The national media continue to beat us up–First The New York Times and now The Wall Street Journal.
In December of last year, The New York Times wrote a piece subtitled, “Nashville and others are thriving…while cities like Birmingham, Ala., fall behind.”
Continue reading Gardendale, Irondale, & Fultondale: The devil made us do it!
Some of you are probably going to think I’m going to blame Irondale’s financial challenges on its elected officials.
I am not.
I’m not sure there’s a human being alive who could find a painless way for Irondale or many of our other municipalities to avoid financial challenges. Continue reading Why we should worry about what’s happening in Irondale
It was the dark of night.
My Mountain Brook friend slipped down the stairs to his basement, opened his garage door, and quietly pushed his trash container to the street. Continue reading Mountain Brook stealing from Vestavia Hills
You’ve probably had the misfortune of noticing a few ants crawling around in your kitchen cabinet.
This is almost always a tell-tale sign that there are a lot more ants nearby.
That’s what we’re beginning to see with Hoover.
Continue reading Why we should worry about what’s happening to Hoover
I don’t know if you noticed—but three Jefferson County cities had a really terrible week.
We in Jefferson County are so intent on staying divided that we’re willing to suffer financial disruption and the unfortunate consequences. Continue reading 3 local cities at risk
I may be sorry I wrote this column.
Any time I write a piece that might be perceived as negative to Irondale, I’m attacked by unhappy Irondale citizens. (I respect their pride and loyalty)
However, in this particular case, I don’t know if Irondale is the devil or an angel. Continue reading Is Irondale gouging us?
I must be nuts.
I’m actually writing an article that might be perceived as negative about the most popular and respected man in Alabama—maybe in Alabama history.
This story broke January 9th; about the same time Nick Saban and the UA football team won the National Championship—but wanting to show sensitivity to Saban worshipers (which include me), I waited until this week to publish. Continue reading Nick Saban proves we in Birmingham are a bunch of suckers
We have a little game us business people play in Birmingham—and we’re darn good at it.
When it’s time to renew the lease on our building—we go to our home city or surrounding cities and demand money.
And it’s so easy to do. There are 35+ municipalities in Jefferson County and if you are large enough or important enough—some local government will throw money at you. Continue reading How to extort money from City of Homewood
Birmingham has always been known as a “steel” town. Now we should be known as the “steal” town.
While our peer cities are recruiting companies from other regions, we steal businesses from each another. Continue reading Let’s spend $125 million stealing from one another
Leadership Birmingham is a diverse group of Birmingham citizens who are selected each year to study Birmingham’s problems and opportunities and then go out and make a difference.
I was in the class of 1992 and when I graduated I asked the business leader who was delivering the commencement speech, “Why doesn’t Birmingham consider combining its city and county government?” Continue reading There’s no way in hell we’ll ever work together