I've been teaching at Auburn this semester, which I think may be bad for my heart rate and overall mental health. The place reminds me of the drug and alcohol fueled insanity after the end of my first marriage, yet it brings some of the only warm memories of my childhood since Auburn football was (and is) one of the few things my dad and I agreed on. The commute is hellacious, especially the miracle of urban planning that is the 280 corridor. By the time I hit Chelsea, I'm already so enraged from the driving that it's amazing that I don't jump out of the C-Max at 50 miles per hour.
My rage has been fueled lately not so much by the Democrats crushing defeat in the midterm elections, but by the handwringing and the weeping and gnashing of teeth by all the liberal activists on my Facebook feed. Granted, the GOP victory pretty much guarantees that the Trans-Pacific Partnership, an egregious example of neoliberalism or the Mark McGwire NAFTA, will pass with bipartisan support and a presidential signature. Of course, this only proves what I have always said - that when it comes to economics, there is really only one party.
With this general state of despair and overall hatred of all things not Robyn Hyden, I decided to attend the Birmingham Land Bank Authority meeting to appraise how the process was moving and what was happening. What I saw was a Frank Underwood-esque example of how to manipulate the democratic process to the ends of an authoritarian leader, William Bell. The community development department ran the meeting, not Heager Hill, chairman of the BLBA. As one community leader stated, "William Bell is community development." Phillip Amthor began rather innocuously by presenting the new website, which seemed to pique the interest of board member Adam Snyder, who in the interested of transparency proposed that the BLBA put all relevant documents on the website. This was warmly received. Things devolved. Amthor blew through a presentation about best practices in about five minutes, leaving the distinct impression that all that mattered for the BLBA to be successful was for it to follow his majesty's RISE plan word for word. No peep from the board members.
Then came a confusing and bewildering set of events. It happened fast. Amthor and community development director John Colon presented a plan for the first group of tax delinquent properties to have their titles cleared in preparation for disposal. The plan asked for approval from the BLBA for 25 properties in Pratt City to go to the judge. The flimsy justification for this area was that the Red Rock Trail is going through Pratt City, but the real justification is that they can't do more damage than a tornado. Pratt City is the experiment. Amthor and Colon skimmed the plan, touching the high points, but never mentioning low-income housing, which would seem to be important in Pratt City. There was a vague reference on a slide to hiring a financial consultant to make housing affordable, but I left with the impression that they plan to build market-rate housing. I could be wrong about this, but that's the impression that I got.
Finally, Gwen Calhoun spoke up asking whether the people of Pratt City actually wanted this. Colon stated that they had gone to 27 neighborhood associations, suggesting that residents were involved in this decision-making. My sources tell me that community development merely went to neighborhood associations and showed a RISE propaganda video, hard-hitting participatory work by anyone's measure.
Next, Amthor and Colon presented a resolution for the BLBA to vote on. With almost no debate, Chairman Hill called for a motion on the resolution with the addition that community development had to produce a plan at the next meeting. Why would the BLBA give the ok on 25 properties without first knowing the details of how they were to be disposed? Nonetheless, it passed unanimously. Colon, Amthor, and community development had successfully railroaded the BLBA, an organization without so much as a strategic plan or a vision statement, into approving the agenda of RISE and Bell.
So, where was Bell in all this? The answer is that he was genuinely disinterested. He showed up late, checked his phone, his hair, and his fingernails, cracked a couple of jokes, left for ten minutes, and finally chimed in to quash any debate about community development's resolution. That's what he was there for.
All of this for a plan that, if it creates market-rate housing, is bound to either a) have vacant land or houses for years to come or b) lead to the gentrification of Pratt City, neither of which is acceptable.
I left disgusted, dismayed, and enraged. The complete and utter disrespect for the democratic process not just by individuals, but by supposedly democratic institutions is enough to lose all faith in this city's ability to respect it's people. No one, and I mean no one, trusts the city to do the right thing and that's why there is 20% turnout for municipal elections. What the BLBA does is not nearly as important as respecting the democratic process and rebuilding the trust between this city's leaders and its people. There are those on the board who have the ability to stop this in its tracks- you know who you are. It's going to take some guts and some real leadership, but it's time to take a stand and say "we won't take this in our city anymore. Enough!"
