By David Sher
I recently met with the CEO of a large private company to discuss how greater Birmingham might progress. He’s a well-known name from a well-known firm.
He was totally engaged in our conversation. He took copious notes and asked thoughtful questions about what I presented.
At the conclusion, I felt good about our discussion. Then he said something that caught me off-guard: “This is very interesting, but Birmingham is a great place. Why would we want to change?”
I can understand his satisfaction. He lives in a beautiful Mountain Brook home. His children attended excellent schools. He has good neighbors who share his worldview. He plays golf at a fine country club. He owns a second home at Lake Martin and a third in North Carolina. His children joined the family business, keeping his grandchildren nearby.
I don’t blame him. From where he sits, it doesn’t get much better.
I’ve lived much of my adult life in Mountain Brook and currently reside in Vestavia Hills. I enjoy a great quality of life in a nice neighborhood with good neighbors.
Recently I had some concerns about my blood pressure. I drove to my nearby Vestavia Hills Fire Department to have it checked. Before I could even get out of my car, three firefighters rushed out to help. They brought the blood pressure cuff to my car and took my reading right there.
Recently, our garbage pickup was missed. My wife called the City of Vestavia Hills to report it. They logged the information and promised to handle it. The garbage was picked up promptly. But here’s the remarkable part: a city employee called my wife back to confirm the problem had been resolved.
Customer service doesn’t get any better than this—particularly from a government entity.
This is the Birmingham experience for those of us living in the suburbs. And it’s wonderful.
A Great Option for Birmingham—No, It’s Not Consolidated Government
For years, I’ve argued that our fragmented government entities need to collaborate. My original hope was for some form of county-city consolidation, but it’s clear that won’t happen in my lifetime.
And so, I’ve shut up about that.
However, there’s a second option I’ve been writing about recently that requires no government consolidation.
We must have a strong county government.
Jefferson County has a legislative and judicial branch, but no executive branch.
Our U.S. Constitution requires three branches for our federal government. Most local governments in America have an executive branch, but not Jefferson County.
An executive branch would strengthen county government and create at least one elected official accountable to all of Jefferson County—someone with the clout and resources to move our region forward.
Just like Jefferson County, Allegheny County Pennsylvania (Pittsburgh) did not have an executive branch, but it created an elected County executive in 2000 and this one act helped turn the Pittsburgh region around.
What’s remarkable is Allegheny County is far more segmented than Jefferson County. Jefferson County has 35 municipalities. Allegheny has 130.
Why It Matters
Our CEO above asked the question—”Why would we want to change?”—reveals our challenge.
Those of us living comfortably in the suburbs of Birmingham have little personal incentive to push for regional progress. Our garbage gets picked up. Our blood pressure gets checked. Our children attend good schools.
But Birmingham as a whole is losing young talent. We’re not creating the jobs and careers that keep the next generation here. We’re not building the kind of dynamic regional economy that attracts investment and opportunity.
We certainly do NOT want to become like Atlanta, Nashville, Austin, or Charlotte—where growth is out of control. But don’t worry, we are at no risk of that happening here.
Those cities are growing because they’re creating opportunities. They’re keeping their young people. They’re attracting new residents and businesses.
The uncomfortable truth is that Birmingham’s comfortable class has the least incentive to demand change and the most power to create it.
Creating a county executive would give Jefferson County a leader with the mandate and resources to think regionally, to coordinate across our patchwork of municipalities, to compete for the jobs and investment that keep families here.
We would not lose our way of life. Our cities would maintain control. We would all benefit.
Our CEO was right about one thing: Birmingham is a great place.
The question is, are we okay with losing our children and grandchildren for lack of opportunity here?
David Sher is the founder and publisher of ComebackTown. He’s past Chairman of the Birmingham Regional Chamber of Commerce (BBA), Operation New Birmingham (REV Birmingham), and the City Action Partnership (CAP).
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Invite David to speak for free to your group about how we can have a more prosperous metro Birmingham. dsher@comebacktown.com
I really appreciate your column. My husband and I moved here 20 years ago from the CT suburbs of NYC. We moved here before Obamacare because we have to provide our own health insurance, and Alabama had affordable rates. Because we had lived through 9/11, we wanted to be sure that we had choices for emergency exits: interstates, an airport, and passenger rail (Amtrak). We chose to live in Birmingham: we bought a condo in Highland park and love life here. There are parks, sidewalks, trees. When we moved here there was better public transportation, but we can still walk to doctors’ appointments, restaurants, drugstores, and grocery stores. It is a fantastic spot for ageing in place. The neighborhood is diverse in age, income, race, and politics to a certain extent. We couldn’t have found a better place for us.
Birmingham’s political influence is often diluted by the fragmented nature of Jefferson County’s 30+ municipalities.Regional Executive Branch: Some advocates propose creating a county-wide elected executive for Jefferson County. This leader would have the mandate to represent all 660,000 residents, allowing the metro area to compete more effectively with Nashville or Atlanta for major federal grants and projects.Legislative Advocacy: The city is actively lobbying the state legislature for greater local control over property laws (like the Land Bank Act), which would allow the city to solve its own infrastructure and housing issues without constant state-level interference.
Let us know when the mayor of Birmingham is willing to cede any authority to a county executive. The water works debacle ought to be a lesson for everyone – Birmingham elected officials would rather crash the ship on the shoals than turn the wheel over to a qualified captain.
1. This has nothing to do with ceding authority. The Jeff Co Commission already has a President and a $1 billion budget to spend. This would just give a county executive more power to orchestrate county-wide projects.
2. Why does every issue this metro have come back to some issue with Birmingham leadership? This commentary was about suburban-living executives inability to struggles and issues that the county as a whole faces as their own struggles. Yet, some still brought it back to an issue with Bham? How? Why? This is the same division that this column continues to speak about.
This whole piece is written from the perspective of people who’ve already voted with their feet. The anecdotes are about Vestavia Hills. The CEO lives in Mountain Brook. The author lives in Vestavia Hills. At what point does a conversation about Birmingham’s future actually involve people who live in Birmingham?
See Sharon Fugate’s statement above. She shows Birmingham has a lot to offer.
Sharon’s experience is wonderful, and Highland Park is a genuinely great urban neighborhood. But it’s also one of Birmingham’s most affluent and well-maintained areas — it’s not representative of the majority of Birmingham residents’ daily reality. The city has neighborhoods with crumbling infrastructure, food deserts, underfunded schools, and chronic disinvestment. A conversation about Birmingham’s future that draws on a Mountain Brook CEO, a Vestavia Hills author, and Highland Park as its reference points is still working from a pretty narrow slice of the actual city.
As I read it, I thought his point was to discuss suburban responsibility and role in the wellbeing of the entire county. The overwhelming majority of the wealth and Power of this county is based in the southern suburbs. So given great quality of life in these relatively wealthy areas what responsibility do they have for other areas of the county? Given the scope of the issues in Bham and the plethora of initiatives the city has put in place to address them it seems that the city is well aware of what is needed.
You can tell them this and they will always ignore the real problems with Birmingham. They are the haves and will never care about the have nots and why, they live in their own bubble and always have. That is why I left in 2021 after living in Bham for 65 years and will never return. Bham is being divided by these very people and they wont care until it knocks on their door, and it will one day.
I have to agree after reading many of the comments. They basically all said, “the suburbs are doing well, how cares about the city?”
Absolutely,
Those who live in the southern suburbs can pretend that what happens in Birmingham proper doesn’t matter. Time will tell. The city is the heart of our metro. Its condition is our condition.
Headlines after headlines talk about the growth of Southeastern cities, but not Birmingham.
I wonder why . . . ?
Kitty, the objective of ComebackTown is to create a community conversation on how to make Birmingham better. ComebackTown has published well over 600 columns with hundreds written by guest columnists–many who live in the City of Birmingham. Please consider being a part of the conversation. If you have an interest in being a guest columnist, please email me at dsher@comebacktown.com and we can set aside some time to talk. I welcome all feedback–both positive and negative.
Thank you for that.
How often does Comeback Town investigate or solicit opinions from the residents of the other 31 suburban Jeff Co municipalities not named Mountain Brook, Vestavia, Homewood, or Hoover? What might be the reaction of residents (and voters) in Gardendale, Fairfield, Trussville, Bessemer, Pinson, Pleasant Grove, Lipscomb, Center Point, etc., etc. to this proposal for a countywide executive? As much to the point, what might be the reaction among legislators across Alabama, given that the proposal might require their approval?
I live in a county of 900,000 people with no municipalities. Baltimore County, MD. (Separate from Baltimore City.) Seems to work — there has never been an effort to form municipalities. Good services. Good schools.
David, I always find your Comeback Town writings to be though provoking. This one did not disappoint.
I think that your focus on job creation within Birmingham and our metropolitan area is spot on. If we can marry more and better job opportunities for young people, to our incredible quality of life that is available in Birmingham, we would have an unbeatable product.
I am not convinced that it takes a county administrator to accomplish job creation. Regional cooperation—that you have so well championed over many years—is required. And, it is making an impact. We do have agencies of city and county governments, and non-profits, that are laser focused on growing and bringing businesses to our metropolitan area. Certainly, I wish we were doing better. But, the reality is that there is tremendous competition today for recruiting business, not only from regional competitors but from our sister cities in Alabama as well.
We have to play to our strengths. We need to critically examine some of our recent success stories—those businesses choosing Birmingham over other sites—and then capitalize on the factors that created the successes. Those factors include our research and technology sectors led by UAB. Other factors include our natural resources such as parks, trails and recreational opportunities, our climate, our numerous colleges and universities, our healthcare opportunities, our entrepreneurial spirit, and our relatively low cost of living. Our physical location in the heart of the South, and at the intersection of four interstate highways is a real benefit in the distribution and logistics world. In short, we have the resources here and now to compete with any other metro area in the South. We do need better marketing.
I am pleased for your friend in Mountain Brook who is perfectly satisfied with the status quo. I suspect that a good deal of that satisfaction comes from having a business that has enabled his children and grandchildren (present or future) to remain close to home. I look forward to seeing more of this opportunity for more of our friends and neighbors.
You have put your finger on the reason for stagnation in this city for the last 6 decades: “life in MB and and Homewood is wonderful. What exactly is the problem? Why would we want to change?” People with the most power and money in this county actually WANT things to stay exactly as they have for 60 years because for them life is quite nice. And things have stayed pretty much the same. They have little interest or incentive to promote policies (or investment) in West End and Fairfield and Ensley, where life is less ideal. How to make people see that the wellbeing of others in this county actually improves their own bottom line, especially when they are already wealthy beyond belief compared to others in this county? Not sure.
You are correct. From a former Bham native from 1956 to 2021, age 69. I left in 2021 because of this big divide of the haves and the have nots and my neighborhood went from a nice safe suburb to a 3rd world war zone in less than 20 years.
And if you improve life in poorer areas like West End and Fairfield, you’ll improve the whole metro area. None of us live in a bubble. If you own a car dealership, for example, and 5,000 more people are now able to afford your cars, you’ll do better too.
The question is what would it take for 5,000 more people to be able to afford a car? The minimum wage would have to go up a lot for that to happen. I think this is a problem with our state government. It wants to market Alabama as a cheap place to do business, so it won’t allow a rise in the state minimum wage. In a city like Birmingham, you need $15 an hour to live well. So what we have is a situation where prosperous people benefit from cheap labor while low-income people barely get by. If we had a better public transit system, there would be more mobility options for people without a drastic increase in wages. That should be a priority right now.
And if you don’t, we’ll continue to sink.
Long time reader of your commentaries, Mr. Sher, and I’m sure you’ve previously highlighted the Jefferson Co. Cooperative Library system, but it deserves to be mentioned in this context, and repeated often. I worked for BPL for 31 years, and in retirement moved to Shelby County. But I still pay my annual fees to belong to the Jefferson Co. Cooperative system. The choice that this provides me is non-pareil – often books and DVDs come to me from Hoover, Birmingham Central, Mountain Brook, my “home” library of Vestavia, or Irondale, entities with larger book budgets or libraries that tend to buy books in my areas of interest. But sometimes titles arrive from one of the many small branches of the Birmingham system. The Jefferson County Cooperative was created decades ago to give the citizens of Jefferson Co. (and those of us outside the County willing to pay for what Jeffco citizens get for free) an excellent level of service and convenience. All this was achieved without the necessity of an “executive” head of the County – just a bunch of far-sighted librarians determined to convince local governments to share the expense of bringing this common sensical project to reality. Thus citizens of Bessemer, Fairfield, Avondale, and Springville Road have access to the collections of Mountain Brook, Hoover, and Vestavia, and vice-versa. As in other areas, let librarians show us the way.
Jeff, you are so right about Jefferson Co. Cooperative Library System. I have been publishing ComebackTown for 14 years and people keep reminding me of the Library Cooperative. Unfortunately its difficult to come up with another good example of collaboration and cooperation. As you said, we need a bunch of fa r-sighted librarians to convince local governments to share the expense of bringing this common sense project to reality in other areas.
David, I have said it before education in schools is the first step, these other municipalites left because of the lack of good education for our children, until we get that problem solved, no one who lives in an area with schools that excel. Birmingham has to stop indoctrinating and start teaching. The Birmingham school system sets our children up for failure.
Indoctrinating what? Would you clarify what this indoctrination is?
Wake up! Mercedes Benz USA building was built in Atlanta [plant is here]. Eli Lilly plant going to Huntsville [UAB is here]. Toyota/Mazda in Huntsville. FBI Huntsville. Space Force Huntsville. We get data centers? Our leadership vacuum is REAL. 1.2 million people live here and we are behind Raleigh, Austin, Charlotte, Jacksonville, Memphis and Louisville. Chattanooga is next. Cooperate, coagulation. Manipulate!
‘This is the Birmingham experience for those of us living in the suburbs. And it’s wonderful.’
This statement is nonsensical, you pay for that service in Vestavia Hills with your taxes, which average 50% more than the city of Birmingham. Diluting the base to appease the bloated City of BHM staff to get what…a call back to make sure your garbage was picked up?