Council makes January Human Trafficking Awareness Month in city
The Mountain Brook City Council — at its regular meeting for Tuesday, Jan. 12 — declared January to be Human Trafficking Awareness Month in the city, recognized a long-time local retailer and took care of some other business, including a reappointment to the Park and Recreation Board.
The council, due to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, met via Zoom, as they have for several months.
The agenda for the meeting was relatively light.
Fighting human trafficking
The council declared that January is to be Human Trafficking Awareness Month in the city. January is also National Slavery and Human Trafficking Prevention Month in the United States.
The proclamation is the latest step by the city to combat human trafficking, which national law enforcement says is a rapidly growing problem.
The Mountain Brook City Council voted in December to make the city a Trafficking Free Zone, a program created by the U.S. Institute Against Human Trafficking (USIAHT) to educate community members on sex trafficking.
At the time, Mountain Brook was the only second city in Alabama to issue such a proclamation.
During 2020, the city began training all city staffers in awareness of trafficking and implementing a zero-tolerance policy for sex trafficking and sex buying in its human resources handbook.
Barbara Fowler, co-chair of the Community Engagement and Awareness Committee for the Child Trafficking Solutions Project, told members the city should be proud of its efforts.
“Other cities in Alabama are following your lead,” Fowler said.
“You guys have been the first to take this on and do the training,” she said.
The COVID-19 pandemic has heightened the risk of children — many of whom are doing more of their school work online — of being contacted and lured by predators, Fowler said.
“As parents, we need to be vigilant about what our children are doing online and set up those safety precautions and have these conversations with them,” she said.
Jefferson County Circuit Court Judge Kechia Davis, who said the courts are seeing more trafficking cases, also praised the city for training its employees.
“You are a model for others to follow,” Davis said.
The city’s decision in 2020 to initiate the training of employees in trafficking awareness has had a “significant” influence on other municipalities in Jefferson County and around the state, said Jan Bell of the Child Trafficking Solutions Project.
“We are connecting other leaders with what you guys have done, and it helps them overcome some of their reticence or objections, no conceptually, but literally how to actually do this in the midst of all the other responsibilities they have,” Bell said. “Your influence is huge and the impact y’all are making in these efforts is huge.”
Recently elected City Council member Gerald Garner recently completed his training and called it “eye-opening.”
“The consequences of human trafficking are far reaching,” he said, and to trafficking as “a plague.”
‘A wonderful community’
The council honored Billy Angell, owner of Oak Street Garden Shop in Crestline Village, for the 30th anniversary his business celebrated in 2020.
“I feel like I am extremely lucky to be able to do business, not only in the community I grew up in, but what I would consider to be one of the finest communities in the country,” Angell told members.
“It’s a wonderful community and wonderful customers,” he said.
Angell also praised the Mountain Brook city government for the support he has received.
City leaders “bent over backwards to help me get in business” in 1990, he said.
In addition, “the city — every time there has been an issue — has always come to my rescue, so I feel very fortunate there,” Angell said.
Park Board reappointment
The council voted to reappoint Meredith Waldrop to a second term on the city’s Parks and Recreation Board.
Her first term on the board came to an end on Jan. 9, said Parks and Recreation Superintendent Shanda Williams.
Waldrop, along with three other city residents, submitted applications for the board seat.
However, all of the members of the park board recommended that Waldrop retain her seat.
“She is very active with lacrosse and our sports programs and has been helpful in decisions concerning upgrades to our fields and facilities,” Williams said in a letter to the council.
Waldrop also has several of her own children who are active in the city’s sports programs, Williams told members.
New chamber president
Council members — as well as Suzan Doidge, executive director of the Mountain Brook Chamber of Commerce — also recognized Ricky Bromberg, who will serve as chamber president in 2021. Bromberg is the president of Bromberg’s jewelers in Mountain Brook Village.
“I look forward to working with the chamber and helping the city in whatever way we can be of assistance,” Bromberg told members.
“We’ve got a prize in Ricky,” said Councilor Alice Womack, who serves as liaison with the chamber. “He has been a long-time supporter of the chamber and the city, and always very vocal at our meetings and helps us and will continue to.”
”We’re excited about the year ahead, and we’re excited about getting back to some sort of normalcy, whatever that is,” Doidge said.
The following are among other items passed by the council:
- A $25,000 contract with Gray's Tree Service to clear some trees around fields 5, 6 and 7 at the Athletic Complex. The clearing is necessary to prevent additional maintenance issues for the fields, which now have artificial turf.
- An annexation of a vacant lot at 4851 Mills Springs Circle. The property owner will use the parcel for a single-family residence.
- A resolution ratifying a $300,000 transfer from the city’s 2020 general fund surplus and $200,000 from the 2020 stabilization fund surplus to the infrastructure capital projects fund.
- A resolution transferring $161,000 to the Mountain Brook Board of Education to reimburse the board for PPE, sanitation supplies and services, equipment and other costs incurred in 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic. “Initially, the BOE submitted — under the city's name — a CAREs Act reimbursement request to Jefferson County for these expenses, but due to red tape it was easier for the city to submit other expenses in place of those claimed by the BOE,” City Clerk Steven Boone told Village Living.
The council’s next regular meeting is scheduled for Jan. 25 at 7 p.m.