"Mobile Should Be Our Example for Cooperation"
Nov 18th, 2008
The following the printed in the Birmingham News:Mobile should be our example for cooperation
November 16, 2008
The Birmingham News
By: Tom Scarritt, Editor of The Birmingham News
Scientists say they have taken pictures of planets orbiting two different stars in our galaxy. While astronomers have seen indirect evidence of these "extrasolar" planets before, these may be the first direct images of those distant neighbors.
I felt a bit like I was visiting such an alien planet when I attended a meeting recently in Mobile. We have read about the economic development there and heard Gov. Bob Riley hold Mobile up as an example of what Birmingham could do, but seeing in person the big new downtown buildings and ongoing construction is striking.
The city's biggest economic development challenge, Mayor Sam Jones told us, is a shortage of downtown property. Everyone wants to be downtown, he said.
We should have such problems.
Mobile has been blessed with good leadership for more than a decade, first with Mike Dow as mayor and now with Jones. During the years when the economy was strong, Birmingham had a mayor who did little to make the city grow. Now that we have a mayor who wants to do everything, there is little money to invest in growth.
It takes more than a mayor, though, to make a city grow. It takes cooperation, in attitude and in action. That is where Mobile appears to excel.
Jones made it clear Mobile views economic development as a regional issue. When a plant locates anywhere near Mobile, it means job opportunities for city residents, whether or not it is within the city limits.
We in Birmingham spend too much time and resources competing over how the pie will be sliced, rather than working to make the pie bigger. Whether it is suburbs luring car dealers away from Birmingham or Birmingham luring a hospital back, we are just moving the existing pieces around on the board. Mobile has been more successful at bringing in new players.
We have had experience working together for regional development. Both Birmingham and Jefferson County contributed incentives to help bring the Mercedes-Benz plant to Tuscaloosa County, knowing our community would benefit from the plant itself and the many suppliers it would attract.
We need to recapture that sense of common purpose.
The city of Birmingham can and should be a leader in that cooperation, but success will require a lot more players to join the team. Folks in the suburbs will have to quit maligning Birmingham and start aligning with the city to promote regional initiatives. Jefferson County is caught up in its own debt crisis, but it still could be a partner in selling the region. Neighboring counties, too, should be involved in bringing jobs to the area.
Mobile has chosen international business as its particular target. "We look at the world as our market," Jones told The News earlier this year. "A lot of our recruitment efforts are international." We should be able to agree on some targets, too, and focus our collective efforts on those businesses.
Birmingham has the institutional intellect, the business muscle and the human capital to lead the state in economic growth. We just need the will to work together to make it happen.
Tom Scarritt is editor of The News. E-mail: tscarritt@bhamnews.com.