Birmingham is either the world’s smallest big city or its biggest small town. This is an essential truism about our community that began manifesting itself to me from about an hour-and-a-half after I arrived here many years ago. It is as true today as it was then, and as it has been, a civic characteristic that, thus far, has transcended time and circumstance.
I view this as a desirable thing, this comfortable existential space that Birmingham has occupied, between urban sophistication and provincial charm. Based on approximately three thousand conversations I’ve had over the years with people who express this sentiment or something very much like it, I know that I am not alone in my feeling that this space not only is worth preserving, but one that we — by which I mean government, business, neighborhoods and citizens, the component comprising Birmingham as a living, breathing civic entity — would do well to find ways to nurture and perpetuate. If we could bottle and sell it, our troubles would be over.
Of course, all good things in life involve a trade-off of some kind, and it’s no different for us in Birmingham. Equilibrium is a delicate state, and ours has been maintained not by the unshakeable steadiness of our progress, but rather by an ongoing series of overcorrections in one direction or another. At one time, it took the sight of public safety personnel assaulting citizens in the streets of Birmingham to act as a corrective, in the interest of balance; at another time, it took the creation of the closest thing Birmingham has to a true civic gathering place, Railroad Park, to provide a focal point for building a broader civic awareness than I have ever witnessed in my time here.
Another threat to our delicate state comes from the very tension of our urban aspirations and our small-town folkways. With regard to the latter, our general approach to civic life — about why this place works (and doesn’t) — is best thought of as a sort of tautological dance: We do things the way we do because this is the way we’ve always done them.
As to the former, what’s to be said? In the simplest terms, our aspiration is for Birmingham to be a city that is known for being a great city — a great place to live, work and play, as the chamber of commerce types like to say. And that’s a fine aspiration, as far as it goes, particularly if we can assume that among the prerequisites for great cityhood are things — better education, better mass transit, better job opportunities — that will give deeper meaning to the term by working to the perpetual benefit of the community as a whole (whether we can in fact assume this is a different subject; very much related, but different).
Therein, in the tension between “our noblest hopes and our deepest fears,” as Rod Serling used to say on the old Twilight Zone TV show, lies yet another trade-off, which is this: To the extent that we want Birmingham to be a big-time town — or at least to give the impression of one — we are going to have to stop clinging to some of our small-time ways. We need to have a better reason for doing things — or for not doing them — than, “This is the way we’ve always done it.”
Easier said than done, of course. But it starts with action in a progressive direction. That, and a willingness to accept short-term pain in return for long-term gain.
I say all of this by way of setting myself up to commend Mayor William Bell for establishing a policy in connection with the city’s support of large public events produced by private organizers. Implementation of a clear-cut policy — under which the city has begun asking organizers to help offset the cost of such expenses as overtime pay for police, firefighters and public works personnel assigned to festivals and other large events — is long overdue.
For years, the city absorbed most such costs, with a succession of mayors recommending and a succession of City Councils approving, the necessary addendums to and revisions of the General Fund budget. In a considerable number of cases, this was in addition to direct cash support the city provided. This was the way it was done.
And, for a long time, this actually worked out okay. Providing in-kind services was a way for the city to support a variety of worthy causes and events with tangible economic and cultural impacts. There were several such events per year, but the city was in reasonably sound shape financially — thanks in part to a steady flow of federal dollars for everything from housing to streetscaping to building parks and community centers — and it made sense to “invest” public resources in developing events to enliven what (let us remember) not so long ago was a fairly limited arts, cultural and entertainment scene.
But things have changed. Partly as a result of the seeds sown by all of those years of investment by our city government, Birmingham’s cultural scene has flourished. Instead of several events per year, we have several events per month — and that’s just the larger events, not including the ever-expanding stream of neighborhood festivals, fish fries, fun runs and other smaller-scale events that are large enough to require some public safety presence.
Those costs add up. And, like every other city in America in the run-up to, and wake of, the Great Recession and its accompanying political upheaval, Birmingham is challenged by the new realities of the relationship between the federal government and the nation’s urban centers.
Plus, we’re in Jefferson County, the future of which has been mortgaged to some mobsters in New York City, otherwise known as the American banking, investment and financial services sector.
Plus, for two years, spending money like the proverbial drunken sailor and ransacking the sofa cushions for more still to spend, we had Larry Langford as mayor.
And still, we did things the way we did them because that’s the way we’d always done them. It was assumed that the city would provide police and firefighters to protect and serve, along with people to clean up the trash and replace the trampled plants and flowers and repair any other incidental damage done to public property — all at taxpayer expense.
It is, then, with nothing but love in my heart for some of our signature local events that I say that it is time to disabuse ourselves of this assumption. If you want to play, you gotta pay, as an old baseball coach of mine used to say, and Mayor Bell is making a sound long-term decision by asking that event organizers bear a fair share of the cost for city services.
Those who would disagree might be interested to learn that I spoke to representatives of several municipal governments — Austin, Charlotte, Nashville, San Diego — chosen because they are widely viewed as great cities, or at least highly desirable places to live. I learned that all have struggled with the same issue, and that each has in place or is actively considering policies that ensure that the city recoups most of its costs, whether through up-front fees, post-event reimbursement, or some combination of these and other measures.
Birmingham is growing up. We can quibble about the ways in which we are growing, about the respective priorities and motivations and benefits and shortcomings of various players on the civic stage, and even about whether the things we are gaining as we grow are apt compensation for the things we are losing as a result of our growth. But no one can deny that Birmingham is growing up.
With that in mind, I would suggest that ways can be found to ease the short-term pain that will come from Mayor Bell’s new policy — and that some of that easing can come from the realization of how spectacularly Birmingham’s longstanding investment in arts and culture is paying off.