Birmingham City Council Highlights 3.21.23

Here are a few of the legislative highlights from Tuesday’s Birmingham City Council meeting, in case you missed it.
 

ITEM 10

The Birmingham City Council approved an interlocal agreement with Lawson State Community College to provide workforce development training for Commercial Driver’s License Training for City Employees. This program will be at no cost to the city.

Currently the Department of Public Works has positions to fill for commercially licensed truck drivers, and this partnership will help in the recruitment of new employees, according to Director Josh Yates.

All of the training will be done with city-owned vehicles (older model dump trucks and trailers) and will allow for current employees to get certified at no cost to them. CDL regulations changed in 2022 and created a shortage of people nationwide who were qualified. This move is to ensure that Birmingham can remain competitive to recruit and retain employees.

Each training session will be able to accommodate roughly 10 people per session. There are roughly 20 to 25 vacant truck driver positions that the City is looking to fill.

“I think this is outstanding,” Councilor Carol Clarke said. “I think this is really going to help the city be competitive against companies like Amazon. We want to be able to retain these employees and I believe this program gives the City a big advantage in that regard.”

Here is the item as it appeared on Tuesday’s agenda:

An Ordinance, in accordance with Act 1969-916 of the Acts of Alabama, authorizing the Mayor to execute an Interlocal Agreement between the City of Birmingham and Lawson State Community College, under which Lawson State Community College will provide workforce development training, more particularly described as “Commercial Driver’s License Training” for City employees and the City will provide vehicles for use by the City employees during the course of the training, for a term of three (3) years and authorizing the Mayor to execute any other documents necessary to accomplish the purposes of the Agreement. [First Reading] (Submitted by the City Attorney) (Recommended by the Mayor and the Budget and Finance Committee)

ITEM 18

The City Council approved a resolution allowing for the submission of an application to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s Office of Environmental Justice and External Civil Rights (OEJECR) for its Environmental Justice Government-to-Government (EJG2G) Program grant in the amount of $1,000,000.00 to develop a Parks Resiliency Master Plan.

This grant would help the City partner with local community-based organizations to perform environmental justice initiatives in the community. It would also allow for the City to complete a Park’s Master Plan to figure out best ways to utilize the City’s public parks in a way that creates equity and resiliency.

If the grant application is successful, the City will be working with members of the community who wish to provide ideas and share their opinions of how a Park’s Master Plan would be best utilized in their area.

“I want to state for the record how thrilled I am to see that we are pursuing this. I can’t emphasize enough how badly this is needed,” Councilor Darrell O’Quinn said. “We have a park system that was designed around Jim Crow and for a population that was roughly 170,000 more people than we currently have. There does need to be a comprehensive look at how we manage our 117 public parks and three other major greenspaces. We need to focus on programing and finding ways in which the public can better utilize these spaces.”

ITEM 20

Today the Council voted to refer a resolution of intent to provide an economic support to Birmingham Southern College back to the Committee of the Whole for additional discussion and questioning from members of the Council.

The resolution did not include specific funding amounts and included language that any support from the City is dependent on binding commitments from the State of Alabama as well as Jefferson County. Birmingham Southern College has recently signaled the need for financial support in order to remain open.

The Committee of the Whole meeting is scheduled for Wednesday, April 19th at 3:30 p.m. More information about the meeting will be made available in the coming weeks.

Here is the item as it appeared on Tuesday’s agenda:

A Resolution of intent to provide an economic development incentive to Birmingham Southern College during the current fiscal year, subject to Birmingham Southern securing binding commitments for funding from the State of Alabama and Jefferson County in amounts sufficient, when combined with the City’s cash incentive, to continue operation of the college and further subject to the City’s identification and allocation of funding, and authorizing the Mayor and his designated staff to negotiate the terms and conditions by which the City of Birmingham will provide such cash incentive in support Birmingham Southern College. (Submitted and Recommended by Councilor Williams, Chairperson, Economic Development and Tourism Committee and Councilor Clarke) **