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Topics:
Community
Birmingham
Participation
In the early
1970s, following a decade of racial strife and the mobilization
of black neighborhoods, the city of Birmingham, Alabama, developed
a formal system of Neighborhood Associations. Today there are
95 of them, organized in various Community Advisory Committees
and an effective bi-racial Citizens Advisory Board that is mandated
to meet with the mayor and city council at least once each quarter.
They focus primarily on community development projects, such as
housing rehabilitation and commercial development, and many of
the low income neighborhoods have worked with local ministries
and community organizers to provide ongoing leadership development.
Case study plus.
Prepared by Ken Thomson as part of the Citizen Participation Project
at the Lincoln Filene Center at Tufts University, funded by the
Ford Foundation, 1988.
Contents
A.
Beginnings
and Authorization
B. Neighborhood Structures
C. Citywide Citizen Structures
D.
Outreach to Citizens
E.
Major Program Components
F.
Overall Perspective of the City on Participation
A.
Beginnings and AuthorizationBorn:
October 15, 1974
Place:
In City Council Resolution formally adopting the Citizen
Participation Plan
The Birmingham
participation system grew out of an extremely tense racial atmosphere
following a decade of racial strife. In 1972 a Community Development
Department was created, the first in a city with a tradition of
among the lowest levels of per capita public expenditures in the
country. At this time, the federal Department of Housing and Urban
Development was promulgating strict guidelines for participation
in a number of cities with past records of racial discrimination,
one of which was Birmingham. The regional director for HUD outlined
minimum requirements for involvement of the poor to Birmingham's
mayor in July, 1973.
In response
to HUD's requirements, the Community Development Department proposed
its first version of a participation plan in October, 1973 and
shortly thereafter a Community Resources Division was set up which
apparently began to implement the plan in several North Birmingham
neighborhoods early the next year. The plan drew major protest
from black leaders, particularly over its dependence upon a private
organization, Operation New Birmingham, as the primary organizer
of the neighborhood structure. This protest culminated with 500
people at a public hearing on the plan in the municipal auditorium
on April 1, 1974. The official record notes that "almost all speakers
expressed opposition to aspects of the initial plan." Staff listened
to tapes from the hearing, conducted a workshop for more than
130 participants, and developed a revised plan which received
final Council approval in October. The new plan omitted Operation
New Birmingham from its provisions, and was generally well received.
At this
point the program was off and running at full speed: an election
of Neighborhood Citizens Committees was held in November, 1974
to fill 258 positions, and neighborhood committees and advisory
groups were subsequently formed. A major effort to inform the
public about these groups was taken through flyers and posters,
churches, community schools, radio and television announcements,
and special events. The first meeting of the citywide Citizens
Advisory Board was held a few months later in February, 1975.
The CAB specifically decided to adopt a citywide perspective,
avoid partisan politics, and work cooperatively with city officials.
Disposition of the $5 million CDBG grant was the major CAB issue
during this year. And it was important for this biracial, grassroots
group of people simply to meet on a regular basis with the Mayor
and City Council members.
B.
Neighborhood Structures
1.
Neighborhood Associations and Community Advisory Committees
At the heart
of the Birmingham system are its 95 Neighborhood Associations. Like
Dayton, but unlike Portland, the entire city is divided into defined
neighborhoods. Except for newly annexed areas, the number and definition
have remained fairly constant (up from 84 neighborhoods when the
system began in 1974). Neighborhood population range: from 180 to
8,200. The median neighborhood population is 2,740.
Two to six neighborhoods are grouped together
into a community. A total of 22 communities exist. The membership
of the Community Advisory Committee are the officers of the neighborhoods
involved. They elect their own officers and representatives to
the CAB. In practice, the CAB representation is the primary function
of this community structure, although the CACs are required to
meet at least bimonthly.
One representative from each of the 22 communities
makes up the Citizens Advisory Board. It is designed to present
the opinions and feelings of the neighborhoods to city hall. (See
below under citywide structures, C1, for further description of
the CAB).
The rules of operation for the neighborhoods
and higher level structures are contained in the Citizen Participation
Plan, which was in existence since the system's beginning. The
provisions of this plan formally supersede any CAB, community,
or neighborhood bylaws. Part of the agreement with citizens was
that this plan would be reviewed and revised as necessary every
two years. Major revisions did, in fact, occur on three occasions:
October 12, 1976, July 5, 1978, and August 26, 1980. Elections
for neighborhood officers changed from an annual to a biannual
basis after 1976. The 1980 changes included combining the Community
Resources Division and the Planning Division of the Community
Development Department.
Voting membership in the neighborhood associations
is open to any resident 16 years of age or older. Property owners,
businesses, and other organizations may NOT be voting members.
The Citizen Participation Plan specifically states
that neighborhood associations may go to the Community Development
Department, the CAC, the CAB, or directly to other city departments
and personnel. In practice, the Community Development Department
has—at some stages in its history—discouraged
neighborhoods from "circumventing" its control, insisting that
all Community Resource Officers take issues through the central
office of the Community Resource Division, not to other city departments
directly.
The CP Plan also calls for Neighborhood Advisory
Groups to be chosen by the neighborhood president, representing
local organizations and specially disadvantaged groups. We found
no evidence that these groups currently take an active role in
the Birmingham system.
2.
Elections
A key link
between citizens and the city in Birmingham are the elections for
officers of the neighborhood associations (called "selections" because
of state law complications). The president, vice president, and
secretary of each neighborhood must be chosen every two years at
the polls in a September/October election held separately from municipal
elections. Any Birmingham resident age 16 or over may vote, and
any resident age 18 or over who has lived in the neighborhood for
90 days and attended at least two neighborhood meetings is eligible
to run for office (by completing a declaration of candidacy). Any
ties are resolved at the next neighborhood meeting. The elections
are run by the Community Resources Division.
A typical turnout citywide is from 7,500 to 8,500
voters remaining fairly constant over the last four elections.
The highest turnout was in the second year of operation, 1975,
with 11,654 voters. In some neighbor-hoods turnout may run as
high as 70%. More typically, turnout in a heavily contested election
will run 10% to 15% of the voting age population. Uncontested
elections may draw only 1 to 3% In 1986, there were at least 309
candidates running for these offices.
3.
Drawing Neighborhood Boundaries
At least half
of the first year of the Birmingham CP system was devoted to identifying
neighborhood and community boundaries. A team of city staff literally
started at one end of the city, working its way to the other end,
knocking on doors and asking people how they perceived their own
neighborhood. Charles Lewis, locally known as "Mr. Citizen Participation,"
argues strongly that this process was critical in acceptance of
the CP system: "When the program began, feeling by some citizens'
groups for city officials included misunderstanding, antagonism,
and distrust. When the new map was prepared which...changed the
boundaries in accordance with citizens' recommendations, an important
step was taken in establishing a trust relationship and two-way
communication between citizens and city officials."
Like the Participation Plan itself, the boundaries
were specifically left open for revision every two years. Few
changes have been made, however, except to add neighborhoods from
newly annexed areas.
4.
CP Administrative Funding
No direct administrative
funds are given to neighborhood associations (but see under the
Neighborhood Allocation Process below for the large amounts of development
money that have been spent on projects designated by the associations).
The administrative budget for the system is allocated
primarily to the Community Resources Division of the Community
Development Department. Up until 1987 almost all of the funds
for the participation system apparently came from the Community
Development Block Grant (CDBG) from the federal government. We
do not yet have complete figures, but approximately $500,000 is
spent for the citizen participation system from this grant, including
$94,000 for neighborhood communications. In addition, $158,000
was allocated directly to Neighborhood Services, Inc., an independent
citizen group working in some of the lowest income neighborhoods
in the city.
5.
Offices and Staffing
There are no
neighborhood offices. Staffing for the Birmingham participation
system is provided in its entirety by the Community Resources Officers
who work out of the city hall office of the Community Resources
Division. There were 9 full time officers in 1987, including the
Principal Community Resource Officer, who serves as staff director
for the system. There had been as many as 13 full-time staff in
recent years, and as few as six or seven when the program began.
6.Neighborhood
Activities
The neighborhood
officers tend to be like ward healers for their neighborhood, taking
the lead in many community events from housing rehabilitation to
halloween parties. And like ward healers, they have an important
material incentive to disperse—-not patronage, but community projects.
Large sums of development money, which have been as much $70,000
a year for a neighborhood of 5,000 people, are allocated by the
neighbor-hood organizations. Determination of how this money would
be spent was a major factor which early organizers of the project
felt would make citizens willing to commit the time and energy to
participate.
Some individual neighborhood officers spend huge
amounts of time on major neighborhood projects—-from the housing
rehabilitation corporation of North Pratt to the commercial development
activities of Five Point South. The neighborhoods seem to be taking
a more and more active role in zoning and land use kinds of decisions
through the early warning they get of them. We witnessed neighborhood
meetings with prospective developers which made it clear that
developers realize they have a real stake in talking to the appropriate
neighborhood associations before attempting to get zoning variances
or other special agreements from the city.
Another major effort of neighborhoods has been
the work to develop a community identity through a number of self-help
projects and festivals. Tool- lending libraries have often been
part of this. These have been very important in establishing a
sense of community in many areas where no grassroots organizations
had ever existed before.
C.
Citywide Citizen Structures
1.
Citizens Advisory Board
Taking the
opposite approach from Portland's multiple channels of participation,
Birmingham has one central body which channels policy proposals
from neighborhoods into city hall: the Citizens Advisory Board.
This body maintains contact with the mayor and the city council,
as well as other departments when necessary. Its formal representative
structure, derived from the neighborhood associations, gives it
the potential to articulate policy positions as the voice of the
neighborhoods.
The CAB meets monthly, and at least one meeting
each quarter is mandated to be with the Mayor and with the City
Council. CAB committees have been developed which largely parallel
the City Council committees. In 1986-87, for the first time, the
three officers of the CAB were all Black, a fact which caused
a degree of concern among some of the white neighborhood officers.
The CAB itself holds strongly to its effective operation as a
biracial body. In fact, other observers have noted that is was
only the second such body associated with local government in
the history of the city (the first was the board of the local
poverty program). A major question exists, however, about the
impact of the CAB. It has no staff other than that of the Community
Resources Division. It initially served a vitally important role
of simply establishing contact, on a biracial basis, between people
in the neighborhoods and the highest levels of government. Now
that contact is an accomplished fact, however, the policy role
of the CAB is unclear. They can and do offer advice, but it is
not clear who listens under what circumstances, or what procedures
exist for translating that advice into policy. The CAB seldom
seems to take positions on major policy issues facing the city,
and seldom seems to win when it does.
D.
Outreach to Citizens
1.
Monthly Neighborhood Newsletters
One of the
most impressive and distinctive features of the Birmingham CP system
is that the Community Resources Division mails out city and neighborhood
information packets every month to every household in the city.
Each neighborhood association can include whatever material it wishes
in the mailing. The material typically includes meeting notices,
new program descriptions, and information about other events or
services of the city or neighborhood. This is a crucial method of
making citizens aware of the role of the participation system and
of their opportunity to participate.
2.
Neighborhood Surveys
According to
the city's description of program history produced in 1984, "Approximately
20 neighborhoods have completed or are in the process of completing
systematic door-to-door surveys to identify neighborhood needs and
problems". This information was to be used for neighborhood plans.
We have found no evidence, however, that full population surveys
have been used in policy decisions by either administrators or neighborhood
leaders.
3.
'Cross Town Newsletter
A publication
called 'CROSS TOWN was an important source of communica- tion between
and about neighborhoods for several years. It was typically a four-page
newsletter that provided information about ongoing city programs,
reported events important for the citizen participation system,
and described recent activities of selected neighborhoods. The publication
was discontinued in 1987 because of budget cuts.
E.
Major Program Components
1.
Neighborhood Allocation Process
The most direct
policy input within the Birmingham participation system is the ability
of neighborhood association to determine how their allocation of
capital development funds will be spent. This policy began in the
first years of the system, when a formula was developed that allocated
to each neighborhood a specific percentage of the CDBG funds coming
to the city. The formula is based on population and neighborhood
need. In 1987 and 1988, however, as increasing amounts have been
cut out of this budget, each neighborhood was given a flat minimum
amount. While in the early years, between $6,000 and $70,000 was
allocated to each neighborhood, in 1988 the allocation was down
to a little over $3,000.
Each neighborhood allocation is made each year,
even if no active neighborhood association exists at that time.
During the year each active neighborhood association votes to
determine how this allocation will be spent. When a new association
is formed it has access to all the funds allocated during the
inactive period. While neighborhoods clearly can spend for innovative
projects they have developed, the city also becomes quite involved,
in practice. What seems to happen sometimes is that the city will
say to a neighborhood, "We have this new project ready to go in
your area, do you want to spend your neighborhood allocation on
this project?" Apparently most of the neighborhood allocations
are spent on tasks performed either by city employees or contractors
going through the usual city contract process.
2.
Neighborhood Training Sessions
The Division
of Community Resources provides orientation sessions for neighborhood
officers after each election. In recent years, these have become
opportunities for each new officer to get to know some of the heads
of city agencies, and how to go about making requests for basic
services or policy changes.
Neighborhood Services, Inc. also provides leadership
training for the neighborhood organizations within its area. There
are 32 neighborhoods in some way connected with them, but only
five or six seem to be involved in the core of their work.
3.
Operation New Birmingham
One of the
first organizations assigned to work on citizen participation in
Birmingham was Operation New Birmingham. This group was a coalition
of business and religious leaders that helped to promote more racially
open economic an governmental processes in some of the hottest periods
of the civil rights movement. They were given a contract in February,
1974, apparently to implement the citizen participation plan, but
their involvement was eliminated with the defeat of the original
plan.
ONB is now the primary contract agency for the
city assigned to manage downtown development. This practice is
unusual compared to the operations of most cities we have examined—in
general, economic development issues and downtown development
are an important role of line departments of the city, and are
not assigned in as high a degree as we found in Birmingham to
a nongovernmental body. In addition to this economic development
role, ONB continues to be an important forum for interaction black
and white residents on questions of race relations and improving
community life.
4.
Neighborhood Services, Inc.
In 1979 a coalition
of low-income groups organized by Greater Birmingham Ministries
sued the city for failing to give low income neighborhoods their
fair share of CDBG funds. At issue was the city's "triage" system
of rating neighborhoods which left out the most needy areas that
were judged to be lacking in leadership or resources necessary to
make good use of the funds. Through this suit the coalition succeeded
in obtaining an agreement from the city to allocate a substantially
larger share of these funds to the lowest income neighborhoods.
As a consequence of this action, 32 neighborhoods
formed a coalition called Neighborhood Services, Inc. As of 1983
they had 8 full-time staff people. They have continued to work
on a number of development projects, from new housing to development
of a community-based supermarket. They also maintain a continuing
leadership development training program to help residents of these
low income neighborhoods to recognize and articulate their community's
needs and take effective action to address those needs.
5.
Neighborhood Information
The Division
of Community Resources has the primary role of informing neighborhood
presidents about events and decisions in city government which are
relevant to their neighborhoods. A major part of this task is accomplished
through a biweekly mailing which includes information on such issues
as:
- Requests
for liquor licenses, pool table, and dance permits.
- Proposed
zoning changes, and corresponding public hearing dates.
- Community
development projects undertaken by the city that will affect
their neighborhood.
- Notification
of responses by the city to requests made by neighborhood officers.
- Citywide
notices including City Council agenda, public hearing notices,
notification of board and staff vacancies to be filled by the
City Council, agenda of the Planning commission, Subdivision
Committee, Zoning Advisory Committee, and the Zoning Board of
Adjustments, and agendas and minutes of the CAB.
The Division
also has the responsibility to maintain the "official map of neighborhoods",
the "official copy of the officers names and addresses", and the
schedule of regular meetings times and locations for neighborhood
association meetings. The telephone number given in all city publications
for contact with the neighborhoods and the participation system
is the Division of Community Resources number.
6.
Other Projects and Events
- An important
effort of the Birmingham system: they have sent dozens of neighborhood
association officers to meetings of Neighborhoods, USA and other
neighborhood-based conferences to find out how other neighborhoods
worked around the country. They have done this in a larger scale
than any other city, as far as we know.
- A major
program supervised by several neighborhoods is the house-painting
program which takes unemployed youth in the summer months and
matches them with private homes whose owners cannot afford to
pay for repainting on their own. The neighborhood associations
determine which homes are the highest priority, and assign supervisory
volunteers to get the job done.
F.
Overall Perspective of the City on Participation
The Birmingham
participation system was designed to create a sense of community
in a shattered city. For the first time, it brought blacks and whites
together in a common vision for the future. Its focus was on physical
development that had been badly neglected in years past. The Citizen
Participation Plan represented the city's recognition of "the need
and desirability of involving its citizens more directly and continuously
in its community development efforts". Personal contact between
city hall and average citizens of all colors and incomes was a cherished
goal.
The Participation Plan has already accomplished
many of its objectives. But it retains the focus upon central
control with which it began: offices, staff, elections, and communications
all emanate from city hall. Increasing ties between citizens and
officials, not establishing independent citizen operations, has
been the central focus. Unlike Portland, for example, there is
much more of a sense of a single channel for participation and
a single source of support for it. This makes for a more coherent
participation system, but also a more restricted one.
The system was also set up with a great concern
for equal access, and the detailed electoral structure and formal
representation through the CAB have performed this function well
from the very beginning. Similarly a lack of information for citizens
had been a critical problem, again solved quickly and surely with
the Birmingham system of monthly mailings to every household.
The biggest question which remains, now that
these initial concerns have been met, is whether the system can
coexist with a more pluralistic political system and gain a financial
commitment from the city's general fund in the face of severe
cutbacks in federal monies that had been the mainstay of the participation
effort.
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