Council discusses Lane Park Road paving needs

Billy Pritchard was beside himself, disappointed that the City of Birmingham hasn’t done a better job maintaining one of its streets that is traveled regularly by Mountain Brook residents. 

Lane Park Road is a Birmingham thoroughfare which is the city’s gateway to the Birmingham Botanical Gardens, but the road is in need of repair due to potholes. 

“It's just really disappointing,” the councilman said during the Jan. 9 Mountain Brook City Council meeting. “That is probably, maybe one of the top two major tourist attractions for the City of Birmingham and it's their road. It's their entrance way for tons of people from Mountain Brook going in there and also from around the state. 

“It's just really disappointing they won't fix their own road,” Pritchard continued. “If they're not going to do it, we ought to do it.” 

Councilman Lloyd Shelton said it's great for Mountain Brook to fix the potholes.

“We're stepping in and fixing a problem of another city,” Shelton said. “What else would be in it for us, other than we're doing it because we're tired of waiting?” 

Mayor Stewart H. Welch III said he initially thought getting Birmingham to fix the potholes would be easy, but has since learned it is not that simple. 

“Even though it's Birmingham's road, it is probably 90 percent used by Mountain Brook residents,” Welch said. “And every Mountain Brook resident assumes it's our road, and that we're not taking care of it.” 

The council decided to delay taking action on the road. In the meantime, City Manager Sam Gaston said he will seek cost estimates from Mountain Brook Public Works Director Ronnie Vaughn about what it would take to pave the trouble spots on the street and/or patch them.  

“I was going to talk with Birmingham,” Gaston said, “about some additional funds, what might be needed.” 

Gaston said Lane Park Road is basically the dividing line between Mountain Brook and Birmingham. When a street is a dividing line between cities, generally half the street is in one city and half the street is in the other city, he said.  

“Here, for whatever reason, coming out of Mountain Brook Village, all the street, the right of way, is in Birmingham,” Gaston said. “We’d like to see what we can do to make it look a little bit better.” 

In other matters: 

• AmWaste District Manager Rick Sweeney gave an update on the company’s garbage collection service. He acknowledged having had 1,355 missed services after one month, of which 322 residences accounted for 901 of those misses. 

“I’m pleased to announce that in the last six weeks, we had a total of 389 missed services, which is about a .43 percent failure rate … or a 99.57 success rate,” Sweeney said. “We’re certainly not perfect (but) we did have one day when we had zero misses reported for the day. That’s our goal every day.” 

• The council approved the city’s tree protection ordinance, after it was tweaked to keep Mountain Brook in line for Tree City USA recognition. 
• The panel granted a request to extend the Caldwell Mill Road bridge project for 74 days, beginning on Dec. 14.  
• Conditional use was granted to Magic City Cheer at 229 Country Club Park. It is located in the former 32 Degree Yogurt location. 
• A transit service agreement was authorized for fiscal 2023 with Birmingham-Jefferson County Transit Authority for the Zoo Route. 

“It covers parts of Mountain Brook Village, the Zoo and Lane Park,” Gaston said. “That's the only really fixed route that we have.” 

• The council set a special called meeting for 5 p.m. on Monday, Jan. 30 for a public hearing to rezone property from Residence B district to Planned Unit Development (PUD) district at 2305 Montevallo Road.  

The next regular meeting of the Mountain Brook council is 7 p.m. on Jan. 23.