By David Sher

I’m dumbfounded.

I’ve written and hosted ComebackTown columns for 14 years on how Birmingham might do better.

Fourteen years of hoping, pushing, and prodding. And then the world turns upside down.

Suddenly Birmingham has turned on the spigot with one win after another. Headlines that seemed impossible just a few months ago are now landing weekly.

• The Wall Street Journal declares Birmingham an Economic Powerhouse.
• The Coast Guard purchases the Birmingham Southern campus for $126 million for a training center.
• Kulture City ranked one of the top 10 nonprofits in the world —  building a multimillion-dollar campus here.
• Homicide rates plummet.
• Birmingham City Schools post highest state report card score ever.
• Birmingham ranked #6 most attractive small-to-mid sized city in U.S.

I feel much of this is because of a visionary mayor who is trying to make Birmingham better rather than play short-term politics.

It’s no wonder Mayor Woodfin won his last mayoral election with 75% of the vote even with eight challengers.

I remember when I first met Mayor Woodfin. It was several years ago when he was president of the Birmingham School Board. I asked him to meet me at Brick & Tin downtown to discuss the Kalamazoo Promise — a program that gave college scholarships to high school graduates — and how we might implement something similar in Birmingham.

I was somewhat surprised when a very well-dressed young man got off his bicycle, took off his bike helmet, and walked into the restaurant.

I thought we could replicate the Kalamazoo model here but limit it to two-year colleges to keep costs manageable. He nixed that idea immediately and thought much bigger. He wanted to cover all public colleges and universities in the state. I’ll admit, I was skeptical. But much to my astonishment, when he became mayor, he did exactly that.

The Birmingham Promise has delivered more than $15 million in tuition assistance to over 1,600 young people, while facilitating hundreds of paid internships. That young man on the bicycle had a plan all along.

Consider what he and his team have done on public safety alone. For years, crime was the ceiling on everything Birmingham wanted to become — on investment, on growth, on confidence. Woodfin attacked it with data and discipline, focusing resources on the small fraction of people driving the majority of violence.

Homicides dropped 45% in 2025 compared to 2024, and the Birmingham Police Department achieved a historic 87.3% homicide clearance rate. In the first 100 days of his third term, detectives made arrests in every single homicide case — a 100% clearance rate. The national average sits around 50%.

As of this writing there have been only 15 homicides in 2026 and the Birmingham Police Department is fully staffed.

But the work that may matter most is the work whose fruits won’t be felt until Woodfin is long out of office.

My wife was a teacher in the Birmingham school system for 33 years. She will tell you the biggest obstacle teachers faced was that children arrived at kindergarten completely unprepared — not knowing their numbers, letters, or colors.

Woodfin and the City are investing millions in Small Magic, a nonprofit designed to ensure every child enters kindergarten with the literacy and social-emotional skills needed to succeed. The initiative has already served over 5,500 children and distributed 15,000 books and educational resources.

That investment won’t show up on a report card this year or next. Woodfin knows that. He’s planting seeds he will never harvest politically — and he’s doing it anyway. That is the definition of leadership.

The school system itself reflects what happens when you play the long game. In 2023, fifteen Birmingham City Schools were rated F by the state. By 2025, that number had been cut to just one, with the district posting its highest-ever report card score. The goal now is a B rating in 2026.

By focusing on the 1% causing crime and the 100% of children needing opportunity, Mayor Woodfin is doing something rare in American politics. He is governing for the future, not the next election cycle.

Birmingham is finally planting its flag. And the man holding it will likely go down as one of the most impactful mayors in Birmingham history.

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