A couple of days ago, out for an end-of-workday stroll around my downtown neighborhood, I happened to spot a friendly acquaintance of mine walking into one of the taverns nearby. This person is a prominent citizen of the community, retired from one long and successful career and embarked upon another, engaged in civic affairs, well versed in the give-and-take of local politics and government, and always an insightful source of perspective and opinion.
I had not seen my friend for some time, so I ducked inside as well. Thinking that he’d be meeting someone, I figured on saying a quick hello and getting back on my way. Instead, I found him at a table alone, enjoying a glass of wine before heading out to meet his wife for dinner, and was delighted to spend the next half-hour or so sipping a beer and exchanging thoughts about the state of our city.
It’s worth mentioning here that, while my friend and I have been in firm general agreement over the years on the issues facing the city, state and nation in which we live, we have tended to disagree on some of the finer points of the causes of, and cures for, the ills that plague us. For instance, he has shown some willingness to tolerate, and even defend — albeit while never actually endorsing — the flashy, globetrotting, style-over-substance approach to governance that Mayor William Bell has favored since taking office in 2010, primarily on the theory that the mayor’s intense focus on his own image and visibility would help burnish that of Birmingham at large.
There is, of course, some credence in that view, even if it is largely impossible to quantify in any reliable way. But I use the past tense in reference to my friend’s view of all of this because, judging from our catch-up chat, he thinks that Mayor Bell’s celebrity act — travel, entourage, security detail worthy of a the potentate of a small nation — is wearing thin here at home, where more and more people are beginning to question the cost-benefit ratio of having had a largely absentee chief executive for the better part of six years.
Granted, that’s my paraphrase of his remarks. And, admittedly, it’s an interpretation that dovetails with my own sense of growing political disquiet here in our presumptively happy village. With that in mind, I will offer gladly the disclaimer that my views are based purely on any number of recent conversations with concerned and inquisitive citizens, whom I encounter routinely in whichever corner of Birmingham I chance to find myself at any given date and time. And I will tell you something that my friend said.
“Are there times when it is appropriate for the mayor, or other city officials, to travel at public expense? Of course there are,” he said. “But if I live in the city, and I look around my neighborhood, and it looks pretty much the same as it did five or 10 or 20 years ago, if not maybe worse — well, then I look at what’s spent on travel by the mayor and city council, and at other things they elect to spend money on and support, and I’ve got to question the priorities at City Hall. I’ve got to ask why my neighbors and I have not seen any benefit from how the city chooses to allocate its resources.”
The most trenchant thing this prominent citizen had to say was also, as these things often are, the funniest. We were talking about how Birmingham measures up against the phalanx of Southern cities that have caught and surpassed us over the years. In the process of commenting favorably on the turnout at Legion Field last weekend for the U.S. Women’s team’s soccer match against Haiti, he shook his head and gave a rueful laugh.
“You want to measure the difference between Birmingham and Atlanta?” he asked. “Atlanta is tearing down a state-of-the-art stadium [the Georgia Dome, set for demolition in 2017] to build an even more state-of-the-art stadium right across the street. In Birmingham, we’re talking about painting the bathrooms at Legion Field before the soccer game.”
Now, I did not hear this statement as an endorsement for the domed stadium that — I am told, and as I have long feared — Mayor Bell views as the crown jewel of his legacy (if it was an endorsement, then my friend and I have a starting point of disagreement for the next time we enjoy a libation together). Nor did I hear the slightest trace of a suggestion that Birmingham be more “like” Atlanta (ditto on the grounds of disagreement).
What I heard, given the general tenor of the conversation up to that point, was an expression of frustration. Frustration with Birmingham’s history of missed opportunities and untapped potential — of shooting itself in the foot at critical times — but more than that, with its stubborn refusal to learn and apply the lessons of our failings to our plans for the future.
We keep doing things the same way, putting the same shade of lipstick on the same pig. We have the problems we have, and to the appalling extent that we do, because when it comes to addressing them, we favor treating the symptoms instead of the disease. We place a higher value on how things appear — especially to non-residents — than on how they function, or how they impact the lives of each and every person who calls our city home. We expect — and, almost inexplicably, demand — little from our elected officials, and therefore get little in return, unless I missed it when we officially adopted “At least he/she is not in jail” as the minimum requirement for satisfactory service to the public.
What I heard my friend acknowledging is that, even among those who have supported Mayor Bell and continue to invest some hope in his administration, patience with him is running out. Regardless of race, income, neighborhood of residence, or any of the other demographic means of delineating one segment of our populace from another, belief in the mayor’s trickle-down approach to economic justice, community development, and the distribution of public services and resources is evaporating like raindrops on a (potholed) Birmingham street in late July.
Astute politician that he is, Mayor Bell has become aware of this. Among other things, his awareness of it accounts for the near-exponential uptick in recent months in local sightings of him in places other than waving to the crowd at large public events, or dining in one of the city’s more upscale (and, allow me to stress, undeniably outstanding) restaurants.
It also accounts for the resolution, back in August, of the six-week budget impasse between Mayor Bell and the city council. The upshot of this was that the mayor’s office “found” $6.5 million to allocate to weed abatement and the demolition of abandoned houses in neighborhoods across the city. Since that time, the mayor and council have been at pains not to stumble all over one another in their haste to claim credit for finding the motivation to (quite belatedly) do their jobs.
Let’s make sure we have this straight: Our duly elected representatives are patting themselves on the back (and, by the way, spending public dollars to do it) for getting around to spending $6.5 million to clear properties where it is not uncommon to find weeds taller than most grown men, and to tear down houses that, in many cases, have been blights on their neighborhoods for years. One source at City Hall tells me that if we really want to make a dent in those chronic problems — i.e., start making them periodic, rather than chronic — we need to spend three times that.
But we won’t. Not this mayor, and not this city council. They can’t spare it from the glorification of themselves and the fulfillment of their collective sense of entitlement, nor from the gargantuan time and expense it takes to prop up the illusion of productivity at City Hall. They hold us — that is, the electorate — in such low esteem that they have convinced themselves that we’ll buy whatever they’re selling. They count on us to believe their tales of noble deeds done in our service, and to accept the idea that this pale iteration of representative government is the best that Birmingham can do.
It isn’t. And if we think that it is, we’re in the process of selling ourselves short.
Again.