There are really two items on this week’s Birmingham City Council agenda that may be of significant interest to you:

Item 24 allows Alabama Power the right to do the necessary work to power Sloss Furnaces‘ proposed (and long-awaited) visitors center. It’s currently on consent.

Item 36 is an interesting one on today’s agenda. It is a resolution to pay no more than $2,000 to the Neighborhoods USA Conference taking place in Little Rock, AR later this month.

Based on the late registration fee for the conference, this allocation would cover the costs of no more than 10 delegates’ attendance and would not include transportation to and from the conference. Birmingham historically sends the largest delegation to the conference (it normally includes a representative from each of the city’s 99 neighborhoods). Several of our previous mayors have tried to reduce the number of delegates attending so that the money spent on that trip could instead be used for neighborhood projects. Neighborhoods normally used their allocated funds to cover the registration costs of the trip.