few years to
discuss ways to move this community toward the success we all know is possible.
They have sought to identify leaders and
strategies to help us reach our potential.
This is a discussion, though, that we all
should be having.
McCrary, the CEO of Alabama Power
Co., voiced the concern of a lot of thoughtful, involved citizens when he spoke to the
Kiwanis Club of Birmingham. “There will
be a far smaller Birmingham to lead unless
all of us take action,” he said.
We all know that the city of Birmingham
is losing population, but as the reporting in
today’s paper shows, the whole metropolitan area is lagging behind our peers in the
South and our state as a whole. We cannot
take McCrary’s words as a warning for the
city alone; our actions and decisions affect
the entire community.
We first must know where we want to
P U B L I S H E D
Code words sow
seeds of distrust
P U B L I S H E D
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M A Y
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Success is there;
spread it
The successes stand out.
go. “We don’t have the leadership and a viToday’s installment of The News’
sion of what Birmingham could be — or at
exploration of “Birmingham at a Crossleast it is not well spelled out,” said Logan,
roads” looks at education in the metthe former CEO of Time Inc.
Riley prodded Birmingham’s politiropolitan area, showing the big gap becal leadership to get its act together, and
tween urban and suburban schools. The
speak with one voice for the good of the
classrooms are very different in terms of
region. “There’s no reason you can’t exboth resources and results, the reporting
cel,” he said.
shows.
Our challenge is to find the will and
Even across that divide, though, sucthe ways to excel. We can easily
cess looks the same. News
identify some centers of excelreporters caught up with some
lence, starting with the Univervaledictorians from Birmingsity of Alabama at Birmingham.
ham city schools, and found
We need to nurture and build
they are thriving in postgraduon that excellence. Feeding our
ate education.
successes can provide important
At a time when most of the
fuel for solving our problems.
news from the city schools is
The voices you hear in the
discouraging, their stories offer
stories today offer a realistic ashope.
sessment of where we are today,
Terra Moody, Ensley High
Tom Scarritt
but they also offer hope about
School class of 2003, is earning
where we can be tomorrow.
a master’s degree in commuScarritt is editor of
The important thing is they are
nication studies and a Ph.D. in
engaged and interested in the
The Birmingham News.
information sciences at the Unifuture of the community.
His column appears
versity of Alabama.
They are not looking to place
Nathan Putman, Huffman
Sundays in the Commentary
blame or make excuses. They are
High
School class of 2002, is
looking to make Birmingham a
section. He can be reached at
pursuing a Ph.D. in the biology
better place.
[email protected]
department at the University of
The more of us who are enNorth Carolina at Chapel Hill.
gaged, the better our hope of
Angelique Turner, Carver
finding a better way.
High School class of 2003, is studying in
As the conversation moves forward,
the Auburn University School of Pharwe want you to be a part of it. One way is
macy.
to join the discussion at the “Crossroads”
We spend a lot of time analyzing what
blog on al.com, the online home of The
is wrong with our schools. That is imBirmingham News. Or write us a letter. We
will be watching and reporting on what you
portant. We need to fix the problems. We
have to say.
should also study the success stories, so
We also will continue to report on the
we can build on what is working.
challenges our community faces and espeClearly, the Birmingham schools are
cially on the good ideas for meeting those
in trouble. Families are voting with their
challenges.
feet; another 1,300 students left the sysWe invite your observations and your
tem this year. The dropout rate, whether
good ideas.
or not you agree with the methodology of
M A R C H
ing the stereotypes and speaking honestly
about our problems.
That’s hard to do. I’ll start with just a few
corrections to the Birmingham lexicon:
“Civil rights,” for instance, was not an
era in history. It is a constitutional guarantee.
“Growth” is not sprawl. “Development”
does not always involve turning wilderness
into Wal-Mart. Sometimes development
comes from knowledge and acceptance.
Sometimes real growth is fixing what’s broken.
“Looking out for the children” does not
always mean building a new school system. That might help a few students, but it
leaves others behind. And it doesn’t always
work.
“Birmingham” should not translate as
“black” any more than “suburbia” translates
as “white.” Birmingham is the center of this
community. You don’t have to live in it. You
don’t have to like it. But don’t disparage it
for laughs. And don’t let people get away
with using its name like a slur.
When black families move into a community it does not mean the neighborhood
is “going down.” But when a city such as
Midfield sees lightspeed white-to-black
tipping, don’t pretend the change is idyllic,
either.
Don’t assume that people in Mountain
Brook have no problems. Don’t assume
people in Birmingham have no choice.
And while Birmingham has a serious
homicide count and a senseless black-onblack crime problem, that doesn’t make it
“a black problem.” We all grieve. We all lose
opportunity when Birmingham stumbles.
We’ve got to break the code if we want
to get beyond the distrust that is killing us.
If we don’t, we will never find ourselves on
the same page.
P U B L I S H E D
the latest dire report, is far too high.
Neither the dropout rate nor the experience of a few top students tells the
whole story of the Birmingham schools.
The reports from the valedictorians
suggest some teachers are setting high
expectations and helping students meet
them; the statistics show far too few students have that experience.
We need to find ways to take the things
we know work, such as prekindergarten
preparation and the Alabama Reading
Initiative, and make them available to a
lot more of Birmingham’s children.
Resources clearly make a difference.
School systems that can afford computers and extracurricular activities can
give their students a richer experience.
However, some Birmingham schools are
finding innovative ways to narrow that
gap. At South Hampton Elementary in the
Pratt City neighborhood, Principal Cedric
Tatum has raised $18,000 through private grants, allowing him to equip all the
fifth-graders with hand-held computers
equipped for word processing.
The population the school serves may
be poor, but Tatum said he does not consider South Hampton a poor school.
Like the success of the valedictorians, the story of South Hampton should
help Birmingham schools find ways to
spread success to more classrooms. That
entrepreneurial spirit is no substitute for
adequate school funding, but it does offer
one model for coping with the funding
realities.
There is a lot about Birmingham
schools that needs fixing, from budget
woes and a bloated bureaucracy to the
need for higher standards and expectations. It also has opportunities and pockets of success that can provide a foundation for progress.
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Our opinions | The opinions on this page are shaped by The Birmingham
News’ editorial board, independent of news coverage decisions elsewhere in
the paper. Members of that editorial board are publisher Victor H. Hanson III,
editor Thomas V. Scarritt, editorial page editor Bob Blalock, editorial writers Joey
Kennedy, Eddie Lard and Robin DeMonia, and cartoonist Scott Stantis.
THE OPINIONS OF
THE EDITORIAL BOARD
Birmingham
at a crossroads
THE ISSUE A declining city core
holds back the region. What’s
missing is the leadership needed
to fix festering problems.
A sunspot mars the surface of the sun, disturbing
everything around it.
One of the biggest sunspots in the fast-growing Sun
Belt is Birmingham. Alabama’s largest city is no longer
the Magic City, as was made clear Sunday in the first of
a series of special reports in The News on the challenges
facing the metropolitan area. Consider: Of the nation’s
100 largest cities in 1960, the ones with the greatest
drops in population were Birmingham and 14 “Rust
Belt” cities in the nation’s industrial Northeast and upper Midwest. Birmingham had 340,887 people in 1960.
It has about 231,000 now.
The seven-county Birmingham-Hoover metropolitan area, despite extraordinary growth in suburban
counties such as Shelby, still trails nearly every urban
center in the Southeast in population growth. Birmingham lags not only the region’s bright lights such as
Atlanta, Nashville and Charlotte, but also Huntsville,
Mobile and Montgomery and, embarrassingly, Little
Rock, Ark., and Jackson, Miss.
A Brookings Institution study of 302 U.S. cities identified 46 “weak market cities” in “weak market” metro
areas. Birmingham is one of just six in the Southeast.
The others are New Orleans; Albany, Ga.; Pine Bluff,
Ark.; Rocky Mount, N.C.; and Shreveport, La. These cities and their metro areas ranked in the bottom third in
the economy (growth in employment, establishments
and payroll) and residents’ well-being (income, unemployment, poverty and labor force participation).
Too many signs point to a drained, debilitated city
core that drags down the whole region. It is a region
held back by longstanding distrust that crosses racial,
economic and community lines; by a hodgepodge of
102 city, seven county and 19 school governments; by
an economy that has not fully shifted from a smokestack industry to today’s knowledge-based jobs; by
deepening disparities between inner city and suburban
schools.
But what continues to handcuff the region is its lack
of political, corporate and civic leadership committed
to overcoming the city’s and region’s problems. It is
evident in the lack of a solution, nine years after a failed
vote on a domed stadium, for our smallish convention
center complex. It is evident in the lack of a solution
for the area’s transportation problems, symbolized by
the daily gridlock on U.S. 280, which brings thousands
of workers into downtown. It is evident in the lack of a
solution for other regionwide problems such as sprawl
and protecting the area’s watershed.
Birmingham has its bright spots, such as a continued
strong banking presence despite recent mergers and
sales of hometown banks. There is a surge downtown
in residential and, to a lesser extent, business development. Brightest of all is UAB, the region’s economic star,
which has a $3 billion impact on the state economy and
employs about 19,000 people.
But those aren’t enough to overcome Birmingham’s
many woes, as evidenced by its continuing decline. The
city’s problems matter in Fountain Heights and Forest
Park, but they should matter just as much in Mountain
Brook and Midfield, in Adamsville and Alabaster.
As Charles Ball, executive director of the Regional
Planning Commission of Greater Birmingham, put it
about the city’s decline: “There’s a consequence to the
entire region. We could continue on the same track, but
the end result is something we’d be embarrassed by.”
No one in Birmingham or its surroundings should
want that. The question is: What are we going to do
about it?
P U B LI S H E D
M A RC H
1 3 ,
Achieving
‘great returns’
The more
the messier
THE ISSUE This area desperately
needs visionary leadership that
will work together; a good
place to start is by pruning the
“political kudzu.”
THE ISSUE The Birmingham
area has been largely content
with things the way they
are. Trust is a key missing
ingredient in moving the region
forward.
News staff writers Jeff Hansen and Joseph D. Bryant
describe as “political kudzu” the more than 100 local
governments in the Birmingham-Hoover area.
The image, in today’s main story of the third installment of “Birmingham at a Crossroads,” works on a
couple of levels: It calls to mind an infestation of local
governments spreading across our seven-county metro
area, but also how their lack of cooperation chokes
progress the way kudzu suffocates the countryside.
Finding a solution to our area’s “political kudzu” will
be at least as hard as killing the real thing.
One thing ought to be clear to readers. Our region’s
governmental structure (or lack thereof) isn’t working.
It produces few leaders with a regional vision, fosters
duplication of services, divides communities and makes
finding solutions to problems that cross city and county
lines much harder.
For anyone paying attention, this isn’t exactly news.
The Birmingham region is beset by politicians more interested in looking out for themselves and their districts
than in the big picture. The News has devoted reams of
copy, for example, to years-long, unsuccessful efforts
to improve regional mass transit and to expand the
Birmingham-Jefferson Convention Complex. Both of
those projects require cooperation between municipal,
county and local legislative leaders. None of that, really,
has come close to happening, mainly because some
elected officials have put their own interests first.
The more the merrier? How about the more the
messier?
It is not just that our political leaders can’t work together. In many cases, they don’t want to work together
and don’t even try. The region’s citizens pay the price.
Hansen and Bryant posed the question: Are the fragmented governments at the heart of the Birmingham
area’s lagging growth over the past four decades?
“If you look at places that are growing faster in the
South and Southwest and places that are not growing
fast, the question answers itself,” said Steven Haeberle,
chairman of the department of government at the University of Alabama at Birmingham. “Places that prosper
have less fragmentation.”
Of the nation’s 100 largest cities in 1960, the ones
that have lost the most people are Birmingham and 14
“Rust Belt” cities in the industrial Northeast and upper Midwest. Birmingham lags the Southeast’s bright
lights such as Atlanta and Charlotte, but also Huntsville,
Mobile and Montgomery in Alabama, along with Little
Rock, Ark., and Jackson, Miss.
It should surprise no one that improvements in the
way governments operate and cooperate spur economic growth, innovation and better government services
and quality of life.
But those improvements can’t happen without
visionary, selfless leadership in this region. It must include not only top elected officials, but the corporate
and civic movers and shakers who can make things
happen. They have to be willing to work together to get
things done for the good of the region; a good place to
start is by pruning the “political kudzu.”
Change for the better can happen in Birmingham,
but only if our region’s leaders want it. And if they don’t,
we need new leaders.
The Birmingham region’s collective investment in
progress hasn’t exactly been bold. Nothing that would
compare with investing in high-risk stocks, much less
bonds or even certificates of deposit. It’s more like putting all your money in passbook savings.
“If you invest little, your returns are going to be
small,” says former Birmingham Mayor Richard Arrington Jr. “If you don’t want to take any risk, you are not
likely to get any great returns.”
Birmingham has been risk-averse, and it has too few
great returns toward progress to show for it. That’s because the region doesn’t have enough of a key ingredient successful investors need: trust.
Too many area citizens, especially those of the
elected variety, would rather wallow in the distrust that
prevents cooperation and kills progress. That’s the deflating message of the main story in Sunday’s second
installment of “Birmingham at a Crossroads,” a series of
special reports exploring challenges facing the Birmingham metropolitan area.
“If we are to move ahead, we need vision, leadership
and trust,” said Ed LaMonte, a political science professor at Birmingham-Southern College who worked for
many years in Birmingham city government. “Trust
seems to be the most slippery of the three.”
Without trust, it doesn’t matter how strong a vision
someone has. Without trust, there can be no real leadership, because one leader, or one government, can’t do
everything — really, not much of anything — to move
this region forward.
One government can’t rein in sprawl. One government can’t make the region’s highways handle traffic
seamlessly. One government can’t fund and run a transit
system that responds to the needs of the region’s riders.
One government can’t clean up the region’s poor air
quality. One government can’t pay for an expansion of
the Birmingham-Jefferson Convention Complex.
That’s because there are dozens of governments in
the region representing people separated by race, income and geography who have different interests, political beliefs and social circles. Add to that Birmingham’s
history of racial strife, including court-ordered desegregation that fueled white flight from Birmingham to the
suburbs. Then mix in the outsized egos and conflicting
personal and political agendas of some of our most
powerful local elected officials, as well as the penchant
by some to use race and/or ethnicity to rouse their constituencies, and it’s no wonder there’s so much distrust
and so little cooperation.
There are small seeds of trust, though, that provide
hope, four of which The News highlighted Sunday:
expanding green space in Birmingham through visionary plans for public parks; raising almost $4 million to
restore the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church, site of the
infamous segregationists’ bombing that killed four girls;
saving Woodlawn High School’s 1930s-era mural, a visual link to Birmingham’s past; and starting a monthly
meeting of local elected officials to discuss the region’s
problems, large and small.
Interestingly, in three of those four examples, private citizens, nonprofit groups and corporations — not
elected officials — jump-started the efforts.
Those undertakings are promising, but so much
more can and must be done. Trust among citizens and
their leaders, in each other and in a bold vision of what
this area could become, would make it so much easier
to achieve great returns.
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P U B LI S H E D
M AY
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Making right turn at crossroads
THE ISSUE
We know what
doesn’t work
in Birmingham;
let’s figure out
what does.
Other cities and regions at a crossroads have found ways to streamline
and improve their governments. A few
examples: Consolidate local governments. Birmingham tried and failed
at “One Great City” in 1970, and since
then there’s been little serious talk
about another try. In 2000, Louisville,
Ky., and 92 smaller surrounding cities
and the county merged to form Louisville metro. Louisville vaulted from
the nation’s 69th largest city to its 16th
largest. Metro government oversees
services such as police, fire, roads and
garbage, while focusing on investing
in roads and bridges, expanding the
park system, working closely with the
countywide school system and investing heavily in downtown Louisville.
Make county government stronger,
giving it a greater ability to lead the
region. Pittsburgh’s Allegheny County
beefed up its government by changing
to a county executive form of government and getting more legislative
power through home rule. Pittsburgh,
which like Birmingham is evolving from
a steel town, has flourished in recent
years.
In Allegheny County, a chief executive who is elected countywide administers, presents plans and programs and
has veto power over the county council
members, who legislate. It provides for
the checks and balances between the
P U B LI S H E D
executive and legislative branches in
federal and state government that are
missing in Jefferson County’s government. Jefferson County commissioners
are elected by district and hold both
administrative and legislative duties.
Combine certain public services.
Charlotte, N.C., and Mecklenburg
County have just about ended duplication by sharing services, ranging from
police to parks to planning. The cooperation is so complete the two governments even share the same office tower.
It is a “functional consolidation”
birthed by powerful business leaders
J U N E
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who gathered with top city and county
leaders to figure out ways to make
government run more like a business.
Their ideas led to interlocal agreements that merged most city and
county government functions. Both
governments have some members
elected at-large, and both have professional managers.
What’s right for the Birmingham region? That’s hard to know at this point.
What isn’t so hard to know is what’s
wrong for Birmingham: balkanized local governments divided by a distrust
that crosses racial, economic and community lines. The result is a region lagging its Southeastern peers.
There’s a better way. Let’s figure out
what would work best for Birmingham
and do it.
T
BIRMINGHAM
h e
THE ISSUE The Birmingham
metro area’s crime numbers
look OK compared to other
Southern metro areas, but the
city of Birmingham’s are awful.
Police can and must do more.
Tell the good people who live on Tuscaloosa Avenue
in West End that the Birmingham metro area’s crime
isn’t so bad.
Tell them that despite the deadly grip of violence
they and other good people in crime hot spots confront
every day, Birmingham’s numbers look pretty good:
Our metro area ranks 11th of 27 Southern metro areas
in violent crimes, far behind the Memphis, Nashville
and Charlotte metro areas; 19th in property crimes,
trailing Mobile, Montgomery and Huntsville; and 15th
for all major crimes with an average of 4,763 crimes per
100,000 residents each year, as reported Sunday in The
News’ latest installment of “Birmingham at a Crossroads.”
But look at the city of Birmingham by itself, and the
numbers jolt — or at least they should.
Only Atlanta and Richmond have higher concentrations of metro-area crimes in their central cities. Of the
more than 600 people killed in Birmingham since 2000,
more than half were between the ages of 15 and 30, according to a News analysis of murder reports. The murder rate is especially high for those aged 20 to 24, with
more than 75 murders per 100,000.
“Wow,” said David Kennedy of the John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York City when told of
Birmingham’s murder rate. “That’s a Baltimore, Detroit
or Gary (Ind.) level.”
Kennedy knows of what he speaks. Birmingham
remains among the most violent cities in America,
ranking 22nd in the nation in 2006 among cities of more
than 100,000 with 1,359 violent crimes per 100,000.
Worse, its rate of 44.5 killings per 100,000 ranked fourth
in the nation — trailing Gary, Detroit and Flint, Mich.
And what have city and police officials done about
it? In January, Birmingham Mayor Bernard Kincaid and
the City Council agreed to spend $150,000 for a study on
the causes of the city’s troubling murder rate and to develop an anti-crime program based on the study results.
But after the number of murders dropped in the first
half of the year, Kincaid said the Police Department’s
crime-fighting strategy must be working.
That’s dangerously shortsighted.
Other cities have tried aggressive crime-fighting programs with some impressive results, but Birmingham
has been slow to change its ways. A decade after former
New York City police commissioner William Bratton
made accountability and getting timely information
two of his key recommendations in a review of the Birmingham Police Department, police here still can’t fully
follow the “New York model” because of a 20-year-old
data system. With that model, police create up-to-theminute, detailed crime data that can be analyzed and
mapped, allowing them to target hot spots and deal
with emerging crime. Precincts are held accountable for
results.
Fortunately, a major narcotics bust has allowed Police Chief Annetta Nunn to provide $600,000 in matching funds that will pay for a modern crime database.
There are other programs around the country that
have yielded impressive crime reductions, from Boston
to Minneapolis, from Indianapolis to Stockton, Calif.
Birmingham police must pursue these tried and true
crime-fighting ideas at least as aggressively as they pursue a cop killer. They should take the best of those ideas
and tailor them to Birmingham.
It would be one instance in which stealing isn’t a
crime. But to do nothing more because what the police
are doing must be working? Tell that to the good people
on Tuscaloosa Avenue and see what they say.
8 ,
N
ew s
|
Ready,
aim, fire!
The courage
test
THE ISSUE The lack of
cooperation and leadership is
holding back the Birmingham
area economy.
THE ISSUE The Birmingham city
school system must have strong
leadership to take the correct
path.
David Bronner, head of the Retirement Systems
of Alabama, offers the perfect image for what ails
metro Birmingham when it comes to solving its economic problems. (And for that matter, just about all
of its woes.)
“You tend to form a circle and shoot each other,”
he says in today’s “Birmingham at a Crossroads.”
The bullets include politics, egos and self-interests, along with geographic and racial separation.
The result is that Alabama’s largest urban area fails
to reach its fullest economic potential. Birmingham undervalues and underinvests in its economic
crown jewel, the University of Alabama at Birmingham; it can’t recruit high-paying new companies in
the financial sector because the state targets incentives only for industrial manufacturers; its lack of
collaborative spirit threatens to leave Birmingham
behind Charlotte, Nashville and even Mobile.
What’s so frustrating is that even with these
problems, some of the Birmingham-Hoover metropolitan area’s economic numbers look strong: for
example, low unemployment (under 5 percent since
1995) and the eighth highest average annual pay
(nearly $40,800) among 30 Southern metro areas.
As good as those numbers look, today’s story offers a number that suggests a region without its act
together: Birmingham ranked 28th of 30 Southern
metro areas in the average annual growth rate of its
gross metropolitan product from 1994 to 2004. GMP
measures the size of a metro area’s economy.
Imagine what we could do if the region’s political,
corporate and civic leaders worked together instead
of at cross purposes.
It ought to be simple: Work with instead of
against each other. Do everything possible to grow
UAB. Work to get the Legislature to change the state’s
incentives law. Don’t compete against each other for
the same economic development projects.
Or as Bronner says, “You have to get them out of
the circle and into a straight line, and start shooting
together.” Ready, aim, fire!
Money alone won’t fix what’s wrong with Birmingham city schools. Neither will closing a dozen more
schools. Nor will stashing $20 million in a reserve account, as required by the state Department of Education. Nor will a 10-year master plan from a consulting
company hired by the system for $158,000, no matter
how good a plan it is.
None of that will make Birmingham schools much
better if the courageous leadership necessary to implement the system-wide reform is missing. Unless Birmingham gets its act together at the very top, it will be
nearly impossible for city schools to stay much above
the bottom.
The kinds of programs and leadership Birmingham
needs to move forward were underscored in the “Birmingham at a Crossroads” package of stories by News
staff writers Marie Leech and Anita Debro in Sunday’s
paper.
The findings weren’t surprising to anybody who follows local education: Suburban school systems do a better job educating their students than urban systems. Yes,
the suburban systems have better resources than Birmingham, as illustrated in the main story that showed
fourth-graders at Mountain Brook’s Crestline Elementary School working on laptop computers at their desks
in a spacious, modern classroom while fourth-graders
at Birmingham’s Gate City Elementary, a few miles away,
worked in a small classroom with one working computer so slow that students don’t even use it.
But area other school systems (including Jefferson
County, which has about 8,000 more students than Birmingham) also spend much less on school buildings,
administration and other areas. During a 10-month
period that ended July 31 this year, Birmingham spent
more than $3 million on legal fees and settlements, and
another $2.5 million to send employees and members of
the Board of Education to conferences across the United
States and Canada.
Last year, the Birmingham city system spent 34 percent more on administration ($9.5 million total) than the
much larger Jefferson County system.
Birmingham residents are less likely to approve a tax
increase for schools until school officials bring nonclassroom spending in line.
Let’s hope Superintendent Stan Mims and school
board members are listening to experts like Jerome E.
Morris, an education professor at the University of Georgia and a graduate of Birmingham schools. Morris says
Birmingham must make a “radical transformation.” Former Birmingham school board member Robert Corley,
director of the Center for Urban Affairs at UAB, is even
more specific: “They need to reconstruct and reconfigure the whole school system. . . There’s no question that
Birmingham is too top heavy, too bureaucratic, has too
many schools and doesn’t have the best teachers.”
Yes, there are wonderful, high-performing schools in
Birmingham, but they’re often magnet schools that attract the best students. The dropout rate is too high and
student performance is uneven across the system.
Mims and the school board can respond to the criticism defensively or constructively. If they are committed, there is hope, as demonstrated by urban school systems that have turned around, including Atlanta under
the leadership of Superintendent Beverly L. Hall. Test
scores are up, and attendance is increasing in Atlanta
schools.
In Mobile, the state’s largest school system, a grassroots campaign led county residents to approve the
first school tax increase in 40 years. A Yes We Can! Birmingham program, modeled after that effort in Mobile
County, started here in July.
But in the end, it will take courage and vision from
Mims and at least a majority of school board members
to remake Birmingham city schools. That’s a test city
school leaders have yet to pass.
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i r m i n g h a m
31
AT A CROSSROADS
Crime
in context
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Seeking a leader
THE ISSUE
Can new
Birmingham
Mayor Larry
Langford get
area leaders
on the same
sheet of music
singing in
harmony?
If anyone has a broad view of our
region — broader than just the city of
Birmingham, or Jefferson County, or
the Birmingham-Hoover Metropolitan
Statistical Area — it is Gov. Bob Riley.
Voters statewide have elected him
twice; he still regularly travels across
Alabama touting his programs or pushing economic development projects;
elected leaders from all over the state
lobby him for help back home.
Here is what he says about Birmingham: “Birmingham should not only
be able to compete. It should have no
peer. But in my four-plus years here . . .
the major stumbling block we have had
in every single project we have had up
there is an unwillingness to cooperate
as a region. We couldn’t get them on the
same sheet of music, let alone get them
to sing with any sense of harmony.”
Riley was talking economic development, but he could have been talking
about almost any issue confronting
the Birmingham area. Not only are our
leaders not on the same sheet of music,
let along singing with any sense of harmony, many of them have no interest
in even agreeing about what song they
should sing. Truth is, many of them
fight all the way to the choir room, and
then they would rather go solo on songs
of their own than sing together as one.
Their failed leadership is why metro
Birmingham now trails Mobile and
Huntsville in areas such as economic
development. It is why metro Birmingham’s growth among the nation’s 100
largest cities resembles “Rust Belt”
cities in the industrial Northeast and
upper Midwest. It is why solutions to
longstanding problems are as rare as a
good, soaking rain these days.
As the latest, and last, installment of
The News’ yearlong “Birmingham at a
Crossroads” series noted Sunday, many
area leaders publicly and privately have
cried for someone to get things moving,
starting with the core city. In October,
Birmingham voters, themselves desperate for change, chose Larry Langford as
their new mayor on a campaign slogan
P U B LI S H E D
of “Let’s do something.”
In a little more than a month on the
job, Langford has passed tax increases
to pay for a domed stadium and transit
improvements, ideas that have gone
nowhere in the past decade. He has
proposed razing Boutwell Municipal
Auditorium to make way for an expanded Birmingham Museum of Art.
He has promised city support for an
amphitheater at the long-delayed Railroad Park.
It is the kind of action that inspires
visions of Langford as a charismatic
catalyst for the region’s hoped-for
progress. Langford talks a good game
on cooperation, and has reached out to
mayors of surrounding cities, business
leaders and civic groups.
But Langford’s history shows that,
too often, his way of getting things done
has little to do with cooperation. On the
dome, for instance, Langford pushed
for tax increases in the city that would
raise $19 million for the dome, even as
he said he wanted the local legislative
D E C EM B ER
1 8 ,
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delegation to force the Jefferson County
Commission to contribute $5 million.
Then, last week, the mayor surprised
leaders of the Birmingham-Jefferson
Convention Complex by telling them
his top site for the dome is near the Birmingham Race Course.
Alabama Power Co. Chief Executive Charles McCrary, who headed
Langford’s transition team and said the
dome should be built downtown, offered some great advice on leadership
the new mayor should follow: “A leader
is not one who forces you down a particular path. A leader shines the light
down a dark path (and inspires) enough
confidence to go down that dark path.”
Langford is capable of shining a
light down a dark path, but he’s just as
capable of forcing you down a path you
don’t want to go. With the Birmingham
area at a crossroads, Langford must be
a leader.
32
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B
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N
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ew s
BIRMINGHAM
AT A CROSSROADS
EDDIE LARD
EDITORIAL WRITER
Fixing the region requires a new government
Call it the Birmingham syndrome. For many, governments in
this part of the state can’t get their
acts together. And the region suffers.
This past Sunday’s subject of
“Birmingham at a Crossroads”
was headlined “Too many pieces
in government puzzle?” It noted
the Birmingham-Hoover metropolitan area — a region of about
1 million people — consists of
seven counties, 102 municipalities
and 21 school districts. We don’t
have to imagine the duplication
of services such a proliferation of
governments produces. We see it in
the Balkanized mess fostered by a
history of racial turmoil and demagogic politics.
Simply put, our various governments don’t work well together.
That lack of regional cooperation
is magnified by a state constitution
which requires any meaningful
change in government structure to
first win approval of a state Legislature that can be downright hostile
toward this region.
It has stifled attempts to de-
velop a regional transit system, fix
an unfair county occupational tax
and expand the convention center.
The absence of a regional governing structure also wastes taxpayer
money and sets back economic
development.
Consider, for example, WalMart, the nation’s largest retailer.
In recent years, money-challenged
Birmingham shelled out $21 million to persuade Wal-Mart to build
two stores in the city rather than in
neighboring cities.
It’s a model for other businesses
with their hand out for incentives
and looking to bid one city against
another. That would be more difficult to do if we had a regional government with real authority instead
of each city trying to cut its own
deal to lure a business.
Sunday’s package of stories
notes the successes of combined
governments in Charlotte and
Louisville. But we could also list
Nashville, Jacksonville and Indianapolis as places where regionalism works, in contrast to our
failures here following a different
blueprint.
Here, we strain to find examples of true cooperation. The superb regional library system here
is the best example. It’s so good, it
should be a model for how other
ventures ought to work. Instead, a
few county ventures — purchasing, emergency management, the
sewer program, stormwater management — are about all we have
to point to. And even those are a
mixed bag. The sewer program
was badly mismanaged, in large
part because the Jefferson County
Commission tried to do it alone,
and the stormwater program was
assaulted and almost killed by
developers.
There is no regional transportation system. No consensus on expanding the convention center. No
regional development plan to bring
sanity to the sprawl madness.
Instead, in Jefferson County
alone, we have three dozen municipalities, each with a mayor and
city council. Most also have police,
fire and street departments, as well
as their own zoning boards. And
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New York Times News
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BAGHDAD, Iraq — Addres13 nasing representatives of
tions and three international
Nouri
groups, Prime Minister
a
Kamal al-Maliki openedconmuch-anticipated regional
with a
ference here Saturday
plea to Iraq’s neighbors.
his efback
to
them
He asked
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A luxury hotel is planned the
of
Birmingham at the site Finan17-story former Regions Fifth
at
cial Corp. headquarters
North, a
Avenue and 20th Street of the
source with knowledge
project said.
are
Details about the project
Monexpected to be announced
day at a 2 p.m. news conference.
the
A news release scheduling
s from
event said representative city
the
Harbert Realty Services,
will
of Birmingham and others
a ma“concerning
plans
unveil
a downjor project to transform
town property.”
is exA major hotel company site,
the
pected to operate at
ballrooms
with a restaurant, spa,
sources
and 255 guest rooms,
said.
The new hotel would comple-
hate crimes of the civil rights
one of the most violent
a communitywide
Church was the scene of
has been restored through
The Sixteenth Street Baptist
College, and Carolyn
historic landmark, the church
movement. Now a national Neal Berte, former president of Birmingham-Southernfriends.
her
by
$3.8 million campaign led 1963 bombing of the church, which killed four of
the
McKinstry, who survived
must cross difficult fault lines:
Metro Birmingham’s path forward history. Flight to the suburbs.
A violent racial
public officials.
Corruption and bickering amongregion: Trust.
challenge facing the
Each is part of the most complex
SEEDS OF TRUST
NEWS STAFF/BERNARD
Races, places,
politicos get
past differences
by cooperation
TRONCALE
idle Ensley Works smokestacks
1957, top left, contrasts with right. Bottom: A multiple
A thriving Birmingham in
ormick building today, top
and the vacant Ramsay-McC Boulevard and 20th Street South at UAB.
exposure of bustling University
fastest-shrinking cities,
Birmingham is one of the nation’s
lass medical center.
yet it has an ever-growing, world-c
but many suburbs prosper.
The metro area’s growth lags, of concentrated poverty.
pools
left
has
Middle-class flight
Is there a better way?
By JEFF HANSEN, JOSEPH D.
BRYANT and THOMAS SPENCER
News staff writers
Boulethe corner of University
On any given weekday,
and trafis jammed with people
vard and 20th Street South
is the doorstep of the Univerfic. The bustling intersection
the
— and the heartbeat of
sity of Alabama at Birmingham
Page 9A
IN COMMENTARY
205-325-4444
News staff writer
along race,
Birmingham’s fault lines always aldon’t
place, politics and class
low easy alliances.
of the
But Kate Nielsen, president
of Greater BirCommunity Foundation
that obstamingham, fervently believes
cles to trust can be overcome.
people of difWhile it is difficult for
opinions to sit
fering backgrounds and decide to trust
across a table and simply they can readone another, Nielsen said,
ily build and earn that trust. something,”
“It’s working together on
something to get
she said. “If we can find
together, the
our arms around and work
trust will come. …
to build this
“By action, we’re going
trust.”
metropolitan
That is going on across
projects large and
Birmingham today, in
area’s civic, busismall, where the metro
leaders are
ness, political and religious
finding comsetting aside differences, toward shared
mon ground and working
goals.
lost heart
of waist-high grass, the
stand sentry above fields
more than
population has plunged
of a community whose
any other in the city.
in metthe realities of life today
Both intersections show
ropolitan Birmingham.
largfor the future of Alabama’s
One hails the best hopes
built around
center
economic
est urban region — a robust
other excenter and university. The
a cutting-edge medical
Belt of
Rust
the
is
t that
poses the poverty and abandonmen
the South.
to
is Birmingham’s struggle
Between these extremes
thrive as a city and region.
See CITY | Page 6A
ONLINE: We invite your
special reports that will exthoughts on the critical
This is the first in a series of
area.
Birmingham metropolitan
issues facing the Birmingplore challenges facing the
takes a broad look at the
ham area. Join the conversation
Today, The Birmingham News
of
challenges, and introon al.com, the online home
forces that have forged Birmingham’s structure, blight,
government
The Birmingham News, at
duces six issues — distrust,
leadership — that will be
blog.al.com/bn/crossroads.
the economy, education and
months.
coming
the
over
examined in special reports
at a Crossroads. 1D
Birmingham
about
Editor Tom Scarritt writes
ABOUT THIS PROJECT
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HANSEN
By THOMAS SPENCER, JEFF
and SHERREL WHEELER STEWART
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PROJECT
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E
WE INVITE
YOUR THOUGHTS
Join the
conversation
at al.com,
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Deaths push four-day toll
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SPORTS
Section C
AP poll has USC as No. 1; six from
of the
TALLADEGA — Each
the 43
dozens of crewmen on in toteams that will participate
Talladega
day’s Aaron’s 499 at
specific
Superspeedway have
sucjobs critical to their driver’s
cess.
team
When you walk past the
drivers
hauler of Ginn Racing
Smith in
Mark Martin and Regan
By JEFF HANSEN and JOSEPH
s
Get The News at home
Call 205-325-4444
www.al.com
INSIDE
Meet Auburn’s
next War Eagle
POSITION
BATTLES
HAVE BEGUN
over ranks:
Birmingham-Ho
Out of 27 Southern metro areas,
15th
11th 19th
far behind
such as Memphis,
Nashville and Charlotte.
SPORTS | Section C
for all major
crimes, of 4,763
in property
crimes, areas
Cash crunch has
Jeffco rethinking
capital projects
with an average
crimes per 100,000
residents each year.
behind the metro
of Mobile, Montgomery
and Huntsville.
es in the city of Birmingham
But with more than 600 homicid
since 2000,
URBAN VIOLENCE
DRIVES CRIME RATE
Enhancements costing
millions may be tabled
By BARNETT WRIGHT
News staff writer
budget
Faced with a projectedlooking at
is
shortfall, Jefferson County
million in procutting more than $25
training cenjects, ranging from a new
renoter for the sheriff to courthouse
vations.
of general
Jeff Smith, acting director has been
services, said his department projects
capital
told to rethink some
decline in the
because of a steady
What really
happened in a
Marion cafe the
night when the
lights went out?
Jimmie Lee Jackson
Shot to death in
1965
NEWS STAFF/SAMANTHA
LIFE IN WEST END
Bullets mark
epicenter of city’s
violent crime
By CAROL ROBINSON
News staff writer
Gardner’s
The playground for Stevin Chrysler
children lies between a burgundy
of ragged asphalt
and a red Toyota, a patch
about 15 to 20 feet square.
car, a Fisher
It holds a bright yellow toy that slopes
slide
Price seesaw and a plastic
sewer grate that
down to a backed-up
flies.
spawns mosquitoes and
But that’s not the worst part. interrupts
That comes when gunfire
child’s play.
said of
“They know to run,” Gardner to stay
know
his kids, ages 9 and 5. “Theyaround here,
close to the wall because,
you’re running for your life.”
complex
Like many at his apartmentAvenue in
in the 1200 block of Tuscaloosa said the
Gardner
Birmingham’s West End,
the threat of vioecho of gunshots and
.
lence are commonplace
Beirut,” Gard“It’s war, baby. It’s Iraq. It’s
fear; that’s life.”
ner said. “There ain’t no
Other cities try
different tactics
ABOUT
THE SERIES
This is the
fourth in a series of
special reports exploring challenges
that face the Birmingham-Hoover
metropolitan area.
Today, The Birmingham News looks at
crime.
By JEFF HANSEN
News staff writer
are released, BirEach year when FBI statistics
one of America’s most murmingham is laid bare as
derous cities.
commonly live in one
But in an age when people crossing municipal
county and work in another,
piceach day, what is the real
boundaries many times
Birmingham-Hoover?
ture of crime in metropolitan
federal crime staof
A Birmingham News analysis
across the Deep South shows
tistics for 27 metro areas
ranked:
that Birmingham-Hoover with an average of 568 in11th in violent crimes,
far behind such
people,
100,000
per
year
cidents each
Nashville and Charlotte.
metro areas as Memphis,
with an average of 4,195
19th in property crimes, behind the Alabama
incidents per 100,000 people,
and Huntsville.
metro areas of Mobile, Montgomery
with an average of 4,763
15th for all major crimes,
each year.
crimes per 100,000 residents
the South in no single catMetro Birmingham led
murders, where the Biregory of crime — not evenof 9.7 slayings each year
the
mingham-Hoover average
ranked seventh, behind
per 100,000 residents
Miss.; MemJackson,
Va.;
Richmond,
metro areas of
Rock; and Mobile.
phis; Baton Rouge; Little
ONLINE
Join the conversation at al.com, the
online home of
The Birmingham
News, at
blog.al.com/bn/
crossroads,
where you can
also find previous
installments in this
series.
BRANDI
to help
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COUPONS
**
WEDDING
REGISTRIES
Careful what
you ask for
— you just
might get it
UP TO $185 IN SAVINGS IN
NEWS STAFF/BERNARD TRONCALE
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Sports
Television
Travel
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C
COLLEGE FOOTBALL | Section
LIFESTYLE | Section F
Auburn quarterback Brandon
Alabama quarterback John
Cox
SUNDAY
www.al.com
November 11, 2007
BIRMINGHAM
job
one of the nation’s strongest
etro Birmingham has
markets.
with metro workers churning
unFactories are booming,
potato chips to cars. The
out products ranging from
remained under 5 peremployment rate has consistently
4 percent. Paychecks
hovering between 3 and
average
cent since 1995, typically
Hoover metropolitan area’s
among 30
highest
are healthy, with the Birminghameighth
the
nearly $40,800,
annual pay coming in at
The
Southern metro areas.
earmarks of a boomtown.
the
all
has
In this view, Birmingham
the city’s coreconomy is healthy.
economic experts and even
But there is another view,
porate leaders acknowledge:growth for the past decade lags far behind
corporations
Birmingham’s economic
and a growing list of major elsewhere.
the South’s business capitals,
by mergers or moved
swallowed
been
have
same
city
the
at
the
born in
manages to win and lose
Strangely, metro Birmingham
its full economic pourban area fails to meet
time. Alabama’s largest
because we:
— the
tential, area leaders say,
our star economic asset
. Under-invest in and undervalue
Birmingham.
secUniversity of Alabama at
new companies in the financial
manufac. Cannot recruit high-paying
incentive money at industrial
the sertor, because the state targets
z or ThyssenKrupp, not
turers such as Honda, Mercedes-Ben
M
Dean should hit Jamaica today
Monday.
and the Cayman Islands on
WHAT ABOUT THE U.S.?
of Mexico
Dean should enter the Gulf
say it’s
by Tuesday, and forecasters danger.
is in
too soon to say if the U.S.
8A
vice sector.
By MARIE LEECH
F
ive miles and a world
of difference separate
Gate City and Crestline
elementary schools.
At Gate City, in one of
Birmingham’s poorest
and roughest neighborcram into a
hoods, 26 fourth-graders
decades
tiny classroom that looks
student is
behind the times. Every school’s
the
black, and 92 percent of
children live in poverty.
The window-unit air conditioner
teacher
competes with the substitute
vocabulary.
as she leads students in
computOnly one of the three old
but it’s so
ers at the back wall works,
it. The stuslow students don’t use
classes,
dents have no art or music lab, it
and while there is a computer
unused.
lacks a teacher and goes
side of
These children are on one
Birminga glaring divide in metro
Students in
ham’s public education.
educators
the poorer, urban areas,
to sucsay, don’t get a fair chance
being left
ceed at school — and risk
behind in life.
CresA few miles down the road,
Brook
tline Elementary in Mountain
divide.
shows the other side of the spread
Eighteen fourth-graders
the size of
out in a classroom twice
child works
the Gate City room. Each
typing short
on a laptop computer,
see themstories about where they
their teachselves in 20 years, essays
a book.
er will have published in
See SCHOOLS | Page 6A
INSIDE
The top 10 tear-jerkers
|
— and why we weep 1E
Traumas
follow
troops
home grown
League.
conWednesday, in a press
t at Leference announcemen
angion Field, Cribbs will
head
nounce the team’s first
coach.
here,
As previously reported
A&M
former Pittsburgh, Texas
By TOM GORDON
Mississippi State coach
News staff writer
NEWS and Sherrill is a candidate.
LOCAL
servJackie
The ranks of Alabama
died Events planned Also in the mix is former Alaice members who have
for city, state. bama and Auburn defensive
at least
in Iraq have grown by
15A
2006.
coordinator Bill Oliver.
18 since Veterans Day
may
Birmingham
this
on
candidate
larger,
surprise
The
But even
native recalls be NFL Europa veteran Mike
growth
Veterans Day, is the
ready
his time as
Jones, but Cribbs isn’t
in the number of Alabamians
duty a POW in WWII. to announce a decision.
who have returned from and
18A
fans
in Iraq, Afghanistan
‘‘It will be someone the
’
other high-stress assignbut COMMENTARY will identify immediately,’
who
ments, outwardly intact
Cribbs said, ‘‘someone
postowe
we
with
What
ly be recoginwardly scarred
an
our soldiers. 1B will unquestionab
traumatic stress disorder,
nized as a winner.’’
anxiety disorder generally
in
The AAFL begins play
POP+CULTURE
triggered by an extremely
franchises —
can
Documentary April with six
traumatic event. It
FlorBirmingham, Arkansas, and
honors
cripple their lives. It changes
their
ida, Michigan, Tennessee
Alabama’s
the way they behave, do
a round-roones.
servicemen. 1E Texas — playing
jobs and relate to loved
will
bin schedule. All players
See PTSD Page 9A
be college graduates.
Early signees for the league
of
include 2006 University
Florida quarterback Chris
Leak, 2001 Heisman Trophy
Newinner Eric Crouch of
braska and locals Reggie
FredMyles, Rudy Griffin and
and
die Milons of Alabama
Jake Arians of UAB.
as
Each team can protect
state as
many players from its
of the
it wishes, with the rest
late-Janua
in
By GINNY MacDONALD
selected
team
News staff writer
ary draft.
passengers or drivers
Sixty percent of the
have been held naon Alabama highways Tryouts
killed in 2006 in crashes
tionally for the past four
belts.
Cribbs is keeping
were not wearing seat
but
in
months,
increase
a steady
The statistic, along with incentive to high- a close eye on the conclusion
given
college season.
highway fatalities, has
pushing for a tougher of the 2007
the
way safety advocates
‘‘I’m very interested in
afseat belt law.
said Alabama Trans- guys who will be available
“It boggles the mind,”
Cribbs
McInnes, who lobbied ter the season is over,”
portation Director Joe
seat belt law dur- said. ‘‘Let’s say someone has a
unsuccessfully for a tougher
but a long shot, at maksession.
ing the spring legislative R-Pleasant Grove, in- shot, NFL. They could pick
ing the
State Rep. Pat Moore,
ocfor
all
required
have
up $50,000 to $100,000
troduced a bill that would
NEWS STAFF/JOE SONGER
buckle up. It also would four or five months with us
cupants of vehicles to
wearing a seat and still have the opportunity
not
City
for
Gate
fine
at
the
a tiny classroom
have increased
vocabulary assignment in
to play in the NFL.”
belt from $25 to $50.
Fourth-graders work on their fourth-graders at Crestline Elementary School type
See BELTS Page 8A Brandon Cox, are you liswhile
a glaring divide in metro
Elementary School, top,
The two classrooms show
tening?
has
essays on their laptop computers.
While the AAFL concept
naBirmingham’s public education.
drawn rave reviews from
ABOUT THE SERIES
face
tional media outlets, let’s
of special reports exploring
The
This is the seventh in a series
it: This is Birmingham.
ver metropolifootchallenges that face the Birmingham-Hoo
grim reaper of off-brand
looks at education
News
Birmingham
The
tan area. Today,
ball lives at Legion Field.
and athletics.
Cribbs, however, is unde-
Seat belts
not worn in
60% of deaths
6 GIs killed in ambush /
The same inequities that
of athletes and low
a lack of resources, a loss
struggle to
fields too. Burdened by
high school sports programs
participation, Birmingham
es.
and college opportuniti
produce winning teams
Read the stories on PAGE 15C
INDEX
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the online
Join the conversation at al.com, at blog.
News,
home of The Birmingham
you can also
al.com/bn/crossroads, where
of this series.
find previous installments
Movies
Multimedia
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3E
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Norman Mailer,
author, dead
at 84 / 2A
Get The News
at home
Call 205-325-4444
3A
NBA 20C
OUTDOORS 21C
[ 15C ]
GOLF 22C
AT A CROSSROADS
By SOLOMON
and JON SOLOMON
News staff writers
T
he scoreboard told
only part of the
story.
Bessemer’s Jess
Lanier High beat
45-19
Birmingham’s West End
in a Thursday night football
in Sepgame at Lawson Field
tember. Lanier fans crammed
On
their side of the stadium. 200
the other side, fewer than
people showed up, including
the band.
for
The meager following
of
West End is just one sign
where high school athletics
stand in Birmingham City
decSchools. The system that
athades ago set the pace for
is
letic success in the state
win
more likely to lose than
when its teams face schools
from surrounding suburbs.
Beyond victories and deBirof
state
feats, the current
is
mingham prep athletics
SPECIAL/RICK ZERBY
costing its residents opportunities and hope.
Some coaches and parents
assert that college athletic to
scholarships are less likely
go to Birmingham students
than their suburban councity’s
terparts because of the
reputation of poorer academics, training and resources.
Also missing are the positive feelings and unifying can
bond that athletic success
bring to a school and community. Low morale can prompt
athletes to leave the system,
drops,
and as the enrollment
system
funding for the school
falls, as well.
Birmingham school board
chairmember W.J. Maye, the
man of the school system’s
athletics committee, spoke
on
bluntly about city teams
the field: “We are terrible. the
were
we
There was a time
NEWS STAFF/FRANK COUCH
to
system people didn’t want us
photo, the West
top
puts
In
do.
everybody
teams
Now
play.
support that suburban
Regions
can
don’t get the fan and booster
Hoover vs. Vestavia Hills at
on the schedule so they
Birmingham city school teamsa September football game at Lawson Field. Below,
have a win.”
in
End stands are sparse before
The city’s only state titles
of
Park packed ’em in.
the past 14 years — nine
boys
them — have come in
INSIDE
and girls basketball. During
17C
ABOUT THE SERIES
y A city team struggles /
the
in
that period, teams
of special reports exploring
17C
area.
This is the seventh in a series
growing Birmingham suburbs
y A city team succeeds /
high
Birmingham-Hoover metropolitan
Athletic Partnership / 17C
— where the city’s nine
challenges that face the
looks at education and athletics.
y Coaches turn to Birmingham
schools are outnumbered
Today, The Birmingham News
capmore than 3-to-1 — have
21
ELSEWHERE
tured 193 state titles in
ONLINE
too / 1A
sports.
y Inequities show in classrooms
al.com, the online home
school districts / 7A
Join the conversation at
y Ideas from other urban
at blog.al.com/bn/
See ATHLETICS Page 18C
of The Birmingham News,
estate market / 7A
also find previous
y Good schools drive real
crossroads, where you can
installments of this series.
NEXTEL CUP SERIES
CHECKER AUTO PARTS 500
Johnson, Gordon
Mountain Brook girls, are fast friends, in
Hoover boys win titles more ways than one
HIP
CLASS 6A CROSS COUNTRY CHAMPIONS
McGregor, Dunn
top individuals
That won’t stop teammates
from battling for Cup title
By WESLEY HALLMAN
By JENNA FRYER
News staff writer
letter praising him.
year at TrenRoss earns $91,564 a
of the highest
holm, making him one
directors in the
education
A two-year college adult enrollment paid adult education
He received
low
two-year college system.
program suffers from
hired to run it the job after working in adult education
because the lawmaker
away attending for just over a year, records show.
spends too much time
to a rouincluded pay from a speaccording
salary
Ross’
duties,
legislative
to
by former
cial state contract approved Trenholm
tine evaluation of the program.
Johnson.
Montgomery Chancellor Roy salary, but Johnson
Sen. Quinton Ross, a
of his
education di- paid some
of it each year
Democrat hired as adult
Col- approved paying much
Technical
State
Trenholm
rector at
in a written
See TWO-YEAR Page 9A
lege, disputed the report cited a state
statement last week and
News staff writer
INDEX
Vista
At the Innovation Depot,
left, and
Engineering’s Dustin Nolen,
reactor to
Cameron Robinson use this
make thin films of diamond.
Classified
Commentary
Deaths
Editorials
InStyle
LifeStyle
Local News
Money
the online home of The BirJoin the conversation at al.com,
crossroads, where you
mingham News, at blog.al.com/bn/
of this series.
can also find previous installments
UAB rallies late to stun Kentucky
SPORTS | Section D
**
Sunday, November 11, 2007
For The Birmingham News
McOAKVILLE — Patrick
High
Gregor and the Hoover
School boys cross country
their
team had revenge on
2007
minds entering the
ip
Class 6A championsh
meet.
the
Mountain Brook won
NEWS STAFF/JEFF ROBERTS
2006,
Class 6A boys title in
teamleft, wins the 6A boys’
terred.
and McGregor and his
Hoover’s Patrick McGregor,
girls’ 6A
mates decided they weren’t division while Austin’s Jennifer Dunn wins the
‘‘There’s a market for footSpartans
the
in Oakville on Saturday.
going to let
ball in the spring. People
title at Indian Mounds Park
the
claim back-to-back champicame out and supported
Jusposted
supHayes came in 14th and
onships. McGregor
Stallions. We were well
Vesindiwere
tin Rogers finished 16th.
the top time to win the the INSIDE
ported even though we
as
came in second,
Hills
championship
tavia
mission.
vidual
14C
/
suicide
a
on
title y Results
third,
Smiths Station finished
Bucs claimed the team
/ 14C
‘‘I love Birmingham. We’re
came in fourth and
Saturday at Indian Mounds y More cross country
Auburn
stagnant
been
has
that
a city
Brook claimed
Park in Oakville.
the Mountain
for a while, but we’re poised
Hoover finished first in
team
Mountain Brook missed team standings due to three fifth.
to explode. I believe this
but the
spots in the
out on the boys title,
has the ability to be a catalyst
6A girls runners claiming won, Nick
See RUNNING Page 22C
Spartans did earn the
for something positive.”
top 20. McGregor
title.
The Associated Press
for an esAVONDALE, Ariz. — Searching
the Nextel Cup title,
cape from their race to
and Jeff Gordon
teammates Jimmie Johnson for a little rest Jimmie
Mexico
separately headed to
Johnson
and relaxation.
planned to “With the few
Both championship contenders
to recharge before races that we
use their short vacations
Raceway to
left, I think
heading to Phoenix International
and the have
Racing
today.
chase
it’s better to be
resume the title
two good friends were on top and
tense battle between
their minds.
the farthest things from to run into each trying to control
at all
They never expected
traveling with it if
other, but did when Gordon, lunch. Trav- possible. Right
having
his wife, spotted Johnson
now I’m glad to
infant daughter, Gorleading.
eling with his wife and
be
with
visit
brief
a
for
don pulled the car over
There’s not a lot
Johnson and his wife.
bar, relaxing and of time left.”
“We’re sitting at a beach
in the door walk Inhaving a fun lunch and
who was coming INSIDE
grid and Jeff,” said Johnson,
at Texas.
off of last Sunday’s win
y Bump and
Run / 19C
Page 19C
See PHOENIX
WEATHER | 22A
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SUNDAY
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December 16, 2007
EM123
Lighting the
way to city’s
best displays
BIRMINGHAM
Section E
Tickets for
dangerous
driving up
in a hurry
NEWS STAFF/BERNARD TRONCALE
ham News has explored critical
— race
Over the past year, The Birming
litan Birmingham-Hoover
challenges that face metropo ent, inner-city crime, blight in our
and trust, fragmented governmc growth, disparities between urban
economi
uneven
industrial core,
People across the area agree:
and suburban classrooms. is key to progress. Can someone
ip
forward?
On each of these fronts, leadersh
that leads our communities
or some group craft a vision
Busy lifestyles thought
to breed bad road habits
By GINNY MacDONALD
News staff writer
tickets given in JefThe number of speeding 2004 to 2006.
from
ferson County doubled of dangerous driving
Tickets for other types
increased sharply as well. of speeding tickets
Statewide, the number period, and Shelby
that
rose 77 percent during
increase, according
County had a 114 percent
e Office of
to the Alabama Administrativ
Courts.
all court proceedings
The AOC, which tracks
statistics on what state
in the state, released
driving: speeding,
troopers call dangerous lane changes and
reckless driving, improper
closely.
too
following
is a factor, but that
Additional enforcement
for the increases in tickalone doesn’t account
More people appear to
ets, state troopers say.
and at high speeds.
be driving aggressively speeding tickets inIn Jefferson County,
from 5,721 in 2004 to
creased 100 percent,
11,433 in 2006.
See TICKETS
AT A CROSSROADS
CAN WE COME
TOGETHER?
LIFESTYLE
ABOUT THE SERIES
Thirst for leadership
sets stage for change
By JEFF HANSEN, SHERRI C.
exploring
in a series of special reports
This is the eighth and last
ver metropolitan area.
challenges that face the Birmingham-Hoo
looks at leadership.
Today, The Birmingham News
RESIDENTS SPEAK OUT
ver have definite opinions
In
People across metro Birmingham-Hoo
challenges, and on its leadership.
on our region’s strengths andof Birmingham at a Crossroads, reporters
researching this installment people from all walks of life in
114
Gordon’s
for The News interviewed
Read News staff writer Tomand read a
13A,
Jefferson and Shelby counties.
to say, beginning on PAGE
account of what they have on PAGES 15A-16A.
sampling of their comments
GOODMAN and THOMAS SPENCER
News staff writers
plans for the Birnew mayor — to set in motion
that had been
It took one change — a
been stalled, launch conversations
mingham region that had had drowned in cynicism.
that
headquarters to
avoided and stir hopes
to Fairfield, from corporate to a charismatic
People from Vestavia Hills
from a two-term incumbentto move forward.
quest
call centers, saw that change
as a catalyst to the region’s
mayoral elecand controversial leader
showed itself in Birmingham’s
The thirst for change that collaboration and cooperation that reaches
for
are starting
People
area.
tion also unleashed a quest
across the metropolitan
beyond the city limits and divides in a region that has drifted for a generato talk across long-standing
Page 6A
ONLINE
READ THE INTERVIEWS
Shelby
each of the 114 Jefferson andThe
Complete interviews with
al.com, the online home of ads
residents can be found on
om/bn/crossro
Birmingham News, at http://blog.al.c
a vision that aims
tion.
— not a single person, but
They talk about leadership forward, across city limits and county lines,
and religious leaders.
to move the whole community
business, philanthropic
a broad coalition of political, Davis said, metropolitan Birmingham-Hoover
Otherwise, U.S. Rep. Artur
to think of ourselves as
where we have “ceased
will continue to be a place . ceased to think of ourselves as a people with
..
and more settled and
living in one community
and we have gotten more
a vast common ground,
focused on our differences.” said, when leadership has the opportunity to
Now is a moment, Davis
future.
forge a better common
See LEADERSHIP | Page 14A
A deal for climate change
at fighting
At a global conference aimed almost
from
global warming, delegates
a framework to
190 countries agreed on
a series of steps
tackle climate change —
and developing
that both industrialized
accountable for.
countries would be held
3A
JOIN THE CONVERSATION
at a
we’re opening up “Birmingham
With the closing of this series,you can discuss your thoughts and
Crossroads: The Blog,” where are saying about the challenges
read what others
ver. This blog will
facing metropolitan Birmingham-Hoo
forum for you to discuss
remain open as an ongoing here, work here, are a
our region. Whether you live or corporate leader, or
public official or a communityconversation online at
you’ll join the
just have an interest, we hope
http://blog.al.com/crossroads
blasting hurts homes
Coal mine neighbors sue, say
of resishaking, a number
to the
dents have turned
and
courts to stop the blasting
have get paid for damage they say it
Mining companies
coal
Alabeen blasting northwest pace caused — allegations
compabama hillsides at a faster the mining and blasting
at
nies deny.
the past few years to get
beneath
valuable black seams
Cracks in drywall, driveways
are among the
them.
and or foundations
Irked by the noise
By KENT FAULK
News staff writer
WEATHER | 26A
High: 42 | Low: 29
INDEX
this damage to
lawyers ing to have
Robert O.
common complaints
be- their house,” said
who escite. Doors and windows
floors Bryan, a Jasper lawyer
coming hard to close,
residents
pulling timated he has 30
sagging, chimneys
“They
knick- involved in lawsuits.
away from houses, and
off didn’t in most cases move
knacks being knocked
other into the neighborhood of the
the
among
are
shelves
going
mine knowing what was
complaints.
moves
to happen. The mine
choosnot
are
“These folks
1B
Commentary
10A
Deaths
2B
Editorials
LifeStyle
Local News
Money
December 16
© 2 0 0 8 TH E B R M N G H A M N EWS
Fashion
in store
Huge crowd
Nordstrom’s
at Legion Field very own style
is in vogue
sees Jackson
win
MONEY | Section C
State
E-MAIL: [email protected]
November 11
SWAC CHAMPIONSHIP
| BASEBALL | TRACK
FOOTBALL | BASKETBALL
struggle to produce
am high school sports programs
low participation, Birmingh the suburbs, where many top athletes prefer to play.
Faced with lack of money and
ties. It’s a lot easier in
CRENSHAW JR.
winning teams and college opportuni
PTSD cases have
steadily since 9/11
DIVIDE
AN ATHLETIC
up on playing
exist in classrooms show
WEATHER | 22A
High: 68 | Low: 46
hen Joe Cribbs
shuffled out of Buffalo and straight into
few
the USFL, more than a
sanity.
people questioned his
The year was 1984. And
BufCribbs had to get out of
was
falo, because he felt he
Our 120th year x $1.50 under an Orwellian thumb.
‘‘When I came over I really
Cribbs
had no other options,”
said. ‘‘There was no free
to play
agency, so I either had
terms
with Buffalo under their
or go to the USFL.”
So he headed home, joining
for
the Birmingham Stallions
a
a bigger paycheck and
chance to reconnect with
saw
friends and family, who
for
him play professionally
the first time.
good
Bottom line, ‘‘it was a
VETERANS DAY
state.
move for me. I love this
I could live anywhere I
to raise
wanted to, but I chose
my family here in Alabama.”
the
The 1980 AFC Rookie of
BufYear, Cribbs returned to
with
falo for the 1985 season,
a nice salary bump to boot,
and finished his eight-year
Miwith
1988
in
career
NFL
ami.
footin
back
is
Cribbs
Now
upstart
ball as president of the
in
Team Alabama franchise
the new All America Football
Lawmaker cited in low
program enrollment
September 30
COLLEGE BASKETBALL 20C
BIRMINGHAM
TWO-YEAR COLLEGES
ONLINE
chalof special reports exploring area.
This is the sixth in a series
ver metropolitan
lenges that face the Birmingham-Hoo
looks at the economy.
Today, The Birmingham News
1E
19A
1C
Movies
Multimedia
Scene&Heard
3F
5F
2A
against mining companies
.
into their neighborhood
companies they conof and the
“Just the mental aspect
with to do the blasting.
watch tract
of other residents in
having to sit there and
it’s Dozens
your home be damaged,
Jeff
tough,” Bryan said.
at
In the past four months,
least nine lawsuits involving
in
filed
been
have
78 people
Court
Walker County Circuit
1F
Pop + Culture
Television Punch
1G
Travel
THE PEOPLE BEHIND
THE PROJECT
“Birmingham at a
Crossroads” was reported
and edited by the following
staff members:
Principal reporting:
Jeff Hansen, Thomas
Spencer, Sherri C.
Goodman, Joseph D.
Bryant, Marie Leech,
Sherrel Wheeler Stewart,
Carol Robinson,
Victoria L. Coman,
Anita Debro, Tom Gordon,
Robert K. Gordon,
Solomon Crenshaw Jr.,
Jon Solomon, Ray Melick,
Andrew Gribble
Photography:
Bernard Troncale,
Michelle Williams,
Samantha Clemens,
Linda Stelter, Joe Songer,
Frank Couch
Graphics: Jody Potter,
Mark Baggett, Bill Thomas,
Harrison Prince,
Wayne Marshall
Design: Napo Monasterio,
Aimie Taluyo
d trails
Cooper ranks second; Kincai
By BRETT J. BLACKLEDGE
See ECONOMY | Page 6A
ABOUT THE SERIES
Get The News at home
Call 205-325-4444
ON THE FIELD,
AN ATHLETIC DIVIDE
Cry me a movie
AT A CROSSROADS
IN OUR CLASSROOMS,
A LEARNING DIVIDE
Birmingham students face
distinct disadvantages:
widespread poverty, schools
with limited programs,
outdated equipment.
Suburban students thrive in
high-tech schools with broad
menus of challenging classes.
Children — rich, poor, black
or white — don’t have an
equal shot in public schools.
Is that fair to them?
DOUG SEGREST
Cribbs: Spring
football will fly
in Birmingham
Parker Wilson
W
EM123
News staff writer
SPORTS
State
Georgia feasts on Mississippi
Bama
Auburn turnovers befuddles
C. GOODMAN
News staff writers
WHAT’S NEXT
See the stories on PAGE
Langford
leads in
mayor poll
By THOMAS SPENCER
Birmingham campus for
University of Alabama at
at right.
frequented the booming
near the North Pavilion,
Construction cranes have the Hazelrig-Salter Radiation Oncology Facility
decades. These tower above
Hurrica
TODAY’S PAPER
FEELING PAIN OF
BULLDOGS’ BITE
The economy is a bright spot
in metro Birmingham’s story.
,
Jobs are diverse and plentiful
wages increasing. Yet our
economic growth lags most
of the South, exposing some
ses:
underlying weaknes
a failure to work together
and build on our strengths.
er
Jefferson County Commission
field of 10 canLarry Langford leads the
mayor’s
didates in the Birmingham
commissioned
race, according to a poll
by The Birmingham News. by 33 perLangford was supported last week,
cent of the voters surveyed
CooPatrick
while political newcomer
percent. Mayor
per was the choice of 25 at 9 percent,
Bernard Kincaid was third
President Carfollowed by City Council
City Counole Smitherman, 6 percent; 5 percent;
cilwoman Valerie Abbott,
William Bell, 4
and City Councilman
received less
percent. Other candidates
percent of the
than 1 percent, and 18
voters said they were undecided.
voters who
of BirmingThe poll of 400 registered in the Oct. “if the election for mayor
said they plan to participate Monday ham were held today.”
9 election was conducted Powell, a
for the poll is
Larry
The margin of error
through Saturday by
at the Uni- plus or minus 4.9 percentage points.
communications professor
Birmingham. It
See MAYOR Page 8A
versity of Alabama at
would vote for
asked voters whom they
ne Dean gains strength
and
The storm caused damage
at least one death as it swept
past the Dominican Republic,
and NASA announced it is
bringing the shuttle Endeavour
back a day early in case operations in Houston are affected.
Our 120th year x $1.50
News staff writer
August 19
August 5
AT A CROSSROADS
ARE WE
FALLING
BEHIND?
18 of the area’s top corporate
to Comleaders to send a letter
Fine
mission President Bettye
to
Collins urging the county
continue the funding.
AlaExecutives including
McCrary,
bama Power’s Charles
Warren
Energen Corp.’s Mike
Corp.’s
end and Regions Financial letter
a
Jefferson County would
Dowd Ritter signed
contribur
arts
million-a-yea
the
$5
its
that dated Aug. 15 saying
qualtion to a cultural alliance
contribute to the region’s
funds dozens of arts organiza- ity of life and promote ecoproposal
tions, under a budget
are con- nomic development.
county commissioners
sidering.
See BUDGET Page 8A
The proposed cuts prompted
WHAT HAPPENED
SATURDAY
of Homes
www.al.com
September 30, 2007
E M 1 2 3
News staff writer
the
Join the conversation at al.com,
online home of The Birmingham
News, at blog.al.com/bn/ also find
crossroads, where you can series.
previous installments of this
of special reports
This is the fifth in a series
the Birmingexploring challenges that face Today, The
area.
ham-Hoover metropolitan
blight.
Birmingham News looks at
Get The News at home
Call 205-325-4444
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Television
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ONLINE
ABOUT THE SERIES
WEATHER | 20A
Get The News at home
Call 205-325-4444
A 14
By BARNETT WRIGHT
Tolbert’s dream.
years ago, hoping to help
Blight is shattering John
in South Woodlawn three
Tolbert, 59, bought his home
from childhood.
s neighborhood he recalled of its copper, and moved in
restore the working-clas
which had been stripped
He renovated the house, w.
with his wife and mother-in-la
neighbors on
Tolbert and three of his
their
keep
to
hard
Tennessee Avenue work
repairs, tending
homes nice — making
lawns, planting flowers.
a tide of urban
But they cannot fight
vacant and rotblight: Two houses stand
torn down after
ting. Two others were
Empty lots sprout
owners moved or died.
screams past on
weeds and garbage. Traffic
through where 10
Interstate 20, which cuts
dealers gather in
homes once stood. Drug
an alley after dark.
stays shut in- Richard Johnson works to keep his
Tolbert’s mother-in-law
and a security home and yard tidy, even though
side, behind burglar bars jail.”
is
is in
a house across Georgia Road
door. “She feels like she
into Tolbert’s boarded up and decaying.
Burglars have broken
he is giving up and
house eight times. Now
— house by house,
moving to Center Point.
of slow-motion destruction
Tennessee Avenue is a snapshot
core of metropolitan Birmingaway at the old industrial
block by block — eating
See BLIGHT | Page 10A
ham’s Jones Valley.
PRESIDENTIAL VISIT: President
the site
Bush on Saturday toured
bridge
of Wednesday’s deadly
collapse and vowed to fast-track
rebuilding efforts.
searchTHE RESCUE EFFORT: Divers
for vicing the Mississippi River
their
tims were forced to suspend
shiftsearch, hampered by debris
current.
ing in the swirling, murky
7A
PRESS
PAGE
PIONEER
JADE THOMAS/ST. PAUL
See the story on
Your guide to the 2007 Parade
Business leaders
urge commission
to rethink cutoff
News staff writer
See CRIME | Page 10A
See WEST END | Page 11A
WEATHER | 20A
In Minneapolis, a pledge
|
Jeffco budget gap
imperils arts fund
By THOMAS SPENCER
case is
A major part of the defense’s helped
actions
rights-era that Jackson’s own
The most prominent civil uncon- bring on the trooper’s bullet and that
an
care brought on
death cases usually involve
was at- incompetent medical
Fowler and
tested set of facts — someone
his death eight days later.
tacked and killed.
another former trooper
did what and R.C. Andrews, said Jackson had been
But the facts of who
have
the 1965 civil still living,
when are in dispute in Jimmie Lee trying to get Fowler’s gun when Fowler
of
rights-related death
former State shot him.
Jackson, for which
Fowler is
See MARION Page 6A
Trooper James Bonard
sometime next
scheduled to be tried
News staff writer
1C
Punch
1G
SUNDAY
Legislator
missed work
at college job
suffers slow-motion
The core of metro Birmingham
oods followed.
When heavy industry faded, neighborh people moved
boarded up,
Across the Jones Valley, businesses
were left to decay. It leaves
to the suburbs, thousands of homes
How can we fight urban blight?
everyone with a complex problem:
year.
By TOM GORDON
Sports
Television
Travel
THE SEC: HOME OF SUPERFANS
Looks like Buddy
Holly, sounds like
Bob Dylan —
and he’s 11 | 1F
AT A CROSSROADS
NEWS STAFF/LINDA STELTER
Trooper’s trial puts facts
of 1965 killing on the stand
CLEMENS
Terrance McKee, Charles
city. Officers Dontrell McCray,prepare to head out on
is the most violent in the
as they
Birmingham’s West Precinct
at shift change last week
were 406 violent crimes
Calvin go through notes
Scheonvogel and Derrick
in the West Precinct; there
264 people have been slain
patrol. Since Jan. 1, 2000,
this year.
from January through May
reported in the precinct
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Tide bows to Seminoles and Bowden
Our 120th year x $1.50
www.al.com
for problems in
times and now are a magnet
day.
South have burned several
6000 block of First Avenue past the blighted eyesore they must live with every
Carver Apartments in the
and Demetrius Coates walk
South Woodlawn. Takeshia
destruction.
Charged with murder
1E
17A
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LifeStyle
Local News
Money
WITH A KICK,
AUBURN TOPS
FLORIDA AGAIN
Calhoun College
logs show days
not made up
James Bonard
Fowler
1B
26A
2B
at al.com,
ONLINE: Join the conversation
the online home of The Birmingham
News, at blog.al.com/bn/crossroads.
the
of special reports exploring
This is the third in a series
metropolitan area.
challenges that face the Birminghamat government structure.
looks
Today, The Birmingham News
ABOUT
THE SERIES
Commentary
Deaths
Editorials
NEWS STAFF/MICHELLE WILLIAMS
County
top, faces the Jefferson
The Birmingham City Hall, across Linn Park. While just
city
Courthouse, above, directly
branches, the county and
a block separates the two
forms of government.
operate under different
C
|
COLLEGE FOOTBALL Section
Rep. Laura Hall, a Huntsville
didn’t
Democrat, show she
she
make up weeks of work
missed during some sessions.
trouHall, who works with
a
bled students, produces
request
monthly report at the
Marilyn
of Calhoun President
By BRETT J. BLACKLEDGE
she
Beck to document when up
News staff writer
makes
she
when
works and
A north Alabama lawmaker days missed. System policy resale
administrativ
receiving a $75,000 annual
full-time,
quires
as Hall to work
ary from Calhoun Community
hours employees such hours a week,
of 40
College works whatever
allowed an average
she can and is
hours a year, and depick up or 2,080
throughout the year to
“normal work week” as
the Leg- fines a
days she misses while
40 hours.
islature is in session.
See TWO-YEAR Page 8A
by
But work logs produced
balance.
county’s operating cash
said we don’t
“The commission has
said. “Anyhave any money,” Smith we need to
thing that we can delay,
delay, defer or terminate.”
Ea r l i er th i s
the general
year,
INSIDE
services departy A look at
compiled a
ment
projects on the
list of capital
bubble / 4A
projects that toApproximately
taled $32.2 million.
projects — althose
of
million
$25.6
county’s capital
most 80 percent of the
— are now
requests for 2008
See BUDGET Page 4A
See GOVERNMENT | Page 11A
**
LIFESTYLE | Section E
CAN THESE
NEIGHBORHOODS
BE SAVED?
|
ALABAMA | AUBURN UAB
across greater Birminghamocal governments sprawl
Hoover like political kudzu. region has 102 cities — 15 of
The seven-county metro
Children in metro Birmingthem crossing county lines.
separate school systems.
ham go to classes in 21
there are even more pieces.
Within the larger governments,
each responsible for
members,
council
rs, also
Birmingham has nine
County has five commissione
a single district. Jefferson
elected by district.
services, fragmented deciThis bramble means duplicated
to inter-government cooperation,
roadblocks
and
sion-making
of political science at Birminghamsaid Natalie Davis, professor political priorities often smother
Southern College. Competing and the greater good in Alabama’s
needs
efforts to serve common
ConAlabama
largest urban area.
1901
the outmoded
More tangles come from n experts say. Framers of that construggles to
stitution, public administratio
government structure that
stitution set up a county economy.
meet the needs of a modern“it is easier to defeat good suggestions
“Right now,” Davis said,
suggestions.”
rather than make good
of cooperation, ranging
lack
a
highlight
center
Ongoing squabbles
over expanding the convention
from a decade of bickering agreement on funding mass transit.
to the failure to find regional
News staff writers
x
INDEX
FLORIDA STATE 21, ALABAM
August 5, 2007
L
June 24
August 19, 2007
AT A CROSSROADS
D. BRYANT
High: 94 | Low: 71
E M 1 2 3
E M 1 2 3
AT A CROSSROADS
WEATHER | 24A
SUNDAY
BIRMINGHAM
$100,000
sent
in transportation grants
to Northwest Shoals
Community College,
where he was a director.
districts.
7 counties. 102 cities. 21 school
too many pieces,
Does local government have
on?
too little leadership, cooperati
Inspectors find rebuilt project
crumbling in Iraq / 9A
SUNDAY
Our 120th year x $1.50
SEN. BOBBY DENTON
TOO MANY
PIECES IN
GOVERNMENT
PUZZLE?
SEC are in Top 25 | 1C
MONEY | Section D
$101,240
to at least 25
BIRMINGHAM
News staff writer
sent
in legislative grants
to Jefferson State
Community College
there
when he was employed
part time.
after a body
An Ohio man is arrested
missing
believed to be that of his
/ 12A
pregnant girlfriend is found.
garage
the NASCAR Nextel Cup
of today’s
area before the start
— you’ll
race — and take a whiff
his
see why John Youk believes
important
job may be the most
of all.
and
That’s not Sunoco fuel that
paint burning off headers
you’ll be smelling.
but“Folks get tired of peanut
ter and slick meat sandwiches,”
Ginn
for
chef
jolly
Youk, the
mariRacing, said as he placed
boneless
nated, Greek-style
sausage
chicken breasts and elk
steel
pasta on the large stainless
hauler.
grill next to his team’s
See FOOD Page 8A
worked
College while he
there.
Bishop State Community
sent
President Yvonne
Alabama lawmakers
of their College the Mobile House
more than $1 million
two- Kennedy,
of
discretionary money to
Democrat whose use
year colleges that employed $94,440 of legislative discrethem or their close relatives tionary money at the school
records
investigation,
under
is
in recent years, state
2003
in
colshow.
also sent $50,000 to the
The legislative money came lege in 2000, records show.
discrecame from a spefrom special pots of
set The $50,000 lawmakers had
tionary funds lawmakers
line item
cial
state
in the education budaside for their use in the
Some created
budgets dating to 2000.
to fund their projects.
special get
sent
legislators sent the
Lawmakers said they
combegrants for parking lots,
the money to the colleges
puters, student scholarships, cause they are in their disother
training programs and col- tricts, not because of jobs
projects to community
their they provided.
benleges that hired them, the
“There was no special
in
wives or their children,
efit derived from me beinga i d
grant records show.
ture,” s
from t h e L e g i s l a
Eloise,
wife,
The amounts ranged
whose
by Sen. McClain,
as a secre$250,000 sent in 2002
to worked at Lawson from my
E.B. McClain, D-Midfield,
tary. “I don’t think
Lawson State Community standpoint any specific thing
when
College in Birmingham
offered.”
was
to
his wife worked there;
Most of those separate
Little,
$2,000 sent by Sen. Ted
ChattaD-Auburn, in 2001 to
See MONEY Page 8A
hoochee Valley Community
By BRETT J. BLACKLEDGE
FORMER
REP. BOBBY HUMPHRYES
Page 4A
Family grieves for woman
Page 8A
See HOTEL
State lawmakers with
financial ties to colleges way
send special grants their
$107,250
8 U.S. troops killed in Iraq
corporate
ment Birmingham’s
downoffices, boost traffic for
raise the
town merchants and
city’s profile in the convention
News staff writer
RANKING COLLEGE
FOOTBALL’S BEST
How much
are utility
ads costing
customers?
BONDS TIES
AARON
in violent
crimes,metro areas
sent
in transportation and
legislative grants
to Harry Ayers State
Technical College
and Gadsden State,
where he’s a director.
April 29
March 11
BIRMINGHAM
REP. BLAINE GALLIHER
of Mei, Japan,
When Yasunori Kadotani
Birmingham three years
boarded a jet to head to the United States was
ago, all he knew about
and in the movwhat he had seen on television
News staff writer
NEWS STAFF/HAL YEAGER
By MIKE BOLTON
1C
Punch
1G
$144,440
sent
in education and
legislative grants
to Bishop State
Community College,
where she’s the president.
ies.
the plane, he had viEven as he stepped off
at
next five years working
sions of spending the
in Steele, Ala., which he
Yachiyo Manufacturing view of everything else
figured would be like his
setting with fast livin America — a vast urban
ing.
he said through an
“As I got closer to Steele,”to myself, this is not
interpreter, “I kept thinking
what I expected.”
Alabama-style.
Welcome to culture shock,
NASCAR teams
enjoy gourmet
by special cooks
Sports
Television
Travel
REP. YVONNE KENNEDY
By WILLIAM THORNTON
Your order’s ready –
please drive around
3F
5F
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$250,000
sent
in Alabama Department of
Economic and Community
Affairs grants
to Lawson State
Community College
when his wife was a secretary
there.
‘Not what I expected,’ one says
AARON’S 499
She lives in Besrica Young is a rare breed.
schools her kids
semer, teaches in Hoover,
Southside and
in Homewood, frequents
, visits family in
downtown Birmingham
in Midfield.
Center Point and thrift-shops
stay
metro area, she thinks,
the
in
people
many
Too
in their own little worlds.
part of the largit’s
though
“Each community, even
is so isolated,” she said.
er Birmingham metro area,
Birmingham a better place
“If I was going to make
take ownership of the
overnight, it would be: Everyone
a suburb.”
city, even if they lived in
help build a greater
That, Young believes, would
develop a level of cooperasense of community and
tion that too often is lacking.
built on familiarity,
Trust — a level of confidence
of integrity and reliability
shared purpose, and a sense
Birmingham.
metropolitan
for
challenge
key
a
— is
we need vision, leader“If we are to move ahead,
LaMonte, a political science
ship and trust,” said Ed
-Southern College and forprofessor at Birmingham
Unifor Urban Affairs at the
mer director of the Center
. “Trust seems to be
versity of Alabama at Birmingham
three.”
the most slippery of the
s
patchwork of communitie
Metro Birmingham is a
troubled racial history. People
that grew from the city’s
lines
city
income,
race,
by
today often are separated
and social circles.
10A
|
See ROOTS OF DISTRUST Page
This is the second
in a series of special
reports exploring
challenges that face
the Birmingham
metropolitan area.
Today, The Birmingham
News takes a look
at trust. Future
installments will
explore government
structure, blight, the
economy, education
and leadership.
SEN. E.B. McCLAIN
Foreign workers
find state defies
TV stereotypes
A 255-room hotel is planned
at the site of the 17-story
former Regions Financial
Corp. headquarters at Fifth
Avenue and 20th Street
North in Birmingham.
FULL LIST
Page 8A
with ties to two-year colleges
Since 2000, 19 legislators
more than $1 million
have given them grants totaling
TRAVEL | Section G
Project to include
255 rooms, spa
and restaurant
NEWS STAFF/BERNARD TRONCALE
WEATHER | 26A
High: 72 | Low: 48
New hotel
coming to
downtown,
insiders say
FOLLOW
THE
MONEY
TWO-YEAR COLLEGE SYSTEM
Plan your
Fourth of July
getaway
POP & CULTURE | Section F
Our 120th year x $1.50
www.al.com
June 24, 2007
E M 1 2 3
News staff writer
region’s economy.
Birmingham’s Ensley neighborJust four miles away, in
after
and businesses scar block
hood, abandoned homes
are the
and Pleasant Hill Road
block. At 20th Street Ensley
thousands
Works, furnaces where
remains of the Ensley
Today, 18 rusting smokestacks
of people once made steel.
INDEX
Our 120th year x $1.50
Summer movie guide:
From Spidey to Shrek
By DAWN KENT
enforts to control the violence
refusing
gulfing the country by
forto finance attacks or allow boreign fighters to cross their
ders.
“Confrontation of terrorism,
ceasing
dear brothers, requires
meand
any form of financial
cover,
dia support and religious and
as well as logistical support that
men
provision of arms and
explosive
would turn out to be
tools killing our children,
bombwomen and elders and a n d
s
ing our mosque
churches,” al-Maliki said.
See IRAQ
AT A CROSSROADS
CAN WE TRUST
ONE ANOTHER?
Our 119th year x $1.50
www.al.com
in the
rectly and debris was left
rights of way.
nt
Cecil Calvert, superintende
mainteat the county’s Ketona
that
nance camp, estimated $1.05
one company was paid
working
million for one month
the cost
700 lane miles, and
uswould have been $327,028
By BARNETT WRIGHT
ing county workers. Engineers
News staff writer
by
pavement
$6.1 often measure
street
Jefferson County spent
con- lane miles. A two-lane
has two
million for grass-cutting work
that is one mile long
tracts in 2005 and 2006, millane miles.
$2.3
that would have cost
milworkers,
The county spent $3.6
lion if done by county
ed KHIS
by
according to a cost analysis n lion with Bessemer-bas
Birmingwith
million
LLC; $1.7
the Roads and Transportatio
Maintain
ham-based Green
Department.
with
that LLC; and $800,000
County inspectors asked besome of the work be redonecorSee GRASS Page 9A
cut
cause the grass was not
Country’s neighbors
urged to help
curb violence
www.al.com
Eddie Lard is an editorial writer for
The Birmingham News. He can be
reached at [email protected].
LIFESTYLE | Section E
SUNDAY
April 29, 2007
Jeffco spent
$6.1 million on
$2.3 million job
Iraq conference
opens with plea
Feeling lucky?
Save the date
next Saturday
The story
behind an
Alabama
anthem | 1F
LIFESTYLE | Section E
WHICH WAY
FORWARD?
Your guide to golf on the
TODAY’S PAPER
SWEET HOME
EVERYWHERE
***
SUNDAY
E M 1 2 3
BIRMINGHAM
UP TO $72 IN SAVINGS IN
COUPONS
TODAY’S PAPER
among cities and more support for
amenities such as museums and
parks. And our transportation system might even get the attention it
deserves.
And though this is a very long
shot, maybe we could have one
county school system rather than
12 providing unequal learning opportunities.
We all would be better off.
But here’s where the Catch-22
comes in. Even though we know
the government structure we have
doesn’t work, we can’t change it.
And the people who can, our legislators, have no incentive to do so;
they’re doing fine in terms of power
and personal benefit just the way
things are.
The only hope is that more people will recognize government here
is broken and will do whatever is
necessary to cure the Birmingham
syndrome. Even working together.
2 0 0 7
SPORTS | Section C
12 swimsuits that
will turn heads
SUNDAY
E M 1 2 3
2 7
‘crash-a-thon’
BUSCH SERIES: Labonte winspole
for today’s race
AARON’S 499: Gordon wins
SPORTS | Section C
SPORTS Section
March 11, 2007
J U N E
DRAMA AT ’DEGA
Mobile’s
Russell is No. 1
pick, heading
to Oakland
BOLD
BEACH
LOOKS
POP & CULTURE | Section F
OR
NCAA TOURNEY TRACKER
PAPER
UP TO $142 IN SAVINGS IN
COUPONS
NFL DRAFT
]
TODAY’S
UP TO $120 IN SAVINGS IN
S H E D
we have 12 school systems with 12
superintendents and 12 boards of
education.
The U.S. government determines metropolitan areas largely
by commuting patterns. If a certain
percentage of people in a surrounding county commute to work
in Birmingham and Hoover, that
county is included as part as the
metropolitan statistical area.
Fortunately, it’s not based on
a sense of community. If it were,
we would barely register a blip on
the national radar. There’s too little
recognition that we’re all in this
together.
What we need is true regional
governance. Rather than a County
Commission, maybe we should try
a county council. The council, representing all the cities and unincorporated areas, would be empowered to set policy and pass laws; a
county executive, or mayor, elected
at large, would carry them out.
Police, fire and sanitation services would be more uniform rather
than haphazard.
We might get less competition
Get The News
at home
Call 205-325-4444
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Get The News at home:
Call 205-325-4444
Contributing
reporting: Kim Bryan,
Walter Bryant, Mike
Cason, Michele A. Collins,
Malcomb Daniels, Stan
Diel, Keysha Drexel, Liz
Ellaby, Kent Faulk, Greg
Garrison, Jeremy Gray,
Patrick Hickerson, Russell
Hubbard, Dawn Kent,
Wayne Martin, Laura W.
McAlister, Rahkia Nance,
Toraine Norris, Lisa
Osburn, Bill Plott, Tiffany
Ray, Anne Ruisi, William
C. Singleton III, Brannon
Stewart, Erin Stock, Kelli
Hewett Taylor, Marienne
Thomas-Ogle, Anna
Velasco, Val Walton, Nancy
Wilstach, Hannah Wolfson,
Barnett Wright
Copy editing: Tom
Bassing, Leigh Barnette,
Joe Crowe, Bryan Crowson,
Nichele Hoskins, Paul
Isom, Veronica P. Kennedy,
Bill Kimber, Carol Mitchell,
Gregory A. Richter, Carl
Sanders, Nikki Seaborn,
Frank Truchon, Nathan
Turner, Miles Walls
Web presentation:
Bob Sims,
Napo Monasterio
Editing: Chuck Clark,
Staci Brown Brooks,
Jerry Underwood,
Tom Arenberg