Councilman Carroll says administration pitching watered-down version with too little money
By Brendan Kirby
Published: Aug. 20, 2024 at 7:02 PM CDT
MOBILE, Ala. (WALA) - Mayor Sandy Stimpson on Tuesday offered an alternative to an affordable housing plan pitched by City Councilman William Carroll.
The mayor’s budget, released Tuesday, contains $1 million for a pilot program incentivizing home construction in blighted neighborhoods.
“We think that if we create a citywide housing improvement program through local taxes, it relieves us of the burden of federal regulations, which makes a lot more nimble to be able to do things that y’all want,” Chief of Staff James Barber told council members at an Entitlement Committee meeting.
Carroll expressed frustration that the administration is opposing his idea, which is to create a quasi-government organization to oversee the expenditure of public funds.
“Are you ready for a war?” he asked Barber as the meeting was breaking up.
Carroll noted that $1 million divided by seven council districts amounts to only a little more than $142,000.
“Which really doesn’t give you any equity in neighborhood revitalization,” he told FOX10 News. “I’ve got the Campground, the Bottom, Maysville, and all these other areas within District 2 that really need revitalization.”
Carroll faced tough questions about his proposal not just from the administration, but also from some of his colleagues, over the structure of the organization dubbed the Mobile Revitalization Cooperative District. That organization, authorized under a state law, would be run by a board appointed by the city, the Downtown Redevelopment Authority and the Mobile County Commission.
Carroll said council members and commissioners could put millions of dollars into the organization, which would be used to acquire property and offer incentives to developers to build new homes – or even commercial and mixed-use buildings, in some cases.
Carroll has said he would up $2 million to $3 million in capital funds assigned to his district.
But Councilman Ben Reynolds said he was leery of an unelected board exercising enormous power to spend public money.
“I have a fundamental objection to this form of governing,” he said. “I think it’s our job to make these decisions.”
He noted that the state law authorizing the districts even allows for the seizure of properties under eminent domain.
“That basically means this cooperative district can wield these great powers provided to it by way of the state to basically do whatever it wants,” he said.
Councilman Joel Daves expressed concern that the district would have the ability of raise money through borrowing.
Carroll agreed to add language to the resolution creating the district that would limit its powers with respect to borrowing and eminent domain. Barber said he appreciated those concessions, as well as Carroll’s agreement to require the district board to follow the state ethics law. But he said that “despite the safeguards,” the administration still has a philosophical difference over how best to provide affordable housing.
Barber said the district would “not accountable to the people that run the city of Mobile.” He said the administration also does not believe housing is the best use of capital funds, which he added would be better spent on projects like street repairs, the construction of sidewalks and other anti-blight measures.
Barber said keeping it in-house also would avoid the necessity of diverting some of the funds to pay the salaries of staffers who would work for the improvement district. He added that if Carroll or other council members wanted to use their capital funds to supplement housing incentives, they could do so through a city-run structure.
“The million dollars is nothing more than seed money that would go into housing or replacing the housing, affordable and workforce housing, in these neighborhoods to revitalize them,” he told FOX10 News. “It doesn’t prohibit the city council for also adding additional capital monies into the program specifically for the replacement of housing.”
Carroll asked Barber why the Stimpson administration, after 12 years in office, had not tackled the problem if it had the ability to do so. He said the advantage of the district is that it would have a project manager working full time on the problem, targeted at the communities most in need of help.
“The No. 1 issue in our city right, when you talk to people, is affordable housing and the need for it and the shortage of it,” he said.
Carroll reiterated in an interview that the administration’s proposal in insufficient.
“What kind of equity does that get you?” he asked. “Nothing with their plan, but with my plan, we’re talking about a million dollars a year into a specific area that generates more than the possibility of one housing development.”
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