Better together?

Compared to national averages, Birmingham is lagging behind in growth for population, jobs and overall economic development.

But when we’re comparing data about Birmingham and other U.S. cities, it has to be asked: which Birmingham? There’s the downtown core and the city of Birmingham itself. There are 35 municipalities in Jefferson County alone. And there are the many other municipalities and rural, unincorporated areas of Birmingham’s seven-county metro area.

Many of these municipalities face the same issues, both in economic development and in other areas, and the success or failure of Birmingham as a greater region has an impact on the success or failure of smaller cities and towns, in particular.

To a group of local nonprofits, businesses and even several mayors, that also appears to be the answer: regionalism, not individualism. 

“You really can’t point to a region where you have a dying center city and thriving suburbs, or vice versa. … Their fates are all connected,” said Chris Nanni, president and CEO of the Community Foundation of Greater Birmingham.

The Bold Goals Coalition of Central Alabama Workforce Action Network — a broad collection of Birmingham-area nonprofits, businesses, governmental departments and other organizations — commissioned a study of Birmingham’s job climate called the Building (it) Together report, released in June. The study brought an array of recommendations to bolster the city’s sluggish economy and prepare for the future, but one of the overarching conclusions was that it works better if the region is working together.

It’s an idea that has been floated before, in a variety of forms, and hasn’t gotten very far. But some members of the Bold Goals Coalition believe that this new data, as well as changing attitudes among mayors and other community leaders, mean the climate has changed and 2018 could be regional cooperation’s year.

“Collaboration makes a ton of sense,” Mountain Brook Mayor Stewart Welch said.

Together, but not one

It’s important to be clear that cooperation, which is what several community organizations are advocating, is not the same thing as creating one Birmingham.

The mayors and leaders of the Bold Goals Coalition who spoke to Village Living were all firm on one point: combining the Birmingham area’s cities, school systems and other institutions into a single greater metro — similar to Nashville’s city-county government, for instance — is not on the table.

“I think people get it twisted sometimes — cooperation doesn’t mean consolidation,” Birmingham Mayor Randall Woodfin said. “I think this conversation is different because it’s not saying cities should merge together.”

Reorganizing Birmingham into a single government has been proposed before. In 1970, the One Great City campaign touted the idea of a single metro government for the entirety of Jefferson County; however, the effort died in a state Legislature committee in 1971. But residents and leaders alike still seem to reject that approach.

The Public Affairs Research Council of Alabama (PARCA) released a 2017 report, commissioned by the Community Foundation of Greater Birmingham, that looked at governmental fragmentation in Jefferson County and its effect on area growth. 

As part of the report, PARCA surveyed 400 Jefferson County residents and found that 81 percent of the respondents favored regional cooperation, with the highest approval among 18- to 34-year-olds. However, only 43 percent of the people PARCA surveyed said they would support the idea of consolidation, with residents of mid-size cities like Hoover or Homewood showing only 25.5 percent support.

What the Bold Goals Coalition is suggesting instead is more of a middle ground: Keep your city boundaries, your councils, your schools and the other parts of your own cities. But where cities face the same problems or can’t go it alone, the Coalition wants to create systems so it makes sense to tackle it together.

Lagging behind

The Bold Goals Coalition’s Building (it) Together report paints the picture of a city that has struggled to keep up with a changing workforce and changing employment opportunities, especially in the wake of the 2008 recession.

Without a change in tactics, the report suggests that Birmingham will continue to fall behind its regional metro neighbors.

The Building (it) Together report is the work of Burning Glass, a Boston-based company that provides analytics software and research for job markets and economic development. Burning Glass Research Manager Ben Bradley said the report was created using three main sources: labor market data, Burning Glass software that collects data from job boards and postings across the U.S. and a series of focus groups with about 150 business leaders.

Bradley said he saw a “good amount of consensus” from business leaders in the community about their main worries when it comes to workforce and business climate in the Birmingham-Hoover metro area.

The major conclusions of the report were:

► Greater Birmingham’s economy is dominated by local industry rather than national or international “traded” industries, resulting in a lack of outside money coming to the area. 

► The area’s workforce is predominately in low-skilled occupations, and only 21 percent of the workforce is employed in occupations requiring a bachelor’s or advanced degree. Specialized roles take an above-average time for companies to fill.

► The Birmingham region has struggled more than similar cities in recovering from the recession, and it has not yet reached the pre-recession workforce of 535,000.

► Business leaders identified a need for more entrepreneurship and management talent in the area. 

► Birmingham lost about 360 working individuals per year to other cities between 2010-14.

► The local talent supply and employment demand do not match. Areas such as IT, finance and engineering do not have enough people to fill roles, and new graduates have degrees but don’t have the right workplace or hands-on experience.

► About 43 percent of undergraduate students leave Birmingham after graduation, and more than 50 percent of doctoral students move to other cities.

► Employers noted difficulty in finding ways to recruit minority job candidates. White students in Birmingham are earning the majority of four-year and advanced degrees, while minorities have some of the highest unemployment rates.

► Greater Birmingham will have 59,000 jobs to fill each year through 2026. The workforce is projected to grow 8.9 percent during that time.

“All of the data — if we continue to do things the way we’re doing it — is not promising,” Nanni said. “We’re just trying to have an honest look at the data. … To remain relevant and to grow and to be prosperous, we have to change the way we act.” 

Waymond Jackson, the Birmingham Business Alliance’s senior vice president of public policy, said the report findings didn’t surprise the BBA but did “validate” some of its existing economic development programs and strategic planning.

“Companies are making decisions on where to go based on talent,” Jackson said. “It’s slightly impossible to move the needle on issues like workforce and education working alone.”

Jackson said the BBA has narrowed its focus to a few industries, such as advanced manufacturing and IT, to create programs that train workers for current and future jobs. The BBA also has a team dedicated to bringing companies to Birmingham and keeping them there, particularly by identifying “pain points” about doing business in Birmingham.

Jackson said because people live, work and spend their money in different cities and counties across the region, every municipality has a stake in developing business opportunities and workforce across the region.

UAB Senior Vice Provost Suzanne Austin said the university has a dual interest in the study results, since it is both a major employer and a producer of future employees. Austin said the university is “already taking this report to heart” by looking at ways to increase graduates in growing fields and reviewing if curriculum matches employer demand, as well as ways to make Birmingham more attractive to new graduates from UAB and other schools.

Alabama Possible Executive Director Kristina Scott said the conclusion from the report that stood out to her the most was the need for talent development. Alabama Possible is an organization that works to address poverty and the barriers, such as education, that keep people from advancing to higher-paying, higher-skilled careers.

The Building (it) Together report’s data on the number of low-skilled jobs in Birmingham is of particular concern to Scott and Alabama Possible, especially with the report showing a need for more IT professionals.

Growing that talent pool through a variety of educational methods could make a lifelong difference for some of Birmingham’s impoverished families.

“We really need to cultivate the talent to make sure that people are equipped with the skills and education they need in order to thrive,” Scott said.

The equity issues between black and white Birmingham residents — including higher unemployment rates for black jobseekers — in the report are also signs, Scott said, that more work is needed.

“We’re not going to build equity by being passive,” she said.

From the data, the Building (it) Together report lists key recommendations to make changes in the problem areas the report identified:

► Invest in growing career fields, such as advanced manufacturing, engineering, information technology, life sciences and biotech.

► Seek and recruit national and international companies to Birmingham, and encourage local innovation and entrepreneurship.

► Universities should assess whether their graduates’ skill sets match what companies need. Existing research and education at UAB, for example, could build a strong regional biotech industry and draw those businesses to relocate to Birmingham, while keeping more graduates local.

► Invest in training for these career fields, including high school graduation rates, traditional college degrees and trade or other alternative training programs, particularly in moving low-skilled employees into high-skilled fields.

► Businesses and governments should work together to recruit talented leadership and entrepreneurs to the city.

► Work toward more diversity and equity in the workforce through training and recruitment.

All for one, one for all?

Individual cities of the Birmingham region could attempt to implement some of these steps solo.

And some municipalities have already taken steps in that direction, such as Innovation Depot encouraging entrepreneurship, the Birmingham Sister Cities program recruiting international businesses to the area and several cities’ interest in developing ways to attract technology companies.

The members of the Bold Goals Coalition, however, believe these efforts can’t succeed unless they’re coordinated. Indeed, if two neighboring cities are competing for the same new businesses, they could undermine each other. 

“What I don’t want to see is cities cannibalizing each other. … That really doesn’t help our region,” Homewood Mayor Scott McBrayer said.

Nanni said Birmingham’s regional structure was built in a time when a fractured collection of cities and towns could develop industry and grow independently of one another. Technology and globalization of the economy, he said, have changed the game.

“As we’ve shifted into an information age, economies have become more regional,” Nanni said. “So we’re kind of starting behind the starting line compared to these other cities.” 

Reviving an old idea

This isn’t the first time regionalism has been up for discussion in Birmingham.

Aside from One Great City’s consolidation plan in 1970, a project similar to Building (it) Together was proposed in 1997: Region 2020.

Region 2020 was a series of goals for central Alabama based on citizen feedback in public forums. From hundreds of ideas, Region 2020 came up with eight areas of focus as a shared vision for the entire region: government, environment, places and activities, economy and jobs, learning, moving around, quality of life and neighborhoods.

While some areas, such as additional parks and green space, saw forward movement, most of Region 2020’s goals never happened and the organization became part of the Birmingham Business Alliance in 2009. 

Each of the region’s cities looks different, and there is no one-size-fits-all approach when it comes to what each city needs to benefit.

Woodfin said Building (it) Together is different from these previous attempts because it can build on the ways that Birmingham’s cities already work together, without the threat of any city losing its independence or individual services.

Birmingham Office of Economic Development Director Josh Carpenter said he believes “the opportunities for gain so far outweigh the myopic losses that might occur,” and wants to convince residents and local governments that a rising tide lifts all boats.

While economic development is the current topic of concern, Carpenter said regional cooperation can extend to much more: infrastructure projects, public transit and providing emergency services, to name a few.

Nanni said: “What we’re really pushing is not an issue but a structure, a structure that is able to identify issues on an ongoing basis.”

A new generation of mayors

The success of regional cooperation hinges on buy-in from each of the many municipalities in the seven-county metro. While Birmingham’s nonprofits, universities and business organizations can take steps on their own to enact recommendations from the Building (it) Together report, Nanni said regional cooperation works only if the mayors and city and county governments can overcome a “really profound lack of trust” and sense of competition that has existed in the past.

Nanni said groups like the Mayors’ Association and the Regional Planning Commission of Greater Birmingham (RPCGB) already provide some of the foundational blocks to build these bridges.

“I think you’re going to see an entirely different attitude toward regional cooperation as we move down the road,” Hoover Mayor Frank Brocato said.

Several new mayors were elected around Birmingham in 2016 — including Woodfin, Brocato, Ashley Curry in Vestavia Hills, Stewart Welch in Mountain Brook and Tony Picklesimer in Chelsea — and those mayors’ attitudes toward cooperation is evidence the time may be right to breathe new life into the idea.

“You just have more resources. You have more people, you have more chambers [of commerce], you would just have more resources to use to put together a package so they [large companies] would consider Jefferson County rather than another city,” McBrayer said.

“I actually think regional cooperation is absolutely a necessity to help the smaller municipalities that surround the city of Birmingham accomplish our goals,” Picklesimer said, noting that Chelsea has been able to complete two recent projects through funding and assistance from the RPCGB.

Woodfin noted the positive response he has received from his counterparts at regular meetings of the Mayors’ Association. The over-the-mountain mayors have had some small-scale cooperative efforts of their own, including the recent Freedom from Addiction Coalition meetings that center on ways to reduce opiate and other drug abuse.

These mayors are also considering a non-poaching policy: if a business is interested in moving from one municipality to another, the cities won’t offer incentives to try to entice the company away from each other.

“The net effect of all of that is somebody wins, but they win at an expense to the other cities, and you start a precedent for these incentive programs that, eventually, you’re going to give away the farm to get somebody to move,” Curry said.

In July, it was announced that UAB is looking to move its hospital from Bessemer to Hoover, though the mayor has not officially confirmed the news. Despite the potential move from one city to another, Brocato said this was not an instance of poaching business.

“I don’t want to be put in a position where we are being pitted against each other,” Brocato said. “If [companies] ever try to pit us against the city that they’re in, then I would drop out of it [consideration].”

While mayors expressed support for the idea of cooperation, they did have some reservations. Brocato, for instance, said he wants to be a “metro-minded mayor” but his actions will always put Hoover’s benefit first.

“I’m going to do everything I can to bring the types of quality businesses that I can to our city. Hoover is number one for me,” Brocato said.

Woodfin said he thinks a good start to creating regional cooperation is for some of the mayors to identify an easy, “low-hanging fruit” project to “that solidifies that we know how to cooperate.” Continuing communication with each other will help too, he said.

“We can’t have it both ways. We can’t want our region area to grow and demand individually for our mayors to make it work, and then expect us not to work together,” Woodfin said.

Growing grassroots

Since the Building (it) Together report was released in June, members of the Bold Goals Coalition have been presenting the report findings to a number of groups around the region.

As they try to generate citizen and business support for the idea of cooperation, Carpenter said the City of Birmingham’s next steps are refocusing from the city’s physical capital — buildings and infrastructure, for instance — to its human capital and developing programs for talent attraction and retention. He said the city plans to hire a deputy director for talent development and create the Fred Shuttlesworth Opportunity Scholarship, to cover community college tuition for students to pursue degrees with strong career opportunities.

“I think Birmingham is poised for a new generation of public-private partnership,” Carpenter said.

Welch said he’s not sure what his role, as Mountain Brook’s mayor, would be in promoting regional cooperation, but he plans to continue to watch and support the progress of the Bold Goals Coalition in hopes of it giving a boost to the region.

At UAB, Austin said President Ray Watts has already convened a meeting of regional college presidents and provosts to talk about ways to produce graduates who are ready for the workforce and want to plant roots locally. She said changes to curriculum are also under consideration.

“There have to be conversations with the businesses that are hiring our students,” Austin said. “We really need to understand at a pretty deep level specifically what it is that they need.”

Austin said another meeting of university representatives is likely to happen to talk about hiring, curriculum and other changes.

“We have an incredible opportunity in front of us in this region,” Austin said. “We have the opportunity to become a case study in best practice in workforce development.”

“It’s past time for us to get together and look for places that we can work together to stimulate our region. There’s so much potential here and the way you’re going to tap that potential is by working together. You can’t just define that by your own turf,” Welch said.

View the full Building (it) Together report at buildingittogether.com, and the PARCA report at togetherweprosper.org.