Tag Archives: On the agenda

On the agenda: Sloss and travel

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.

On the agenda: One laptop per councilor

In case you missed it yesterday morning, Mayor Langford presented each of the members of the Birmingham City Council with an HP Mini notebook, comple with capability to connect to the Internet using WiFi and an AirCard courtesy of Verizon Wireless. They also received an 8 GB jump drive containing several city reports, including the budget that they are currently working on and a bag to carry it all in; Birmingham Weekly tweeted a description of the embroidered message. A series of classes will be offered for those councilors and city employees that are interested.

The Birmingham News pointed out the total cost of the expenditure in today’s paper, as well as the status of the budget that seems to have encouraged their distribution.

On the agenda: Langford reccommends cutting ONB budget

ONB 50th anniversary logo - yourcitycenter.comMost of the time when Birmingham Mayor Larry Langford makes an announcement, you’re never quite sure of what he means exactly. Take this morning for example when he casually spoke of cutting funding for Operation New Birmingham and moved on the next subject.

Needless to say this was a bit of an eyebrow raiser, but recognizing the potential for a conversation we sent out this tweet:

Mayor Langford suggests that ONB be included in new Chamber/MDB/Region 20202 reorganization.”

Yes, we did notice the typo. Aside from that the local media had been pretty quite until now… This article posted by The Birmingham News  removes any doubt about whether the mayor meant what he said. No official comments have been made by ONB, but considering that they received $450,000 in city funds last year, this could be a serious blow.

Image: ONB 50th anniversary logo.

OK, it got delayed, but…

Yesterday the Birmingham City Council delayed a vote on council agenda Item #17, which at first glance would look like a direct correlation with the title of yesterday’s On the Agenda post. If approved, it would move forward plans to complete phase II of the city’s intermodal transit facility on Morris Avenue.

That is, until you let Birmingham Weekly‘s Kyle Whitmire and The Birmingham News‘ Joseph Bryant fill in the details about the concerns regarding the potential involvement of Larry Langford‘s mayoral campaign manager and CEO of Matrix, LLC, Jeff Pitts.

Glen Iris residents want your help

We just got an email asking for residents to show up at tomorrow’s City Council meeting to show support for residents of the city’s Glen Iris neighborhood. For more than a year they’ve been working to stop development of 107 apartments planned for the eastern side of George Ward Park on the former Knights of Columbus Property. Among other things, the park holds a 24-hole disc golf course.

They will attempt to convince the council tomorrow to initiate a Sector Plan Study of the portion of the Glen Iris Neighborhood that includes the property in question to determine the appropriate zoning. They’re also hoping for a moratorium on building while that sector plan study is being conducted.

The email contains all of the pertinent details.

On the agenda: Construction abound

A quick look over this morning’s Birmingham City Council agenda would not necessarily make you think of construction. However, it signals a great deal of construction and growth for the city, once you get down to the introduction and first readings section of today’s agenda.

A great deal of the items focus on the Ensley neighborhood. Item 19 provides $900,000 to move forward with plans to renovate and stabilize the Ramsay-McCormack Building in the Ensley neighborhood. Item 20 provides for $2 million to be used from the city’s Capital Improvement Fund to assist in completing the HOPE VI Tuxedo Court development in Ensley. Item 32 suggests that the scope of work associated with the project will now include a public park and developing a portion of the Ensley Trail.

Item 24 lets Mayor Langford provide $25,000 towards the $1 million commitment to Sloss Furnaces‘ new visitors center, with Item 28 allowing him to execute the project development contract.

There’s more, after the jump:

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On the agenda: Paratransit gets attention

This week’s Birmingham City Council agenda is light – 15 pages – but it contains a major first reading today.

Items 6 & 7 (on page 3) provide the framework for our local transit authority to continue to provide paratransit service to patients in the region. The $1.77 million being pulled from the money already allocated to the transit authority earlier in the city’s budget will provide new buses for the BJCTA’s aging paratransit fleet. There is additional service provided by ClasTran, but they’ve been feeling the effects of the economic downturn.

This morning’s Birmingham News makes it sound like there’s going to be a delay on the vote due to the fact that it’s a reorganization of where funds are going instead of additional funding for the agency.