Birmingham Citizen Participation Plan

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The Birmingham Citizen Participation Plan (CPP), originally the Birmingham Community Participation Program, is a structured network of neighborhood associations that was created in 1974 to improve communication between residents and city leaders and revised in 1980, 1995, 2006 and 2013.

Neighborhood associations serve as the primary conduit for communicating specific issues, problems and opportunities to the city government. The relationships outlined in the Community Participation Plan are followed with respect to the development of the city's Birmingham Comprehensive Plan and the use of the CPP is a requirement for the city to receive federal Community Development Block Grants. In addition, neighborhood associations are routinely consulted on matters related to zoning changes, liquor licenses, economic development, and city services. Neighborhoods are also granted discretionary funds from the city's budget to use for capital improvements, to fund neighborhood organizations, and for non-capital projects and events.

Birmingham is divided into a total of 23 communities, and again into a total of 99 individual neighborhoods with individual neighborhood associations. All residents aged 16 or older are qualified to vote at neighborhood meetings. Voting membership is not open to non-resident property owners or business owners. Communities don't necessarily follow Council District boundaries, and are based on historical and social dividing lines that preserve the city's generations of physical segregation by race. The plan is intended to accommodate flexibility by having neighborhood boundaries and names reviewed every two years, but the process of altering boundaries requires agreement of all affected neighborhood associations. Except for the accommodation of newly-annexed areas, changes to the neighborhood map have been uncommon.

Each neighborhood elects its own officers (president, vice-president and secretary) who conduct monthly meetings and serve as members of "Community Advisory Committees" with regular access to the heads of city departments. The presidents of these committees, in turn, form the Citizens Advisory Board, which meets regularly with the mayor, council, and department heads. Neighborhood officers must be 18 or older and reside in the neighborhood. Officers cannot hold elected city, state or federal office, be employed by the city, or continue serving after failing to attend meetings regularly or following a felony conviction.

Besides communicating with City Hall, the neighborhood associations also distribute or allocate community development funding awarded by the city. Numerous individual programs have been created through this system, including housing redevelopment corporations and commercial development projects, as well as beautification projects and funding for community events. Some neighborhoods also disburse some of their funds to schools, libraries and other community institutions.

Historically, neighborhood newsletters were compiled by individual neighborhood associations and printed and distributed by the City's Birmingham Community Development Department. These notices included agenda items such as pending permits and variances, updates on public projects and neighborhood requests, as well as minutes from the Citizens Advisory Board meetings and a list of upcoming council, committee, board and agency meetings.

Until 1987 the Community Development Department also compiled and distributed a 4-page citywide newsletter called Cross Town, which reported on neighborhood activities and shared information about city programs and events. At one time these mailings were judged to the "one of the most impressive and distinctive features" of the entire system. (Thomson-1988)

Presently, the Community Resource Services Division within that department, headed by Alice Williams, has a a staff of community resource representatives (CRRs) who are assigned to individual communities as liaisons.

History

Birmingham established a Community Development Department in 1972, consolidating several functions, and specifically designed to comply with requirements drawn up by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) for its Community Development Block Grants, which replaced the direct funding to cities and urban renewal programs that were curtailed during Richard Nixon's administration.

During 1973 the Community Development Department and Mayor George Seibels worked with HUD to design a program which would be administered by Operation New Birmingham. Early implementation began in North Birmingham, but was suspended in the face of widespread protests. A public hearing at Municipal Auditorium on April 1, 1974 attracted more than 500 opponents.

A workshop was held to draft a new plan, this time without ONB's involvement. The map dividing the city into neighborhoods was also redrawn, with city staff going door to door to ask residents how they perceived their neighborhood and community boundaries. Charles Lewis pointed to the visibility of that outreach effort as being critical to acceptance of the system.

The revised plan, with 84 individual neighborhoods, was adopted by the Birmingham City Council on October 15, 1974 and the first neighborhood elections were held in November, accompanied by a city-wide awareness campaign to inform citizens of the program utilizing flyers, posters, radio and television announcements, and visits to churches, schools, and other events. One slogan used to promote the system was, "You don’t have to move to live in a better neighborhood."

With neighborhood officers and committees in place, the first meeting of the Birmingham Citizens Advisory Board was held in February 1975, with 11,654 ballots cast. The group coordinated the distribution of the city's first $5 million Community Development Block Grant from HUD. A formula was established for allocations, balancing neighborhood population against critical needs.

In a 1976 report on the CDBG program, HUD related that Birmingham's 84 neighborhood citizen committees were expected to conduct analysis of their districts and to prioritize problems and development goals. At the community level, officers would determine which of those issues should be referred to the advisory board for citywide attention. That board would then develop policy recommendations to the Mayor and City Council. After ten months of formal evaluation of the plan, a recommendation was made to lengthen the terms of neighborhood officers from one to two years. That modification was enacted by the Council on October 12, 1976.

In 1979 Greater Birmingham Ministries led a group of plaintiffs who sued over the city's allocation formula for Community Development Block Grant money. The suit was resolved with the city's agreement to boost allocations to lower-income neighborhoods which had previously been limited over concerns about insufficient leadership. In 1980 a group of 32 of those neighborhoods incorporated as Neighborhood Services Inc. to coordinate work on projects and to train leaders to be more effective.

The Birmingham Citizen Participation Plan calls for neighborhood boundaries to be re-evaluated every two years, but in practice few changes have been made accept to create neighborhoods for newly-annexed areas. In 1980 the City combined its Community Resources Division with the planning division of its Community Development Department.

By 1984 the city reported that "Approximately 20 neighborhoods have completed or are in the process of completing systematic door-to-door surveys to identify neighborhood needs and problems," though no specific policies intended to address those problems was described.

Until 1987 most of the $500,000 cost of administering the CPP each year were pulled directly from the annual Community Development Block Grant. Of that amount, $94,000 went toward neighborhood communications. Another $158,000 allocation supported the work of Neighborhood Services, Inc. The remainder of the grant funds were distributed toward neighborhood projects, with as much as $70,000 a year being allocated to larger neighborhoods. In practice, neighborhoods tended to accrue large balances, and it was left to city staff to alert associations to potential projects that would benefit from neighborhood funds, sometimes just by filling gaps in the budgets for city departments or contracts which affected specific neighborhoods.

Budget cuts in 1987 caused the city to stop publishing the Cross Town newsletter and to reduce allocations to a flat minimum, which was just a little above $3,000 in 1988. That year Ken Thomson, an evaluator for the Lincoln Filene Center for Citizenship and Public Affairs at Tufts University, characterized Birmingham's CCP as creating "an effective bi-racial Citizens Advisory Board that is mandated to meet with the mayor and city council at least once each quarter." He noted that most of the board's work involved housing rehabilitation and commercial development projects, and that many low-income neighborhoods had partnered with local ministries and community organizers on leadership development initiatives. At that time the city had 95 neighborhoods ranging in population from from 180 to 8,200 residents, with a median of 2,740.

Thomson listed some of the programs undertaken by neighborhoods, including the North Pratt Investment Corporation, commercial development projects in Five Points South, volunteer summer house-painting projects, and tool-lending libraries in several neighborhoods. He noted the active discussion of matters affecting zoning variances and other matters requiring public approval. He also mentioned that associations promoted volunteerism, self-help programs, and festivals that bolstered neighborhood identity and introduced political organization to districts which had never experienced it.

Historian Chuck Connerly concluded in 2005 that while the system preserved certain elements of physical segregation, it also "reversed the city's longtime tradition of denying its Black citizens the opportunity to participate in the planning process."

Longtime Mayor Richard Arrington judged that Birmingham's CPP was second only to the Voting Rights Act in its effect of empowering Black residents of the city to impact public policy. Well-organized majority Black neighborhoods were able to outpoll white residents on critical bond referenda, securing matching funds for major federal grants for capital projects.

1995 changes

A new Citizen Participation Plan ordinance was adopted on June 27, 1995.

During his two years as Mayor of Birmingham, Larry Langford reduced annual appropriations to individual neighborhoods from $10,000 to $2,000. Over the years the city also stopped distributing newsletters, though it has provided neighborhood associations with signs that can be placed along streets to notify residents of upcoming meetings. Associations have also been encouraged to use their funds to distribute their own materials through mailers, flyers, website or social media. Often the associations are only able to collect email addresses or social media contacts from those who have signed in at meetings.

2013 update

In 2011 the annual controversy over how many delegates would be sent to the Neighborhoods USA conference reached a pique when it was revealed that there were plans to charter an airplane to carry 99 representatives to Anchorage, Alaska. Moves to restructure the program gained momentum.

In 2012 the Citizens Advisory Board called a committee to begin re-writing the Citizens' Participation Plan. City Council member Steven Hoyt submitted a resolution for the Council to appoint its own committee to accomplish the same goal. The amended plan was adopted on May 14, 2013.

In 2022 some members of the City Council aired dissatisfaction with low attendance at neighborhood association meetings and low participation in neighborhood elections, but no proposals for changing the system were put forward. During the COVID pandemic about a third of neighborhoods made arrangements for meetings to be accessible by conference call or internet streaming, but votes could only be case by those in attendance.

A The Birmingham Times report in 2023 found a consensus that the Citizen Participation Program no longer wielded the influence it once had. Various officials blamed the loss on "a lack of training and resources, as well as apathy from residents." A contrast was drawn between a few active neighborhood associations which are effective, versus a large segment of "nonfunctional" associations. Others noted that technology has given more residents direct access to city leaders, reducing the importance of intermediary associations.

2025

In January 2025 City Councilor Hunter Williams wrote an editorial opinion criticizing the Citizen Participation Plan for being outdated and for producing questionable recommendations from poorly-attended meetings. He recommended creating a secure, online voting platform to broaden participation in neighborhood level decision-making, and for neighborhood associations to "pre-authorize" requested zoning changes earlier in the land development process.

See also

References

External links

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