On August 20, Mayor Spiro Cheriogotis delivered a new $400+ million budget for Mobile’s 2026-27 fiscal year that begins October 1. The Council has referred the proposal to its Finance Committee, scheduled a public hearing for September 8, and will likely take its final vote later in September.

Over the next few weeks there will be conversations in the council and the community about how the money should be allocated for public safety, drainage, recreation, neighborhood services, planning, libraries, and other public services.

This article is not about those policy arguments. It asks a simpler question: does the proposed budget allow residents to see and understand what the City proposes to spend, what the city is buying, and who is responsible for expenditures? Everyone can see the posted numbers, but the essential facts behind the numbers remain difficult, even impossible, for residents to fathom.

That is the invisible budget: known only by the people who administer it, but failing in its essential purpose—showing taxpayers where the money is going and who is responsible for spending it.

A Question With No Answer

Consider this question: how much does Mobile propose to spend next year on ditch maintenance? Is it more or less than last year?

In FY2023, the budget listed “Ditch Maint” as a separate line item of $825,500. In FY2024, the amount was $1.08 million. A resident could find the number, compare it with earlier years, and see what the City proposed to devote to that particular work.

Then the line disappeared. The ditch category is there in FY2025, FY2026 and this year (p.13), but the amount is not provided. One can only see the total appropriation for a broad category labeled Public Services Maintenance—$10.27 million. It is impossible to know whether the City proposes to spend more, less, or the same amount on ditch maintenance than it previously did when the service appeared as its own line item.

This is important information if a ditch runs next to your house. This is not to suggest that the budget must list every crew assignment, invoice, or piece of equipment. But it ought to explain why the decision was made to drop the details.

Numbers Without Descriptions

Urban Forestry presents the same problem from another direction. The proposed FY2027 budget provides $745,839 for personnel and $2,403,100 for “operating”—more than three times the amount identified for payroll. The $3.1 million total is there, but a description of what is to be accomplished is not.

The $2.4 million operating figure may include some combination of contract tree crews, equipment, stump grinding, debris removal, disposal fees, and other costs. The budget does not distinguish among them. A reader cannot tell what work will be performed by City employees, what work will be performed by outside contractors or how the proposed mix compares with prior years.

Fleet Management is a larger version of the same problem. The proposed budget assigns $3.32 million for personnel and $10.35 million for operating expenses, for a total of $13.67 million. The operating figure increased roughly $2.7 million in a single year, from $7.65 million in FY2026 to $10.35 million in the FY2027 proposal.

The increase may reflect fuel, vehicle purchases, repairs, parts, outside maintenance, equipment, or other costs, but the budget does not say. “Operating” is an accounting label, not an explanation.

Legal Services Without a Ledger

The legal spending items are especially opaque. The proposed FY2027 budget calls for $2.58 million for legal personnel and $504,660 for legal operating expenses. The budget also includes a separate $4 million transfer identified as “Legal Liability.” The City Council’s budget has a line item of $1.03 million for personnel and operating expenses, but does not say whether legal expenses are included in the total.

Read as a whole, the proposed budget does not produce a clear picture of what the City expects to spend for legal services. It does not show the anticipated cost of outside counsel, the number of lawyer positions being funded for the Legal Department, or what it costs to provide defense lawyers to indigent defendants in municipal court. There is a $3+ million dollar “legal” budget on page 9, but no description of what that money is for. There is no explanation for a $4 million transfer to “Legal Liability.”

Besides the City Attorney and a full-time staff of in-house lawyers, the City also employs private “outside” lawyers to handle specific cases, and to advise a smorgasboard of entities such as the Planning Commission, the Board of Zoning Adjustment, and the Architectural Review Board.

A public-records request produced a spreadsheet listing annual payments to outside lawyers and law firms. The graphic below identifies firms and annual payment totals.

The City did not, however, provide retainer agreements for these services, describe the scope of the work, the city department served, or name the official responsible for supervising the engagement.

If you look at the organizational chart, you can see the City Attorney position and the name of the individual lawyer holding the title, who is also a partner at Burr & Forman which has, to date, been paid $1.57 million. But neither the organizational chart nor the budget explains whether the City Attorney’s compensation is included in payments to Burr & Forman, or governed by a separate arrangement.

The budget allocates $10.92 million to a “City Attorney” grouping, but the line items do not correlate with the structure shown on the organizational chart. The chart places not only the Legal Department and Municipal Court beneath the City Attorney, but also Risk Management and Office of Professional Responsibility, Claims, Criminal and Civil functions, Neighborhood Development, Municipal Enforcement, Small Business Development, and Community & Housing Development.

Yet the FY2027 budget shows separate appropriations for only some of those units. It does not identify separate budget lines for Risk Management, Claims, Criminal, Civil, Small Business Development, or Community and Housing Development. A reader cannot determine from the budget how much is being spent on those functions, who has spending responsibility for them, or how their work relates to the City Attorney’s $10.92 million budget grouping.

The point is not that outside counsel is improper. Cities often use outside lawyers for litigation, conflicts, bond work, labor issues, specialized advice, or other matters. But the name of a law firm and an annual payment total do not tell the public what legal work it purchased.

The same is true of engineering. Cities routinely hire outside engineering firms for design work, inspections, traffic studies, and capital projects that in-house staff cannot cover. Not a single professional services contract appears in the proposed budget nor does an estimate of what outside services will be needed in the coming year.

When Categories Disappear

The Fire Department provides a different but related example. In FY2026, the budget separately displayed Fire Administration, the Bureau of Fire Prevention, Fire Training, Fire Suppression, and Fire Communications/E911. This breakdown allowed a reader to see distinct appropriations for each discrete function.

The proposed FY2027 budget, however, does not list those functions separately. Instead the budget shows a single Fire Administration appropriation of $48.71 million. The budget notes that Fire and Rescue operations have been consolidated into Fire Administration, but the budget no longer shows how much the City proposes to devote separately to fire prevention, training, suppression, or emergency communications. The functions remain, but the funding has disappeared as a separately visible part of the budget.

A single gross total amount can be accurate and still answer fewer questions than the categories it replaces. A budget organized around broad totals does not allow residents—or Council members—to see the services, choices, and tradeoffs contained within those totals.

How a budget makes government visible

The Zoghby Act requires budget appropriations to be organized by “operating units, character and object.” (§11-44C-45(6). Those are not empty accounting words. Each answers a specific question.

• An operating unit identifies who is authorized to spend the money: the department, division, office, or cost center responsible for a function.

• Character identifies the general type of expenditure: ordinary operations, capital outlay, debt service, or another broad category.

• Object identifies what the money buys: salaries and benefits, professional or contractual services, supplies, fuel, equipment, and similar categories.

Together, those classifications allow a reader to follow a public dollar from responsibility to purpose. Under the Zoghby Act, appropriations are not merely estimates or administrative suggestions. A budget is an ordinance. It is the Council’s authorization for the administration to expend public money.

The stakes become clear when money moves during the year. For example, when Fire Suppression, Fire Training, and Fire Prevention each had their own appropriations, a significant transfer among them was visible. When those functions are incorporated into a single $48.7 million line, the same internal shift is harder to recognize. The bigger the box, the more discretion exists inside it—and the less visible the underlying policy choices become.

Every department listed in the FY2027 budget follows this pattern: the only detail provided is personnel and operating. Those two lines tell the reader something, but collapse virtually everything other than payroll into a single word—operating.

The result is a budget in which major expenditures are public in the aggregate but opaque in substance.

Who is responsible?

The proposed FY2026-27 budget also includes an elaborate organizational chart. It is dated August 19, 2026 and purports to describe the present structure of city administration. It is brightly colored, filled with names, titles, boxes, and reporting lines.

But here’s the catch: the departments on this chart do not align with the departments that the Council is being asked to fund in the budget. The organizational chart appears on page 3 of the budget and is available online (link above).

For example, the budget lists General Government as a department on page 9 with a funding total of $21 million, but General Government is not a city department (operational unit) that one can find on the organizational chart.

Now look at the proposed budget, which appropriates $14.4 million to “Administrative Services” department. Page 11 of the budget shows that the Administrative Services department consists of Executive Administration, Human Resources, Animal Services, and Information Technologies. The organizational chart, however, does not show an Administrative Services department with those components. It shows a Chief of Administrative Services, which repeats those components and adds three more: Occupational Safety, Training and Compliance, and the Cruise Terminal. .

There is no explanation for the disconnect. A reader cannot tell who is responsible for the $14.4 million allocation, which units belong to it, or whether the chart and budget describe the same organization at all.

The impact of the mismatch between the departments named in the budget and the labels on the organizational chart doesn’t end when the budget is adopted. It will resurface every month when the Finance Director reports budget-to-actual spending to the Council. Without a common set of accounting codes to reconcile the three documents, those monthly reports cannot show whether the city is spending in line with what was adopted — only that money moved.

A Question for the Council

The Zoghby Act, §11-44C-38(a) states: “There is hereby created three divisions of city government: public works, finance and public safety.” It further provides that each division may have an Executive Director not subject to the city merit system, who is appointed and removed only upon the recommendation of the mayor and the vote of five councilors. Section 11-44C-39 states: “the work of each department may be distributed among such divisions, there of as may be established by ordinance upon the recommendation of the mayor.”

Here’s a diagram:

That structure reflects a simple idea. The Mayor recommends the City’s administrative organization within the divisions set by Zoghby. The Council acts by ordinance to establish departments and assign their work among the divisions. The executive directors who lead the three principal divisions are appointed and removed through a shared process involving both branches.

I have not found that the Council has ever enacted an ordinance which establishes administrative departments, defines their their responsibilities or assigns their work among divisions.

The Zogby Act and Council’s Role

The three divisions named in the Zoghby Act—Public Works, Public Safety, and Finance—appear in the FY2026-27 organizational chart, but they are embedded in a much larger collection of executive titles, direct reports, offices, and functions. The chart includes wealth of positions not mentioned in Zoghy or created by any ordinance: Cabinet Chief, a Chief of Administration, a Chief of Administrative Services, a Chief of Operations, a Chief of Building & Planning, a Chief Resilience Officer, and other positions. It does not explain what these titles mean, how their authority relates to the three statutory divisions, or how their offices correspond to the departments and appropriations in the proposed budget.

The point is not that Mobile’s government must remain frozen in the administrative arrangements of another era. Cities change. Services change. Technology changes. New challenges require adaptation. But the City’s legal structure established by state law and implemented by Council ordinances should not change by accretion without a public explanation and council approval—which is the only branch of the city that is vested with legislative power.

A Lesson from the Past

Mobile has confronted these questions before.

During Mayor Mike Dow’s administration city undertook a deliberate examination of how it delivered services. At Mayor Dow’s request, the City Council approved a $100,000 contract with Deloitte & Touche—roughly $250,000 in today’s dollars—to evaluate the city’s organizational structure. A steering committee that included representatives of the City Council, the University of South Alabama, Bishop State Community College, and community organizations directed the year-long effort.

The resulting report, which is now consigned to the city archives, made two significant findings:

• The city’s budgets were being developed by departments, but the departments were not required to identify their missions, goals, objectives, and measurable performance standards. (page 16)

• About half of the city’s departments and organizational units had supervisory spans of control of four or fewer employees. (page 24)

Deloitte saw that as evidence of fragmented responsibility, and excessive management layers. It was also an opportunity to consolidate small units and align related functions.

The lesson from that earlier effort is not that Mobile needs another consultant’s report before it can improve its budget. It is that the City cannot efficiently govern a complex organization if its own public documents do not show how responsibility is assigned, what money is intended to purchase, and what results the City expects in return.

The FY2027 proposed budget shows that the questions raised in 1992 have not gone away—nor should they. Cities are not machines whose parts can simply be swapped, rearranged, or captured in a diagram. They are more like ecosystems: living systems in which people, services, institutions, neighborhoods, finances, and changing public needs continually affect one another. There is no single organizational chart or budget format that can resolve every problem. But that is precisely why the City’s structure, responsibilities, and spending choices must be made clear enough for the Council and public to understand, question, and improve.

The proposed FY2027 budget will be considered and adopted on a compressed schedule. A new Council cannot rebuild the City’s budget structure in a matter of weeks. But it can decide what it expects to see in the budget documents it is asked to approve—not only this year, but in the years ahead.

The work ahead

The Council can ask to review the estimates of revenue and expenditures and other information that the department heads are required (per Zoghby §11-44C-43) to submit to the Finance Director. Those underlying materials will not provide a perfect answer to every question raised by the examination of the budget book, but they may show how the proposed amounts were developed; which assumptions departments used; what services, contracts, positions, equipment, or other costs were included in broad operating categories; and whether budget changes reflect a reorganization, a new program, or a different method of presenting an existing function. Any lingering questions could be addressed by the Finance Director and/or the department heads at a public meeting.

That would be a useful beginning. The Mayor is asking the Council to adopt a $404 million general-fund budget. At a minimum, the Council should be able to examine the estimates and supporting work that produced it.

Second, the Council can articulate a clear expectation for future budgets. The City should present its budget in a form that adheres to both the letter and the spirit of the Zoghby Act: appropriations should be detailed enough to show the operating unit responsible for spending, the character of the expenditure, and the object being purchased. A resident should be able to see the difference between City personnel, outside professional services and contract labor; between routine operating costs and major contractual commitments; and between a reorganization of a department and a change in the way a familiar service is funded.

Finally, Mobile can set an ambitious but practical goal: within two years, the City should adopt a budget capable of earning the Government Finance Officers Association’s Distinguished Budget Presentation Award. The program evaluates whether a budget serves four purposes: a policy document, a financial plan, an operations guide, and a communications device.

The award is not an ornamental certificate. It recognizes that the city has created a framework for budgeting that residents, Council members, City employees, lenders, and outside observers can actually use. In Alabama, the cities of Montgomery and Tuscaloosa have received the award. So has Pensacola, Florida. Closer to home, MAWSS, the Mobile Area Water and Sewer System has achieved the distinction.

There is no one right way to do a budget, and Mobile does not need to copy another city’s budget or pretend that a recognition program will resolve every question of administration. But to strive for an award-ready budget would require the City to do the work this article has described: connect spending to services, services to responsible officials, and appropriations to the results the City intends to achieve.

That is the work ahead.

At budget time, the same question surfaces every year in a hundred different forms: Why can’t we __? Fix the potholes. Repair the sidewalks. Plant more trees. Improve safety and transportation.

The answer is almost always the same: there’s no money. And with that, the conversation quickly shifts to the need for “hard choices.”

Maybe the money is tight, and maybe the choices are hard. But neither explanation tells us how we got here or where we are going. It is not an answer—it is a justification that circles back on itself. We invoke “no money” to explain our choices, then design our choices to fit “no money,” without ever interrogating the assumptions underneath.

The result is a closed loop: revenue projections define what is “possible,” the ordinance framework and budget policies lock those projections into place, and the annual budget presentation simply narrates the consequences. We talk about constraints as if they were facts of nature, rather than the outcome of past decisions about taxes, fees, debt, and priorities. Until we are willing to examine how those choices have structured what “no money” means, we will keep circling the same limits and calling it inevitability.

The Budget Message

The contents of the mayor’s budget message, published as part of the budget, should outline where we are and where we are going. The city council has not adopted any strategic plan or policy that requires the budget to answer those questions. But the budget message is, by design, an opportunity to try.

By law, the mayor’s budget message must include four elements, listed in Zoghby, §11‑44C‑46:

• Recommendations on fiscal policy;

• The budget’s important features;

• A summary of the proposed budget against prior budgets; and

• An explanation of all changes in what the city expects to take in and to spend, measured against this year and last year.

A look back at Mayor Stimpson’s FY26 budget message shows that it checked the first three boxes. It recommends paying down the legacy debt by 2030 and holding a $64 million reserve. It highlights stormwater, animal services, a merit raise, and public safety as important features. And it points to the summary table with five columns and three years of actuals; all of that is there.

Where the question mark appears is on the fourth requirement: an explanation of all changes. The FY2026 message describes revenues as “projected to remain flat,” suggesting there is no new money and only hard choices. But the summary table in the same budget tells a different story: projected revenues rise from $353,160,027 (FY2025) to $386,885,924 (FY2026), an increase of about nine and a half percent, without explanation. The message says “flat”; the table shows growth.

The same information gap appears in the treatment of transfers. Page 4 shows transfers out of the general fund budgeted at $64,427,898, more than double the prior year — the single largest change in the FY2026 budget. Yet the budget message does not explain this increase. Revenues are called flat, transfers rise sharply, and both go largely unmentioned in the narrative.

About those Transfers

Transfers are simple. The city doesn’t keep one checkbook; it keeps several. The general fund holds most taxes and pays for police, fire, parks, and garbage. A capital fund pays for building things. Other funds support fee‑based services like EMS (emergency medical services) and the golf course. Moving money from one fund to another is a transfer.

Think of the transfers table as the place where those fund shifts are recorded — and where some key services “live” even though they don’t have their own departments. This is the part of the budget that is easy to overlook and essential to read.

A quick reader’s guide to transfers:

• The city uses several funds, not one: the general fund for core services, a capital fund for projects, and other funds for fee‑based services like EMS and the golf course.

• Moving money from one fund to another is a transfer. Transfers sit outside any single department’s budget, so they are less visible but still reflect real policy choices.

• In FY2026, transfers fund transit (WAVE), EMS, the golf and tennis centers, arena operations, legal liability, tourism and airport support, and $21 million in capital projects.

• The council approved all transfers in a public vote, but the budget message did not explain them. Residents who want to know what changed must read the transfers table themselves.

In the FY2026 adopted budget, that table lives on page 14; it is the one place where all of these transfers are gathered in one place for the public to see. That is precisely why the law requires “an explanation of all changes:” so the budget message connects these fund shifts to the services and priorities they affect.

What the Budget Won’t Tell You

Everything above is what a budget can tell you: how much the city intends to spend, on what, and roughly why. What it cannot tell you is whether those appropriations will improve the conditions people are living in. You can’t measure a goal that no one has set.

Those conditions show up in numbers that never appear in the budget: what share of households are stretched by housing costs, how many children grow up in poverty, how many families live in a city built for cars without owning one, and how many adults feel their voice is worth using at the polls.

Work a voter‑registration table and you will meet people who have stopped voting because “nothing ever changes.” That sentiment isn’t literally true — things change here all the time. What is true is that under current conditions, some residents thrive, many struggle, and some do not have enough. More than one in four children in Mobile live below the poverty line; that is not a statistic about comfort, it is a statistic about whether a family can cover rent and groceries.

Those figures set the bar for what “success” ought to mean when we talk about budgets, ordinances, and policy — not just whether the numbers add up, but whether life is getting better for the people living within them.

Only one of the numbers on this scorecard looks better than the national average, and it is the one that should worry you most. A smaller share of Mobile households go without a car than in the country as a whole — not because getting around here is easy, but because it is impossible any other way. A car is not a convenience in this city. It is the cost of admission, and 6,489 households cannot pay it.

Years ago, at a Leadership Mobile class, a young physician described his frustration with traffic: he could not understand why it was so hard to get from his office on the north side of town to the hospitals on the south. It is a small complaint. But quality of life sits on a spectrum — from residents who face a daily grind to those who are merely inconvenienced. Inconveniences accumulate. Pile on enough of them and the people with the means to leave eventually do.

A city that cannot hold on to residents across the income scale is one that slowly hollows out. As people leave older neighborhoods, the tax base shrinks faster than the cost of maintaining the streets, pipes, and public safety already in the ground. When that pattern is paired with ambitious annexation into new territory, the city stretches those same dollars over even more miles of roads and pipes, compounding the strain on its long‑term fiscal health.

Annexation made the city geographically bigger. It did not make the population grow. Bigger is a boundary. Growing is people choosing to come here.

The Census is careful about that distinction. When a city annexes land, the Bureau does not simply add the new residents and move on. It restates earlier years as if the new boundaries had always been in place. Otherwise every annexation would look like growth, and no city could ever be compared honestly to its own past.

That is why Mobile has two valid population numbers for 2020, and both are right. The official 2020 census counted 187,041 people inside the city limits as they existed then. Measured on today’s larger city map — including areas annexed since — that same year’s population is 206,900. One year, two different boundaries.

Measured on that same territory today, Mobile has 200,824 residents. Demographers call this “holding the map constant”: counting the same ground over time to see real change. On the ground the city now occupies, there are fewer people living in Mobile than there were in 2020.

What to watch

When the budget arrives, ask four questions:

• Does the mayor’s budget message explain why revenues are expected to rise or fall, measured against last year and the year before, as the law requires?

• Does it explain the transfers? Find the total going out in the summary table, then see whether the budget message accounts for it.

• Does it spell out what the city is trying to achieve — not just how much it intends to spend?

• Does it name anything we could check a year from now to see whether life here got better, and for whom?

Those questions are not a test of rhetoric; they are a checklist for whether the budget and its ordinances are doing what the law promises — making it possible for residents to see how money moves and whether it is changing the conditions they live in.

Next time: Budgets are more than spending plans; they are tools for accountability and transparency. Part 3 in this series will look at the city’s organizational chart, its accounting codes, and whether residents can actually trace the money.

It will be interesting to watch this year’s budget because it’s the first time Mayor Cheriogotis and the council, elected last fall, will shape a budget together. When they took office last November, they inherited a budget already in place. August will be their first real opportunity to put their own priorities on paper.

Budgets translate hopes into dollars. If there was one theme that emerged from the 2025 election across all seven council districts, it was quality of life. What “quality of life” means to you depends on your circumstances, but whatever your definition, the FY26-27 budget will be an early signal of whether your elected officials got the message. The budget will reveal what the city judges it can afford and which priorities it chooses to advance in the near term.

Budgets are the main tool the council uses to fulfill its core legislative responsibility for financial oversight. Our city council does this by setting clear limits on spending, requiring detailed budget categories that show where dollars will be used, and insisting that any significant shifts in funding go through a public budget amendment process.

This summer, I will examine selected portions of the city’s current budget (FY25–26) and other financial documents to frame key questions for residents who want to better understand the new budget when it arrives. But first, a few basic terms.

Budget: A one‑year spending plan based on anticipated revenues, including both operating and capital funds. Operating funds cover the city’s day‑to‑day costs to provide salaries, rent and utilities, and routine services like public safety and trash collection. Capital funds pay for bigger, longer‑term projects like buildings, roads, and major equipment.

Monthly financial statement: The monthly financial report is the checkup that tells us how those predictions are actually playing out, month by month. When the numbers do not line up — whether revenues come in lower than expected or spending runs higher — adjustments have to be made, either through budget amendments or through choices about what gets delayed or scaled back.

Annual Comprehensive Financial Report (ACFR): A detailed, year‑end set of financial statements prepared by the city’s finance staff and audited by an independent accounting firm. Viewed over time, it helps residents see whether the city’s finances are getting stronger or weaker.

All of these reports, and others, can be accessed on the city’s website: https://www.cityofmobile.gov/business/financials/. The city’s site now includes an interactive AI tool that lets you ask questions in plain English about its financial documents, which can make it easier to find specific information without paging through long PDFs.

The Budget Process

The budget process itself is governed by the Zoghby Act1— Mobile’s state enabling law. The Act requires that the mayor submit a proposed budget “on a day to be fixed by the council, but in no case later than the twentieth day of August.” The council has never fixed an alternate date, so August 20 has become the established practice.

The Mayor’s Role

The Zoghby Act specifies what the mayor must submit: a general fund budget covering the city’s day-to-day operations; a budget for each public utility owned by the city; a capital budget covering major investments and infrastructure; and a budget message containing his recommendations on fiscal policy and a description of the budget’s important features. The Act also authorizes the mayor to hold public hearings during the budget preparation process — before the document is submitted to the council—however, past mayors have never held such hearings.

Mobile cannot run a deficit. The Zoghby Act prohibits the council from adopting a general fund budget in which total expenditures exceed estimated revenues and available surplus, unless additional revenue measures are adopted at the same time to make up the difference. (§11-44C-45, §11-44C-51).

The Council’s Role

Once the budget arrives on August 20, the council must set a public hearing and give at least seven days’ notice of the date; hold the hearing; send the budget to the finance committee; hear from constituents; draft any recommended changes; and adopt a budget ordinance — all in the short window before the September 20 deadline. If the council fails to adopt by that date, the prior year’s budget continues in effect. (Zoghby Act §11-44C-42, §11-44C-43, §11-44C-46, §11-44C-51)

The Zoghby Act sets the basic rules. It tells the council what it must do — hold a hearing, adopt a budget, meet the deadline. It says nothing about how deliberate, how transparent, or how engaged that process should be. The question worth watching this August is whether the new council chooses to go beyond the legal minimum — and whether residents ask them to.

The Reserve Fund

The Zoghby Act requires the adopted budget to include a two percent reserve — a modest financial cushion built into the law to protect against unexpected shortfalls. (§11-44C-51) The council has gone well beyond that minimum. By ordinance, the council established a formal general fund reserve policy requiring the city to maintain a reserve equal to 16.66 percent of budgeted general fund revenues — nearly ten times the statutory floor. (Mobile City Code, Sec. 2-2)

The city’s reserve carries over from year to year. The reserve may fall below the 16.66 percent level only upon a council resolution, recommended by the mayor, that describes the emergency or unforeseen circumstances (as specified in the city code) requiring its use, the funding source for restoring it, and a restoration schedule. (Sec. 2-2, Mobile City Code.

The difference between the statutory two percent floor and the council’s 16.66 percent policy is significant in dollar terms — on a $400 million budget, the statutory minimum would require roughly $8 million in reserves, while the council’s policy requires approximately $67 million. That gap represents a substantial sum the city holds back from annual spending. Accessing any of it, however, requires a resolution recommended by the mayor — meaning the council’s own reserve policy can only be activated with executive branch cooperation.

Mayor Stimpson’s FY25-26 budget message reported an operating reserve of $64 million — consistent with the 16.66 percent policy requirement on a roughly $400 million budget. Whether the new administration maintains it the present level, draws it down to fund new priorities, or builds it further will be one of the more telling signals in Mayor Cheriogotis’ forthcoming budget message.

The Zoghby Act: Framework, Not Manual

The Zoghby Act is an enabling law — it gives the city council the authority to make the laws needed to govern effectively. It is not a self-contained code. Think of it as a constitution for city government — it establishes the structure, assigns the powers, and sets the limits, but it leaves the details of governance to the elected officials who operate within it. The budget is one area where that authority is most consequential — and where the gap between what the Zoghby Act requires and what good governance demands is most visible.

Mobile’s reserve policy is a good example of the council using that latitude well. But other Alabama cities have gone further. Tuscaloosa has codified its budget policies in Chapter 2, Article III of its City Code, including financial standards, reserve requirements, and process rules. Huntsville has codified financial policies in Chapter 2, Article IV, requiring its Finance Committee to review budget versus actual performance at every council meeting. Montgomery has a dedicated budget article in its City Code.

Mobile has one codified financial policy — the reserve requirement in Sec. 2-2 — and nothing comparable to the budget policies its peer cities have developed. Instead of developing organic policies for Mobile, we treat the Zoghby Act as if it were a complete governing manual — as if what Zoghby does not require cannot be done.

What to Watch: When the budget arrives:

• Will the council take the time to deliberate openly and invite genuine public input before adopting it?

• Will the $64 million reserve hold, or will the new administration propose drawing it down?

• And council use this first budget cycle to examine and fine tune its own budget procedures — including whether to fix an earlier submission date by ordinance, as the Zoghby Act expressly permits?

Next week: every candidate in 2025 ran on quality of life. What would it actually take to make Mobile a city people choose to live in — and will the new budget reflect that commitment?

Whatever the Council decides, one thing is now clear: the DDD Code is going to be reopened and rewritten. The question is not whether that happens, but how it happens and who gets to shape it.

The Code that Makes Downtown Possible

Mobile has two zoning codes, and they reflect two very different ideas about how the city should work. Downtown, roughly one square mile, is governed by a form-based code: a set of rules that focus less on separating uses and more on how buildings relate to the street and to each other, and on the kind of place they help create.

The rest of the city — the remaining 139 square miles — is governed by a conventional zoning code that divides the city into mostly single-use districts: homes here, shopping there, offices and industry somewhere else.

Both codes are a kind of contract between the city and its residents. They establish the rules for how land may be developed, and people rely on those rules when they buy property, open a business, or invest in a neighborhood.

The maps below show the difference: on the left is the zoning map covering the city outside downtown; on the right, a close up of the form-based districts downtown. Note that the white areas on the left represent single-family residential zoning — a category that does not exist downtown

For those who live downtown, the DDD Code makes daily life possible on foot or by bike. My block of Dauphin Street is home to apartments, ,an architectural firm, two law firms, an Airbnb, an engineering firm, a land surveyor, a nail salon, a therapist, a communications firm, and a donut shop. There is one vacant space, and it will soon be filled by a cafe. And this is just one side of the block.

This mix of uses exists because these buildings were built before the city adopted zoning, when streets were simply streets and uses sorted themselves organically over time. Under conventional zoning today, that mix would be illegal. The DDD Code preserves it and makes it the model to accommodate new development.

How the Code Was Built

The DDD Code, enacted in 2014, did not emerge from closed-door negotiations. It was developed through a genuine public process funded and led by the Downtown Mobile Alliance and the nationally-renowned design firm of Duany Plater-Zyberk,1 with participation from developers, architects, property owners, businesses, residents, and elected officials. That is important because the DDD code has worked precisely because many interests were at the table when it was written.

After more than a decade, a refresh of the code in light of experience is reasonable. But the question is not whether the code should be updated. The question is whether it will be updated in the same open, public-minded way that produced it in the first place.

Where Things Stand

In 2022, after the city completed the overhaul of its broader zoning ordinance, attention turned to the DDD Code. In January 2026, the Council approved a reorganized version of the DDD Code. At that time, the only disclosed substantive change was the elimination of the Consolidated Review Committee. The CRC was the five-member body created by the original code to authorize minor deviations from its requirements.

Now the Council is being asked to consider another round of amendments, also described as non-substantive, with the suggestion that any real policy changes will come later. The upshot is that the public is expected to sort through three different versions of the DDD Code: the official version of the current code published on Municode; the January 2026 restatement not yet in effect; and the latest proposed amendments.

Even worse, no cumulative redline has ever been published showing how those versions differ from one another, from current law, or as a whole. That makes it hard for anyone outside the process to tell what is truly technical, what is substantive, and what the combined effect of these changes would be.

The project timeline that was presented to the Council last year shows five phases of work. It reflects meetings with selected participants, stakeholders and “interested parties” — in other words, meetings that were not open to the public. A process like that would be easier to accept if the DDD Code were simple. But downtown is the most complex and consequential part of the city — layered with history, daily life, and economic importance — and the code that governs it deserves more than private meetings with selected participants. It deserves a public process in which the issues are explored, solutions are debated, and public discussion has the power to shape the code.

Tuesday’s amendments appear to go beyond technical corrections; but without a reliable cumulative redline, the public cannot readily determine the full extent of the substantive changes. For example, one of the amendments proposed on Tuesday would give a single individual the authority to grant administrative exceptions — a power previously exercised by the CRC. This change is a policy choice, not a technical cleanup.

Two Paths

The Council has two reasonable options on Tuesday. It can table all of the amendments; or it can adopt the true technical corrections now, and defer the substantive amendments until they have been tested through a genuine public review.

Either approach could work. What would be harder to justify is approval of significant policy changes under the label of housekeeping before the public has had a fair chance to see what is being proposed, and to evaluate how those changes affect other provisions of the DDD Code.

The Real Issue

There is a legitimate case for some form of administrative relief when issues arise in the application of the DDD to a particular property. Not every minor deviation from the code should require a full trip to the Board of Zoning Adjustment, with the attendant notice, hearings, delay, and expense. A well-designed administrative process can make downtown projects easier without undermining the code itself.

The problem here is not the concept, but the standard for granting administrative relief. The proposed amendment would allow a single staff member to approve deviations deemed “consistent with the purpose of the DDD” and “not significantly harmful to nearby properties.” These vague, subjective phrases provide little guidance for consistent decision-making. The procedure requires no public notice of the requested deviation, no publication of the decision or the reasons for it, and no clear right of appeal. Adding a layer of administrative discretion without sufficient guardrails invites arbitrary application and, regardless of intention, undermines the trust among those who depend on the code.

A Better Process

A better process begins with a clear commitment by the city to public engagement before any substantive changes to the DDD Code move forward. If technical corrections need to be immediately made, they should be separated from the larger policy changes and adopted on their own.

Administrative adjustment mechanisms are not unheard of. Tuscaloosa, for example, allows a similar form of staff-level relief —but with safeguards: written administrative decisions, right of appeal, and carefully considered limits on what may be approved. Mobile could employ similar protections.

More broadly, the city would be well-served by returning to the model that gave downtown a workable code in the first place: a transparent process, a neutral facilitator with form-based code expertise, and a real opportunity for residents, businesses, property owners, and practitioners to help shape the outcome.

Downtown belongs to all of Mobile, but the people who live and work there have the most immediate stake in how this code is written and applied. They deserve an open, intelligible process worthy of the place it governs

What You Can Do

Before Tuesday, contact your council member and make one simple point: whatever path the Council chooses, the public expects a genuine public process before substantive changes to the DDD Code move forward. If needed, contact information is available on the city’s website.

The DDD Code was built in public. It should be rebuilt in public.

A Facebook friend invited me to participate in a survey about Mobile’s transit future. You can, and should take the survey here: https://mobiles-transit-future.civilspace.io/en/projects/mobile-s-transit-future

The survey questions are revealing — they focus on improving bus service, which is valuable but not the same as building a true transit system. Transit should be part of a larger vision for how people live, work, and move around our city.

Right now, Mobile’s elected leaders often treat transit as a social service rather than a cornerstone of good urban planning. That narrow framing misses the larger opportunity: creating a city that’s vibrant, connected, and attractive to new residents and businesses.

No successful city allows cars to have complete dominion over it streets. For decades, Mobile’s population has declined, and much of that can be traced to quality-of-life challenges — neighborhoods that are hard to walk, bike, or access without a car. If we invest in transit, cycling infrastructure, and thoughtful density, we can reverse that trend and make Mobile a place where people want to live and stay.

Transit isn’t just about buses; it’s about choices, opportunity, and the kind of city we want to become.

Above all, Mobile needs a comprehensive, multidisciplinary transit vision that measures success by the steady reduction of dependence on personal cars for every trip, every day. Transit is more than bus service — it’s about rethinking how the city is built and how people move through it. That means zoning reform (restoring duplexes and triplexes, eliminating parking minimums for neighborhood-scale businesses, reducing lot sizes) and redesigning our streets so that walking and cycling are not only safe but enjoyable and inviting. It should be unacceptable that many children cannot safely walk or bike to school, even when they live less than a mile away.

Mobile was once a true transit city — you can still see traces of the old trolleys that once graced our streets. Let’s study what it would take to bring that back. In the meantime, bus rapid transit could serve as a smart interim step.

We should also explore congestion pricing: toll the Bankhead Tunnel and dedicate the revenue to tunnel maintenance and transit improvements. It has been demonstrated in cities across the world that people will walk, cycle, and ride transit if those options are convenient, pleasant, and safe — and if they actually connect them to the places they want to go.

About those gasoline taxes: they do not cover the full costs of road construction and maintenance. See, for example, the Urban Institute’s “Highway and Road Expenditures,” which shows that fuel taxes account for only a minority of total road spending.

This transformation won’t happen overnight, but we have to start now. It’s time to change the conversation: public transit isn’t about poverty — it’s about public health, environmental protection, connectivity, and improving quality of life. For too long, we’ve built a city for cars instead of people. It took fifty years to reach this point; let’s set a bold goal to reduce car dependence over the next ten.

And before doing anything else, read Human Transit by Jarrett Walker. Then take the survey — and tell your elected officials what kind of city you want Mobile to become.

Many leaders still assume that cars should remain the dominant way to move around the city, and that very few people will ever choose anything else. That mindset produces half measures: symbolic “complete streets” where paint substitutes for real protection, and road projects that continue to widen streets instead of calming them.

This approach is not sustainable, and it needs to be acknowledged honestly. Cars are important, they can be enjoyable to drive, and they will be part of our transportation landscape for a long time. But until we truly tame the automobile and make space for walking, cycling, and transit to flourish, Mobile will never reach its potential as a great city.

Caution: Examine the Fine Print

The City Council should proceed with caution when it considers the proposed Registry Ordinance. Section 52-210 explicitly states that “this article addresses registration, inspection, and monitoring of vacant structures before such conditions arise or in parallel where appropriate.” (Emphasis added). In effect, this means the ordinance may be used to target properties for their blight potential, rather than serious code violations.

MISSING PIECES

Blight prevention is laudable, but the Registry Ordinance appeared on the Council’s agenda without any background explanation or context. Key information remains absent—including plans for enforcement, a budgetary impact statement, and a clear justification for adopting the measure.

Enforcement Plan

While a city can enact a new regulatory code, it cannot continuously monitor every property or situation. This is true of the existing IPMC, and the proposed Registry Ordinance. Code officials must always choose where and how to enforce the rules. However, inconsistent enforcement can lead to accusations of favoritism, and even legal claims that the city unfairly and selectively applies its ordinances. Any enforcement plan should be grounded on objective factors like health risks, safety concerns, or the severity of violations—all are key to gaining public trust in the program.

In 2012 the owners of this building raised claims of discrimination—unsuccessfully—in response to a city lawsuit suit to prevent “demolition by neglect,” which violated the city’s historic preservation laws. Although the City succeeded in getting the owners to secure the building, the property has continued to deteriorate and is once again in serious danger.

The IPMC was adopted in 2017 and now serves as the primary tool for blight prevention, replacing the need for common law nuisance actions and “demolition by neglect” statutes in the enforcement of property maintenance standards. There are many advantages to a standardized code:

• The IPMC is updated regularly to reflect advances in building science and public safety, with new editions issued every three years after consensus-driven public processes.

• Multiple court decisions have upheld the IPMC’s enforceability, which provides municipalities and enforcement officials with a solid foundation for compliance and due process.

• The widespread adoption of the IPMC by hundreds of jurisdictions supports consistent code application and predictability for property owners, inspectors, and the legal system.

• Its compatibility with other International Codes enables comprehensive property regulation, promoting safety, habitability, and economic stability.

The proposed Registry Ordinance is not part of the IPMC. Adding layers of regulations on top of an established code, without a clear understanding how it will impact the IPMC and the enforcement plan, will likely lead to negative, unintended outcomes.

Financial Impact

Before the Council signs off on any new program, it should insist on receiving basic budgetary information, including the projected annual revenues and expenses, staff time, administrative expenses, and the technology needs of all departments that will be affected by the new program. This information will ensure that all hidden or indirect costs are considered.

Rationale

The IPMC already empowers the city to inspect properties, identify violations, and enforce code requirements. Owners who fail to comply with those standards face progressively severe enforcement measures, such as criminal misdemeanor charges in municipal court; civil actions to specifically enforce the code; or a declaration that the property constitutes a public nuisance. When a nuisance is declared, the city may order demolition of the structure or it may elected to make essential repairs. The city’s costs would attach as a lien on the property, which can be foreclosed and recouped upon a resale of the property.

The proposed registration ordinance makes no distinction between vacant properties that have been properly mothballed pursuant to IMPC standards, and those that have been ruinously neglected. The new ordinance may, in fact, backfire by imposing financial burdens on owners who are fully code-compliant, which could result in a forced sale. While courts will generally uphold forced sales, there is a legal risk that the city’s action will be seen as confiscatory if the underlying sale is triggered by failure to register and pay fees, as opposed to a public safety reason.

Currently, only three Alabama cities have adopted registry ordinances: Anniston (pop. 21,000), Gadsden (pop. 33,000), and Prichard (pop. 19,000). Have these communities been contacted to learn the registry’s impact?

Consider these two Dauphin Street buildings that are not far from Tobin building: the corner building has been vacant for years, and the one next to it was recently damaged by fire. How will a registry help in this situation? As Elizabeth Stevens, former CEO of Mobile Downtown, documented in her two-part essay “The Epic Challenge of Blight,” remediation is complex. Effective enforcement must be balanced with meaningful incentives.3

Making Mobile Better

The City already has strong building standards on its books and an arsenal of tools it could use to enforce them. In 2016 Mayor Stimpson launched a blight initiative for residential neighborhoods and promised “data-driven” and coordinated solutions. Since then, there has been no program evaluation of the effort. Ten years on, the most visible outcome is the demolition of more than 700 structures—many of which could have been saved and adaptively repurposed. Destruction has proven easier than reconstruction.

It is time to pause and reflect on our history. Mobile’s most disruptive neighborhood changes have often resulted from well-intentioned but poorly designed government initiatives of the 1960s and 70s—such as urban renewal, highway projects, arbitrary zoning schemes and “economic development” programs. There is a clear inverse correlation: as sweeping, top-down projects were implemented, neighborhood vitality steadily declined, contributing to Mobile’s continued population loss since its peak in the 1960s.

The registry ordinance is no substitute for a coherent and consistent enforcement strategy, backed by a willingness to spend money on remedial actions short of demolition. Throughout Mobile’s history the city’s urban core has been an engine of economic growth. Mobile’s present and future vitality depends on good stewardship today.

3

Downtown Mobile Alliance

The Epic Challenge of Blight, Part 2

Within the Downtown Business Improvement District, an annual survey of buildings is conducted. The effort is designed to track vacancies and building blight. Ultimately, it also tracks the successes of buildings being renovated and as well new occupancies which might include residents as well as businesses…

Read more

2 years ago · 3 likes · 4 comments · Downtown Mobile Alliance

Mobile’s historic granite curbs have shaped the city’s neighborhoods for well over a century, acting as humble markers of time and resilience. Seeing them tossed aside is more than disheartening; it represents a loss of both heritage and lasting infrastructure. This photo was taken yesterday at the intersection of St. Anthony, Claiborne and Glidden Place downtown (across from Novo Expresso):

Why Keeping the Granite Matters

Durability

• Superior Longevity: Historic granite curbing has demonstrated resilience, minimal maintenance and resisting erosion from harsh weather, heavy machinery, and road salt far more effectively than modern concrete.

• Lower Life-Cycle Cost: While granite may cost more to install and reinstall, its lifespan is considerably longer——which reduces replacement and maintenance expenses over time.

• Environmental Benefit: Reusing historic materials conserves resources, reduces construction waste, and limits the need for new material production, making preservation the sustainable choice.

Sense of Place/Saving Stones is Saving History

Preserving authentic materials in urban areas is integral in creating a sense of place. Materials like stone, brick, and granite are not just functional—they also embody the craftsmanship and aesthetic values of earlier generations, supporting a shared local identity and fostering pride among residents.

It’s time to stop the bleeding.

Mobile will soon have a new mayor and council, each of whom has pledged to rebuild our neighborhoods. But before that promise can be fulfilled, the immediate priority must be to stop the incremental destruction: to recognize the value of what is already good (no matter how humble) and to save what remains before moving onto the next new project.

Streets are the building blocks of neighborhoods, which together form the tapestry of our community. And just like a tapestry, the fabric of our city can completely unravel by the smallest of threads—each small loss quietly weakening the pattern until it fades away.

While the bank’s right to operate downtown is uncontested, the drive-thru exception demands rigorous scrutiny under section 64-5-11E of the city’s zoning code. To date, the applicant has provided no analysis of the planning principles, safety concerns or legal standards that are a necessary to evaluate the proposal.

The Legal Framework Governing Special Exceptions

Statutory Requirements for Discretionary Review

A special exception is a site-specific, discretionary review to determine if the proposed use (drive-thru banking) is appropriate for a particular location (St. Louis and Joachim Street). The zoning code imposes five binding criteria the BZA must affirmatively find before it may approve the application. The design of the proposed drive-thru must:

1. Align with the city’s comprehensive planning documents

2. Maintain compatibility with neighborhood character

3. Avoid impediments to adjacent development

4. Preserve public safety

5. Provide a clear public benefit

These requirements are conjunctive—failure to satisfy any single standard is legal justification for denial. The purpose of the public hearing is to insure transparency in decision making and to allow the applicant and the community to present evidence related to the standards. The applicant bears the burden of proof through substantive evidence, not merely aspirational claims.

Conflict with Adopted Planning Documents

Contradictions with Map for Mobile

A review of the publicly available information about the bank’s plan shows a clear conflict with the city’s planning documents. The downtown master plan explicitly prioritizes human-scaled streetscapes over automobile infrastructure. It states that all new, redeveloped and adaptively reused buildings should:

frame attractive, human-scaled streetscapes, memorable public spaces, bicycle, and pedestrian friendly streets and convenient transit access to jobs, housing and entertainment.

The $16 million St. Louis Street redesign, which was recently approved by the city council, will implement the goals of the master plan. The redesign will not only reconstruct the 100 year old infrastructure under the street (water, sewer and stormwater) but it will transform the streetscape with wide sidewalks and landscaping that includes 50 new trees, 133 new street lamps, as well as benches.

By definition, a drive-thru will require curb cuts and queuing lanes. These features are fundamentally at odds with good urban design because they:

• Disrupt pedestrian flow

• Create hazardous crossing points where inattentive drivers will endanger pedestrians and cyclists

• Foster air pollution from idling cars, not to mention the added noise from vehicles that would not otherwise be in the neighborhood

Economic and Urban Design Consequences

Suburban Design in an Urban Context

The proposed 2-car queuing lane combined with the off-street parking replicate suburban formats ill-suited for downtown. Detrimental effects include:

• Dead Zones: Asphalt expanses disrupt street wall continuity, which can depress adjacent property values.

• Opportunity Cost: The land that will be dedicated to parking and drive-thru lanes is a waste of prime urban space. This site is better suited to mixed use residential, which could easily incorporate a bank under current codes.

• Bad precedent: Allowing a drive-thru on St. Louis would establish a perilous precedent, thereby weakening the BZA’s ability to deny similar applications in the future.

• With more than a dozen banks in downtown, there is no need, benefit or public purpose for having one at this location.

According to its website, River Bank & Trust is headquartered in Prattville and has 24 branch offices spread out throughout Alabama. There are two branches in Mobile, one on Royal Street and one on University Boulevard. The bank does not own this site, and apparently will not move forward without the ability to have drive-thru traffic. According to the staff report:

The applicant submitted an application to the Consolidated Review Committee (CRC) for review, however insufficient information was provided for a complete analysis to be performed. The applicant was informed of the additional information required, the need for the Special Exception to allow the drive-thru portion of the business, and that other variances may be required (such as parking access) based on the proposed site plan layout. The applicant has advised staff that they wish to obtain the Special Exception approval before completing the exterior design of the structure for CRC review.

Conclusion

Reasonable people can differ on the facts, but uninformed personal opinion is not the same as substantive evidence. As it now stands, River Bank’s application is legally insufficient to support its request for a drive-thru bank. The BZA’s duty under §64-11-E is not to hope for the best—but to conduct a full and fair hearing that examines each of the five standards prescribed by law: planning consistency, neighborhood compatibility, non-impediment to future development, public safety, and public benefit.

As the legendary urbanist Jane Jacobs observed, cities thrive when shaped by collective needs, not private convenience. Upholding the law here means protecting downtown’s rebirth as a space for people, not cars.1

Because the city council has not authorized this action, consideration of the application is premature. Here is a copy of the comments I submitted to the Planning Commission.

The application to consolidate five parcels of city-owned property into a single lot for resale is premature and should be postponed until it has been authorized by the owner—the Mobile City Council. Section 11-43-56 of the Alabama Code vests exclusive management and control of city property in the City Council:

The application on file was not submitted, endorsed or approved by the City Council, which is contrary to state law and the Planning Commission’s own rules. Below is an an excerpt from the application form stating that owner authorization is required:

The redevelopment of South Broad and the revitalization of the historic Down the Bay Community is too important to handle in a piecemeal fashion. The city’s comprehensive plan designates this area for mixed density residential, which is described as follows:

Details matter. The vision expressed in the plan can only be realized if the council insists on a public process and meaningful community engagement before the deal is done and the design delivered.

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Chairman Bryan Lee was smiling when he called to order the April 24, 2024 meeting of the City of Mobile’s Police and Firefighter Retirement Plan Board. Lee, a retired Fire Service Captain and long-time advocate for the pension system, knew what was coming: an actuary was about to deliver the news that the Plan’s assets exceeded three hundred million dollars.  The Plan, headed for bankruptcy in 1988, was now healthy and well on its way to becoming fully funded.

Disasters avoided rarely make news. Mobile’s pension story is a reminder that good things happen when political leaders have the courage to prioritize the necessary over the expedient.  And it all started in 1989 when Mike Dow was elected mayor.

Some Pension Background

Most city employees are covered by a city retirement plan that is managed by the Retirement Systems of Alabama. Mobile’s police officers and firefighters are not covered by an RSA plan. Their retirement and disability benefits come from a separate, city-sponsored plan that was established in 1964.  Nationwide there are more than five thousand such local plans for municipal employees. 

From its inception, Mobile’s plan has been managed by a local board of trustees.  The Board is currently composed of  nine members:  six elected representatives from the police and fire departments (three each),  the city finance director, and two citizens appointed by the city council.  Besides general administrative duties, the Board decides applications for disability benefits. 

Historically, board members were given little guidance or training on how to fulfill their roles as fiduciaries and administrators of a governmental plan.  As a result, Board decisions were criticized, often unfairly, as being politically driven.  

Like many 1960s-era plans, funding was not an issue initially.  The steady flow of contributions from younger employees was more than enough to pay benefits for retirees.   But when the demographics shifted, Mobile was slow to realize that comprehensive reforms were needed to insure long-term stability of the retirement plan.

The Troubles

Dow saw the problem. When campaigning for mayor in 1989, he pledged to the city’s police officers and firefighters that he would find a way to save the pension plan from bankruptcy.  When he took office that fall, the pension fund had over $20 million in assets, but it was not nearly enough to pay the vested benefits due to the retirees, let alone the benefits that would become due in the future. According to a 1988 report, the plan’s actuary predicted that without change, the pension fund would be drained by 2004.

The amount of money needed to fund the plan —and pay the promised benefits—was staggering: $70 million was needed to pay benefits to current retirees (unfunded accrued liability),  plus ongoing contributions that would be needed to pay future benefits (normal costs). For perspective,  the entire city budget at that time was around $100 million.

The Options

Dow had no easy options. For starters, the Board’s ability to increase investment earnings was severely hampered by a provision in the 1901 Alabama Constitution restricting the types of investments that could be made by the Board.

Shutting down the plan wouldn’t help because the bulk of the unfunded liability was needed just to pay the retirees.  If the city defaulted on its payments, they could sue, and would almost certainly win.  

Forcing current and future employees into a new plan managed by the RSA also wasn’t viable because the state would require a massive up-front payment to cover both vested pension obligations and ongoing  costs.   Neither the RSA nor the State of Alabama underwrites local retirement plans.

Restructuring the plan to reduce non-vested employee benefits could generate some savings, but it would not be enough to make a serious dent in the unfunded liability. Studies showed that shutting down the plan and replacing it with a 401(k) type plan for new employees would not generate any significant savings, and would actually cost more than the benefits promised by the existing plan. Increasing employee contributions, which were already at 8% of salary, was also untenable.

In fact,  prior administrations had already reduced benefits by creating a new, lower- benefit tier for police officers and firefighters hired after March 28, 1990. Adding a third tier would not only the dampen departmental morale, it would undermine the city’s ability to compete with other jurisdictions offering better benefits to new recruits.

The Fix

Dow came to understand that Mobile’s pension woes stemmed from weaknesses in three key areas—plan design, plan management and plan funding—and he set out to correct the deficiencies.

Plan Design.  The first item of business was to remove the state law restriction on investments.  At Dow’s request, the local legislative delegation supported passage of a constitutional amendment that would expand the Board’s investment authority.  The voters approved the constitutional amendment on June 2, 1992.

Next, the pension plan hired a new actuary, Chuck Carr, to update the plan and bring it in line with best pension management practices. The Plan was extensively revised and restated in 1997, and the Internal Revenue Service issued a ruling on March 23, 1998 formally declaring the plan tax qualified; meaning that the plan’s investment earnings were tax exempt. 

Although at the time it was generally believed that governmental retirement plans were tax exempt, the IRS ruling removed all doubt.  The ruling came just in time for the fund’s new investment strategies, permitted by the constitutional amendment, to benefit from the economic growth that took place in the late 1990s.

Plan Management.  Simultaneously with a change in the state investment law, the Board overhauled its internal operating rules to align them with best practices for investments; to provide greater transparency and accountability for the overall management of the system; to establish formal rules for conducting hearings on disability applications; and to establish a code of ethics for the Board and the advisors who served them.

Plan Funding. The hardest issue was finding a way to pay down the unfunded liability, which was the only path to ensure the long-term sustainability of the pension plan.  After exploring and rejecting several options, including a proposal to issue bonds to pay off the unfunded liability, Dow ultimately gained support to put the city on a repayment plan.

The repayment plan began in October 1996 and called for annual payments over 30 years—an approach similar to a homeowner's decision to pay off their mortgage over time. However, while a homeowner's success depends on individual self-discipline, the city's success would hinge on the fiscal discipline of mayors and councils that would be elected over the next three decades.

Dow served four terms as Mayor from 1989 to 2004.  During those years,  the city council appropriated funds necessary to make the scheduled payments.  The administration of Sam Jones (2004-2012) followed suit, and the city council appropriated the funds every year— even during the “great recession” of 2008-09. Jones especially deserves credit for his steady hand during those difficult years.

Subsequent councils have stayed the course and the $21 million fund that was on the brink of insolvency in 1990 has now grown to over $300 million.  The latest available figures show that the original unfunded liability is less that 48 million dollars.  If all goes as planned, the initial unfunded debt from 1996 will be completely paid off by 2026. 

Mobile avoided the doomsday scenario of a bankrupt retirement system because the rank and file employees perceived a problem, made it an election issue, and worked to elect leaders who would take the time to understand the facts and to devise a comprehensive solution. The key to Dow’s success was effective communication with citizens, employees, the city council and other stakeholders about the need for enduring short term hardship for long term gain. 

When asked to comment on the success of the plan, Dow was quick to share credit with the city council, then Finance Director Barbara Malkove, City Attorney John Lockett, groups like the Chamber of Commerce and Mobile United; and, importantly, the mayors and councils who followed. Ever the businessman, Dow’s advice for the future is to “keep a close eye on the financials, and be sure to communicate with everybody.” 

Politicians measure success in terms of election cycles.  Leaders think in terms of decades.  Mobile owes Mike Dow a debt of gratitude.

The gas station and convenience store proposed for the corner of Government and Broad Street will be considered by the City’s Architectural Review Board (ARB) on Wednesday, February 21 at 3 p.m. in Government Plaza.  Background on the unfortunate zoning of this parcel may be accessed by clicking here.

The only issue on the table now is whether the proposed design complies with the ARB’s standards for new construction. It is true that the ARB is powerless to control how a property may be used (that’s the function of zoning); however, the ARB has full power and authority to reject any application for work that would have a material adverse impact on the neighborhood, as measured by the design review guidelines.

THE DESIGN REVIEW GUIDELINES

When it comes to new construction in old neighborhoods, the purpose of design review is not to force a particular architectural style or to imitate history, but to make sure that the new development fits in with its surroundings. It is often the case that the massing, scale and placement of the new structures on the site are more important considerations than color, material or architectural style.

Accordingly, the ARB’s design review guidelines specifically require new commercial buildings to be oriented on the site in a manner that is consistent with adjacent historic structures. According to the guidelines, designers should:

• Place buildings in line with adjacent historic buildings in terms of their relationship to the street. If a project is flanked by non-historic structures, refer to nearby historic structures.

• Design side setbacks to be similar to those in adjacent historic buildings. If a project is flanked by non-historic structures, refer to nearby historic structures. 

• Orient facades of new commercial buildings similarly to adjacent historic structures. In most cases, new commercial structures should be oriented to directly face the street.

• Face primary building entries toward the public street.

• Screen ancillary buildings or place them behind the primary building.

THE MURPHY OIL SITE PLAN

The site plan submitted to the ARB, pictured below, does just the opposite of what is required by the guidelines.

As previously noted, there are two separate uses being proposed for this site—gasoline pumps covered by a large canopy, and a retail convenience store. Instead of orienting the primary building to face Broad and Government as required by the guidelines, the retail store is pushed to the north of the site, exposing its ample backside to Conti Street. Meanwhile, the gas pumps and canopy take center stage, thereby dwarfing the primary building and leaving the corner completely exposed.

There are other options. A recent article in Bloomberg’s City Lab posted this design for a corner gas station and convenience store.

While this arrangement is not perfect, it makes the best of a bad situation by holding the corner until something better comes along.

The corner of Goverment and Broad has the beginnings of a beautiful tree canopy, which is a great asset to the site. Re-orienting the convenience store adjacent to the trees and green space is a great opportunity to soften the impact of the primary structure, and to provide pedestrian-oriented amenities like outdoor seating. A coffee shop perhaps?

More importantly, placing the primary building adjacent to the sidewalk/green space will create a much safer environment for the pedestrians who will surely want to shop at the new convenience store.

It is a pity that after all of the time, money and effort the city put into the redesign of Broad Street, the only development on the table is a suburban-style gas station and convenience store. But that is where we are at the moment, and it is now up to the ARB to make the best of it by insisting on good urban design, and rejecting any application that fails to comply with the guidelines for new construction.

Although these disputes are often portrayed as a classic NIMBY (not in my back yard) problem, the truth is much more complicated. Citizens who reside in and around Government Street are frustrated with the city’s failure to implement its plan restore Government Street to the traditional neighborhood corridor it once was.

To understand the frustration, it is important to know that in the world of zoning there are two important concepts:  The Plan for the Future (“the Promise”) and the Zoning ordinance (“the Reality”). 

The Promise

In 2015, the city adopted a new comprehensive Plan called the Map for Mobile, which was based on the following principles:

These principles were universally praised, and were used to create a map of preferred future development for the city called the Future Land Use Map (The FLUM). This map designated the corner of Government and Broad Street (light pink) as a Traditional Mixed Use Corridor.  (The dark pink parcels are for Downtown, yellow is is for Mixed Density Residential). The complete Future Land Use Map may be accessed by clicking  here.

The definition of traditional corridor is found in the Future Land Use Plan (FLUP) which is illustrate below:

The Reality.

In 2022, more than five years after these planning documents were adopted, the city council created a new zoning ordinance called the “Unified Development Code,” or UDC, which is described by the city’s website as follows:

The UDC, however, did not incorporate any of the recommendations of the Planning documents to create new zoning districts like the Traditional Corridors designation. Instead, all of the old zoning districts were left in place. There was, however, a matrix created to “translate” the existing zoning designations B-1 through B-5 into the proposed new districts, including the Traditional Corridor. Please note that B-3, B-4 and B-5 zoning is not recommended for the Traditional Corridors or Centers.

The matrix was never adopted by the city council, and no other legislation has been brought forth to implement the necessary changes to the zoning regulations. In the meantime, the quality of the built environment on Government Street continues to decline. Even worse than permitting bad projects, the failure to adopt new regulations actually deters the type of development that is specified in the plan—dense, mixed-use, pedestrian and neighborhood-friendly design.

How Long is too Long?

In 2012 the city council adopted the New Plan for Mobile—A comprehensive Plan for Traditional Neighborhoods. This plan was incorporated in to the Map for Mobile in its entirety. While it is certainly takes time to put together an ordinance making the all of the recommended changes, it is hard to fathom why Government Street has not been addressed.

Big changes are coming to Mobile. A new airport, new waterfront development, and other large projects will attract all sorts of spin-off development, good and bad. If Mobile wants to get ahead of the curve, it needs to work with urgency to fix its zoning code, and fulfill the promises that were made in the Map for Mobile.

The intersection of Government and Broad is too important to be left to chance. The streets must be given top priority. It is time for the city council to step in and adopt a resolution:

• imposing a reasonable moratorium on the permitting of any new gas stations on Government Street or Broad Street;

• calling for an immediate study of the traditional corridors designation and the drafting of new legislation that will actually implement the plans; and

• appropriate whatever sums are needed for the city make good on its promises.

New rules that align with the aspirations expressed by ordinary citizens who came out in droves to support the Map for Mobile will go a long way to changing the NIMBY (not in my back yard) paradigm to a YIMBY (yes in my backyard) paradigm.

The Mobile City Council has a rare window of opportunity on July 17 to improve the administration of the city’s historic preservation laws by rejecting Resolution 03-742, which has been placed on the Council’s consent agenda. On its face, Resolution 03-742 is a routine request for the Council to approve a new Architectural Review Board (ARB). The resolution, however, omits key information about how the new ARB will transition into its new role, thus opening the door for ad hoc procedural decisions that are made out of the public eye, with no input from the Council.

Background

Mobile was the first city in Alabama, and one of the first cities in the nation, to recognize the importance of preserving its historic streets, neighborhoods and buildings.  The city’s preservation goals were made possible by a special act of the Alabama legislature that was adopted in 1962.

In 1989 the state passed general legislation authorizing every city in Alabama to do what Mobile had been doing for nearly 30 years—protecting its historic buildings and neighborhoods. Now, every Alabama city of significant size (including Auburn, Birmingham, Huntsville, Montgomery and Tuscaloosa) have adopted historic preservation ordinances.

Historic preservation matters because it fosters community pride and a sense of belonging.  It is also good for business.  Well-maintained historic areas like the ones in downtown Mobile,  attract tourists, residents and new businesses. The economic activity stimulated by this new growth creates jobs and increases tax revenues. None of this could happen without well-defined historic preservation laws.   Today, the National Trust for Historic Preservation reports that nationwide, more than 2,300 historic preservation ordinances have been adopted.

Although each city has a slightly different approach to historic preservation, all of them operate in basically the same fashion.  The council creates a  historic development commission that is composed of citizen-volunteers who who have training and expertise in architecture, history, development and law. The commission recommends to the Council specific neighborhoods to receive the historict designation.  If approved, the commission then drafts regulations appropriate for the district.

According to state law, this two step process—recommending district designations and then administering the regulations—may be performed by a single commission or may be divided between a commission and one or more review boards.  Mobile divides the work between two two boards:  the  Mobile Historic Development Commission (MHDC) and the Architectural Review Board (ARB).

The Mobile Historic Development Commission (MHDC)

The MHDC is a non-profit governmental agency in charge of policy.   As noted above, the Commission identifies historic landmarks, buildings, districts, or areas of cultural significance within the city and makes recommendations to the Council on the creation of districts and other matters concerning historic preservation.  The MHDC has other roles, including an advocacy and educational function that can raise public awareness about the importance of historic preservation. It can also direct resources that will help property owners.

The Architectural Review Board (ARB)

Unlike the MHDC, the ARB is a quasi-judicial body that decides whether projects proposed in a historic district comply with the design review guidelines.  Its decisions are binding and have legal consequences.

Projects can be as simple as adding a carport or new shutters, or as complex as the construction of an entirely new building, or the demolition or removal existing structure.  Most applications (more that 90%) are approved as a matter of course, and requests for minor work (such as painting and new roofing)  are routinely approved by ARB staff without the the necessity of a formal hearing.

The ARB has the power to approve or deny projects, to impose conditions on projects, or to require project modifications as necessary to bring the project into compliance with the guidelines. The ARB has no authority to make decisions based on political pressure, public opinion, or personal preference. Like a court, all of its decisions must be impartial, follow a fair process, and be grounded in fact.

A New Era

For the past 60 years, membership on both the ARB and the MHDC has been decided by the Mobile City Council.  In addition, any person dissatisfied with a decision of the ARB could appeal directly to the Council.   All that changed on May 9, 2023 when the Council adopted a new historic preservation ordinance.  Members of the MHDC and the ARB are now nominated by the mayor, and submitted to the Council for approval.  Appeals will now completely bypass the Council and go straight to circuit court.

These dramatic changes were motivated, at least in part, by the desire to restructure Mobile's preservation law so that it aligned more closely with the 1989 enabling statute, even though the 1989 statute expressly grandfathered Mobile’s preexisting ordinances:

No provision of this chapter shall be construed to require the dissolution of any historic development commission or architectural review board created by an ordinance enacted pursuant to prior laws. Any historic development commission or architectural review board created by an ordinance existing pursuant to prior laws and existing at the time of the enactment of this chapter shall continue in existence and shall have all of the purposes, powers and authority set out in the ordinances creating such commissions and boards. Any such commission or board shall also have the power set forth in this chapter, if so provided by ordinance enacted by the governing body of the municipality creating the historic development commission or architectural review board. The fact that such a commission or board is not created by an ordinance enacted pursuant to this chapter shall not be cause for denying such commission or board certified local government status.

Code of Ala. § 11-68-14

Policy arguments about the necessity of new ordinance are now moot.  The Council has spoken and it is unlikely to revisit the issue.  The reality, however, is that the state law, whether it is 1962 or 1989, is just an enabling statute.   It sets some boundaries, but leaves most policy and implementation procedures up to the City Council.   And therein lies the problem—the new historic preservation ordinance that was adopted by the Council last May has significant policy gaps which, if not addressed, will likely create uncertainty moving forward with a new ARB and a new MHDC.

Filling the Gaps

The main problem is that neither the new ordinance, nor Resolution 03-742, specify exactly how the city will transition from the old MHDC and ARB, to the new MHDC and ARB. The administration has apparently decided that the existing MHDC and ARB simply evaporated on the effective date of the new ordinance (July 14), thereby freeing it to impose whatever transition rules it wants, with no further involvement of the Council (other than approving new members).   As a result, neither the public at large, nor any of the property owners who will be affected by the new system will be have any meaningful voice.

Open Questions

Imagine that you own property in a historic district and you are in the middle of a project, or contemplating a new project:

• When will the new boards actually be seated?

• Will they have any training on how quasi-judicial bodies should make decisions?

• Who will provide the training?

• Will the procedural rules change for ARB hearings?

• What design review guidelines will be followed?

The resolution now before the council does not answer any of these questions.   It simply nominates nine people to serve on the ARB and makes no mention at all of the MHDC.  If the old ARB truly vanished on July 14, the effective date of the new ordinance, then so did the MHDC. Nothing in state law authorizes the creation of an ARB without also creating a Commission.

The ARB and the MHDC are supposed to work in tandem. How can the new ARB make decisions based on rules that were written by a boards that no longer exist?

On the ARB agenda for July 18, 2023 is an item calling the for the adoption of ARB Rules and Regulations; yet as of this writing, the proposed new rules have not been made public.  Does the council approve of this practice?

The ordinance has a shot clock. The ARB’s failure to take action on an application within 45 days of submission “shall constitute approval of the application,”yet the new ordinance fails to address how the shot clock rules will apply to pending applications. For example, the application to remove the Conti Street houses from the Old Dauphin Way Historic District is presently pending, but the hearing date keeps being delayed.  Does the clock reset with the new board?

The new ordinance requires training for MHDC members, but it does not require training for ARB members. This is a serious flaw. The ARB is a quasi-judicial body with the power to grant or deny permits for work in the historic districts. This is important work, and ARB members should have specialized training in the conduct of administrative hearings to ensure that their decisions legally sustainable. Organizations like the National Alliance for Preservation Commissions offer such classes.

Common courtesy dictates that when the Council takes action to remove the existing board members, the members should be notified of their removal, the effective date of the removal, and actually thanked for their service.

Last Tuesday (June 13, 2023) the Mobile City Council considered, without comment or discussion, a resolution authorizing the administration to solicit offers to purchase 1.79 acres of city property located at 10 N. Water Street, which is located just north of the Mobile Convention Center.

The resolution was sponsored by Councilman Carroll and Mayor Stimpson and, as required by council rules, was automatically moved forward for a vote on next Tuesday June 20, 2023. If approved, the council would still have to adopt an ordinance declaring the property no longer needed for public purposes and authorizing the sale.

Background

According to the city’s website, the property is currently zoned I-2, heavy industry. It appraised for $3.2 million on April 13, 2023. The plan is to issue a request for proposal, or RFP, seeking a buyer for the property. Currently, neither the RFP nor the appraisal is publicly available.

The parcel was acquired in the 1990s during the Dow administration for future expansion of the Convention Center. It was most recently used as a river access for the Duck Boat tourist attraction. Here’s an aerial view of the site.

Ariel Map

277KB ∙ PDF file

Download

Download

What is the Plan?

Because there has been no pubic discussion, and no pubic disclosure of the contents of the RFP (assuming one has been written), it is unknown if there is a preferred plan for the property. The only plan that has been created with citizen input and adopted by the city council is the New Plan for Mobile. The New Plan calls for, among other things, the creation of a Riverfront Loop which would expand citizen access to the waterfront by linking the foot of Dauphin Street (“Dauphin Landing”) to the foot of Government Street via a boardwalk on the river side of the Convention Center.

Join the Conversation

I plan to visit the site on Saturday. If you would like to join me on this citizen’s due-diligence venture, meet me in the middle of Bienville Square on Saturday, June 17 at 6 p.m. for a short walk and talk.

Downtown belongs to everybody. If you can’t make the walk, now is the time to contact the council because the vote is scheduled for Tuesday, June 20. If you need contact info, the City has a cool mapping tool called “My Place” which can help.

Waterfront access is scarce, so we need to get this one right.

The possible loss of the two houses pictured above has gotten a lot of attention on social media. Both are located in the Old Dauphin Way Historic District, which is on the National Register of Historic Places. Here’s an outline of why local, state and national laws were adopted to protect historic buildings and neighborhood.

By way of background the term “historic preservation” is the practice of protecting and safeguarding buildings and neighborhoods that have historical, cultural, or architectural significance. Here are the reasons why:

1. Preserving History: Historic buildings and neighborhoods serve as tangible links to our past. They tell stories about the people, events, and cultures that shaped our city: Africatown, Leinkauf, Church Street East, Old Dauphin Way, Oakleigh Garden District, the Campground, and DeTonti Square are just a few of the historic neighborhoods in Mobile. Each has a unique character which provides a sense of continuity and connection to our heritage. By preserving these neighborhoods, and the structures within them, future generations can learn from and appreciate their history.

2. Cultural Identity: Buildings and neighborhoods often reflect the unique identity of a community or region. They showcase distinctive architectural styles, craftsmanship, and local traditions. Preserving them helps maintain the cultural fabric and character of a place, creating a sense of pride and belonging among residents.

3. Economic Benefits: Well-maintained historic neighborhoods and buildings can attract tourists, businesses, and investors. Heritage tourism is one of the top draws for many cities, including Mobile. LoDa (the Lower Dauphin Street Historic District) is a vibrant center for cultural activities, tourism, and commerce. The preservation and revitalization of historic areas create jobs, increase property values and boost local tax revenue.

4. Environmental Sustainability: By preserving existing buildings and neighborhoods, we can reduce the need for new construction and minimize the associated environmental impacts. Retrofitting and repurposing historic structures can promote sustainable practices such as adaptive reuse, energy efficiency improvements, and the use of environmentally friendly materials. Perhaps more importantly, the materials and craftsmanship found in even the most modest of historic structures is hard to reproduce today. Few new buildings are designed to last more that 20 or 30 years. This is called “planned obsolescence”.

5. Sense of Place and Community: Historic buildings and neighborhoods give us a sense of place, a connection to the physical environment around us. They provide a sense of stability, continuity, and community identity. Preserving these places fosters a stronger sense of community pride, social cohesion, and a shared heritage among residents.

6. Educational Opportunities: Historic buildings and neighborhoods offer valuable educational opportunities for students, researchers, and the general public. They provide hands-on experiences and visual representations of different periods in history, architectural styles, and construction techniques.

By recognizing the value of our built heritage and actively preserving it, we can ensure a richer, more vibrant future for generations to come.

Tips for Understanding the Council’s Agenda

Every Tuesday the Mobile, Alabama City Council holds a business meeting to approve policies, adopt ordinances, and to authorize the mayor to sign contracts. The items to be considered are listed on a meeting agenda, which is published every Friday on the city’s website.

An agenda is simply a meeting plan which organizes the types of business to be conducted. The documents that pertain to each agenda item are attached to the published agenda.

If you don’t have a computer, you can view a paper copy of the agenda and related documents in the City Clerk’s office, which is on the 9th floor of Government Plaza. It is not necessary to call ahead, but the office number is (251) 208-7411 if you do.

If you have a computer, you can view the online version of the agenda and the supporting documents as a PDF file, or you can browse online. The agenda and the attached documents often exceed 1,000 pages, so beware before you hit the print button.

If you have the computer space, downloading a PDF file is easier to navigate because you don’t have to click back and forth between hyperlinks, and you can search the entire PDF file using < command f > for Mac users, or < control f > for Microsoft users.

The Weekly Council Meeting

The council’s weekly meeting follows the agenda, which is organized according to council rules.  The first 8-10 items are usually the same for every meeting.

CALL TO ORDER

INVOCATION

PLEDGE OF ALLEGIANCE

ROLL CALL. The roll is called and recorded to establish a quorum, which is the minimum number of councilors who must be present to conduct a meeting. In Mobile, five councilors are needed to establish a quorum.

STATEMENT OF RULES BY COUNCIL PRESIDENT The council president is responsible for the conduct of all council meetings and is required to follow Robert’s Rules of Order. The meeting rules are to ensure fairness and maintain decorum. Some basics are:

• The council may only consider one subject at a time. Each item requires a motion and a second before it may be discussed. Five votes are needed to pass any item, except for the annual budget, which requires just four votes.

• A motion to table is used to postpone discussion of an item to a date certain or to move it to the following week. There is no discussion permitted on a motion to table, nor may amendments be offered.

• Motions should generally be stated as a positive action; e.g. “motion to approve.” If the council does not wish to approve the item, then the vote is “no”. Motions to deny (negative motions) are generally not allowed.

• All councilors have equal rights to debate an item.

APPROVAL OF MINUTES

COMMUNICATIONS FROM THE MAYOR

REPORTS OF COMMITTEES

NEW COMMITTEE ASSIGNMENTS

ADOPTION OF THE AGENDA. At the beginning of every council meeting, the council votes to adopt the agenda. Once adopted, the agenda may not be changed without the consent of the council.

Variations

Once the routine business is handled, the remainder of the meeting follows the following format:

APPEALS Appeals are usually special requests such as  “waiver” of the noise ordinance, or  appeals from decisions of city agencies such as the planning commission or the tree commission.

PUBLIC HEARINGS Certain laws require the council to conduct a public hearing before making a decision, such as demolishing nuisance structures or changing the zoning classification of a property.  Generally anyone with information bearing on the item may speak.  The council will often limit the number of speakers and the time allowed for comments.

PETITIONS AND OTHER COMMUNICATIONS TO THE COUNCIL You must sign up to speak at a council meeting.

• Agenda Items. If you wish to address the council about an item that is listed on the agenda, you can sign up on the day of the meeting. A sign-up table is set up just outside the entrance to the council chamber, which is located in the atrium of Government Plaza.

• Non-agenda Items. If you want to address something that is not on the agenda for that day, you must fill out a form and submit it to the clerk’s office the Thursday before the meeting.  Forms are online, or you can request a copy from the city clerk’s office.

• Speaking. All speakers are allowed exactly three minutes, unless the council extends your time, or asks for additional information. Do not forget to state your name before making your remarks to the council.

ORDINANCES HELD OVER.

ORDINANCES BEING INTRODUCED.

Ordinances are laws, the violation of which may land an offender in municipal court.  The term “held over” simply means the ordinance was carried over from the previous week.  Council rules and state law require important matters, like ordinances, to have two “readings.” That means the ordinance will not be voted on the same day it is introduced, unless the council votes to “suspend the rules” so that the matter may be considered right away.

RESOLUTIONS HELD OVER.

RESOLUTIONS BEING INTRODUCED.

Like ordinances, resolutions are legislative actions, but resolutions do not carry the force of law. Resolutions express policy or the opinion of the council on a particular matter. Resolutions also authorize the mayor to sign formal documents (such as contracts) or may be used to recognize a citizen or local organization.

CONSENT RESOLUTIONS BEING INTRODUCED.

Consent resolutions pertain to matters that are deemed routine such as, such purchasing,  and are approved without much discussion.  They are often grouped together for a single vote. Occasionally a councilor will ask that an item be removed from the consent agenda so that it can be voted on separately.

ANNOUNCEMENTS.

The Fourth Council Meeting each Month.

Once a month, the council sets aside time to discuss the status the budgets and economic trends. Usually the Finance Director leads this discussion. The order of business for the fourth meeting is set forth in Section 2-58.1 of the Mobile City Code.

Questions

If you have a question about agendas, council meetings or other municipal law topic, please post a comment or email me via Substack.

Lacking a crystal ball, elected officials and voters alike must rely upon projections and estimates.  The city generated a number of internal projections for the next ten years and contracted with PFM, part of a financial corporate group that has, since 2014, provided the city with “both transactional and non-transactional advisory services” to evaluate the city’s process.

It should come as no surprise that PFM—who performed no independent fact-gathering or analysis—found the city’s approach to be reasonable, “given the limited data available.” The following information that was taken from the report should give all citizens pause:

• No significant new development or redevelopment is projected in the study areas over the next ten years.

  • Population will continue to decline within the current city limits.

  • Road maintenance that is supposed to occur every 8 to 10 years, could take 15 to 25 years because of “political/budget availability.”

  • There are no plans to add libraries, parks or other amenities to the new areas once annexed.

Many believe that any revenues generated in the short term will be dwarfed by the long-term costs of maintaining city infrastructure and providing services to the newly annexed area.   This belief is supported by two inescapable facts.  First, all infrastructure deteriorates over time.  Second, repair costs only escalate.  Further, citizens’ expectations also change over time, and demands for new and improved services always follow.

The citizens of Mobile have been underwriting police jurisdiction services for years, and the millions of dollars that have been diverted to those areas have contributed to the city’s estimated $250 million unfunded maintenance obligation.  The total impact of the city’s failure to maintain its infrastructure has never been comprehensively assessed.   

Prior to 2016, the city was spending less than $4 million a year in capital expenditures. And it showed.  Bloomberg, for example, reported in 2017 that blighted properties contributed to a decline in citywide property values to the tune of $83 million dollars.   Around the same time, Mayor Sandy Stimpson sponsored an an ordinance to abandon the police jurisdiction altogether, which failed to pass.  Fast forward to 2023 and the concern about long term costs and deferred maintenance has mostly subsided and given way to the new message of prosperity restored though annexation.

On the reverse side of the annexation coin, it does not appear that the residents of the areas under consideration are being given an accurate explanation of what would change for them if the annexation vote were successful.  At present, these residents pay no property tax and receive police and fire protection from the City at no cost. Purchases these residents make at businesses in the police jurisdiction are only subject to half the city sales tax that would be imposed on those same purchases if made inside the city limits.

While state law would entitle property owners in the new area a property tax exemption for a minimum of five, and perhaps ten years, there has been scant publicity about an obscure state law that prohibits new residents from receiving any city benefits beyond police and fire protection, so long tax exemptions are in place.    Alabama Code section 11-42-76, states: 

No person residing in territory exempt from taxation in the city shall be entitled to receive any of the benefits derived from taxes paid to the city; except, that as far as practicable it shall be the duty of the city to give police and fire protection to persons and property in the exempt district. 

The PFM report, and the city’s other marketing materials, indicate the city will offer full services to the annexed area right away, including emergency medical services, trash and garbage, and routine infrastructure maintenance—all paid for by city taxes. This would appear to be plainly in violation of state law and subject to legal challenge by the tax-paying residents of the city who would be underwriting such services. If the city believes Alabama Code section 11-42-76 is somehow inapplicable or can simply be ignored, it should explain how it was able to arrive at such a conclusion.

Some residents in the police jurisdiction are no doubt wondering if annexation is worth the coin.  As soon as they are annexed, their sales tax on basic necessities (including groceries) will double,  and they will be subject to zoning and other city controls. Who will be their new council representative, and will they have a voice in that decision?

If the council does not authorize an annexation vote, or if approved, the vote fails, the city must still look for a way to keep its current residents and attract new residents. An obvious approach would be to set about implementing the various plans previously adopted by council that call for the older neighborhoods to be restored as the walkable and liveable communities they once were.

The argument that Mobile doesn’t have enough room to grow is simply contrary to our own history, and to the experience of countless other similarly-situated cities.  Mobile’s 140 square miles of land mass is adequate to accommodate 15,000 new residents needed to achieve a stable population target of 200,000.  A wide range (both geographically and culturally) of other cities have reached and exceeded that goal with far less land:

• Miami FL:  36 square miles, pop. 450,000

• Greensboro,  NC 127 sq. miles, pop. 287,000

• Plano, TX, 72 sq. miles, 300,000

• Orlando, 102 sq. miles, pop. 278,000

• St. Petersburg, FL, 62 sq. miles; pop. 260,000

• Baton Rouge, 60 sq. miles, pop. 222,185

Some of America’s most loved cities, such as Boston and San Francisco have a footprint of less than 50 square miles.  Our nation’s capital is just 61 square miles.

All of the above is simply to show that if population growth is deemed desirable, Mobile does not need to double down on sprawl to reach its growth target of 15,000 new residents.  The success of Downtown Mobile points the way: boots-on-the-ground study that involves listening with humility to the concerns of residents and businesses, followed by carefully calibrated, context-sensitive incremental change.   

Every neighborhood deserves the care and attention that has been paid to downtown.  A good place to start would be neighborhoods at Texas, Ann and Baltimore Streets, leveraging the planned redesign of South Broad Street and the development of a new waterfront park at Brookley.  Stable, incremental growth is far less risky than annexation, which gives tax breaks for as much as ten years, with no guarantee that projected revenues will ever materialize or be enough to make a significant contribution to the city’s overall fiscal health.

The top-down policies of big government and the promise of easy money through consumer sales taxes and unspecified government grants is a page out of the 1960s playbook of urban renewal, which led to the destruction of entire communities, and made our city streets so hostile to pedestrians that no one seriously considers walking or biking any meaningful distance except those that do not have the means to do otherwise.  Experience teaches that such policies were at best negligently harmful, and at worse inhumane and downright cruel to citizens with mobility issues and those who can’t afford the expense of a purchasing, maintaining and operating a car.

Mobile’s extraterritorial jurisdiction has been a financial drain on the city for years.  As reported by the Alabama Department of Examiners of Public Accounts, “the amounts expended by the City of Mobile for services provided in the police jurisdiction are greatly in excess of all revenues collected from within the police jurisdiction.”  The limited projections in the PFM report are little comfort that the new area will add any significant revenue over time.  How could it?  Study Area A, which is the preferred area, has a land mass of 13 square miles.  All but 2 square miles of that area is already developed, mostly residential, and full of aging infrastructure and human beings who will, sooner or later, need or demand more and better services from their city.

If annexing areas west of the existing city limits becomes a dead letter, the only sensible course of action will be to withdraw all city services from the police jurisdiction and apply the savings to the funding of meaningful life-quality restoration programs within the city.

It is high time that the unincorporated areas be left to determine their own destinies without the support of services provided at the expense of the residents of the city.