Fairfield is done. Face it.

The council meetings are the kind of things you see on news reports from the Eastern Bloc, where Roberts Rules of Order is overruled by those with the loudest voices. Or the strongest right hook.

It is dead. Face it.

Gone the way of U.S. Steel and of Larry Langford. Of the bingo halls that used to fill its coffers. Killed by time, and change, and ineptitude. And dependence on Walmart.

Fairfield is in the death throes today. The city council held an emergency meeting to lay off the entire police department because, since the closing of U.S. Steel's Fairfield Works and Walmart, the city is broker than a seven-dollar hooker.

Mayor Kenneth Coachman said he would continue to pay police officers as long as the city has money - which is at least a month. The Jefferson County Sheriff's office washed their hands of the whole ugly matter, and Fairfield residents are as glum as the day Langford went to jail.

And why not? Things are bad. Bad.

Fairfield City Hall.

According to bond documents filed the last time Fairfield borrowed money, Walmart was by far the biggest source of income. And it wasn't even close. Walmart provided about $127,000 a month, or almost twice as much tax money as anybody else. It was a third of the city's sales and use tax revenue.

A third.

If you added the next four largest sources of revenue - Home Depot, Burlington Coat Factory, Sears Roebuck and Foot Locker - they still wouldn't come close to equaling the impact of Walmart.

The Walmart closing this year was like reaching into the city of Fairfield and pulling out its heart. The political poison of Fairfield City Hall just hastened the death.

So now people are asking what next? Now people are wondering if the city of Birmingham will step in and annex Fairfield, if only to save it from itself.

Birmingham City Attorney Thomas Bentley said the merger is technically possible, if Fairfield residents want to do it and the citizens of Birmingham agree.

Fairfield would have to initiate the process.

And while the city of Birmingham has taken no official position on the idea, there are hurdles.

Chief among them is debt. Birmingham could not take on Fairfield's debt and maintain its own obligations. Fairfield has two sets of warrants totaling about $12 million in principal maturing in the 2030s.

Fairfield hasn't even filed annual audits in required disclosures with the Municipal Securities Rulemaking Boad, meaning it has been in technical default almost since the money hit its bank account. Coachman has said the city can't complete those audits because it can't even afford to pay the auditors.

And all that means Fairfield would have to declare bankruptcy to even be considered for annexation by Birmingham.

Birmingham, which has seen falling population over the last few decades, could certainly use a population infusion. But the city must decide if annexing Fairfield would add too much strain on police and fire services.

Fairfield has been beaten, and bloodied. It should be put out of its misery and buried, once and for all.

Make the request, Fairfield, so Birmingham can throw in a life line.