Birmingham City Hall

The Birmingham City Hall is shown in Birmingham, Ala., Monday, August 5, 2013. (Mark Almond/malmond@al.com)

(MARK ALMOND)

Randall Woodfin

By Randall Woodfin, a candidate for mayor of Birmingham, an attorney and a member of the Birmingham School Board

Trust is the assured reliance on the character, ability, strength, or truth of someone or something. Trust is a critical aspect of any relationship, especially the relationship between City Hall and Birmingham residents. For our city to reach its full potential, every citizen must trust that their elected officials have their best interests at heart.

Unfortunately, that is not the case in Birmingham. The last few years have been plagued by infighting between Mayor Bell and the City Council, a corruption probe with City Hall in its sights, and lingering questions concerning extravagant travel and security expenses from the Mayor's Office. All of these distractions have diverted our attention from more urgent challenges facing the future of Birmingham. As Mayor, one of my top priorities will be repairing the broken relationship between the Mayor's Office and the City Council.

Birmingham has a long list of challenges that demand our attention, yet constant infighting between the Mayor's Office and City Council continue to embarrass the city. Building trust and a positive working relationship with the City Council requires cooperation and meeting Councilors halfway on their district priorities.

As Mayor, I will work with each City Councilor to identify shared priorities between them and my office, and assign rapid response teams of city agencies to each City Councilor that can quickly address city service delivery issues in their districts.

To further improve our accountability to Birmingham taxpayers, as Mayor, I would publish my travel schedule and expenditures on the city's website. This is extremely important, especially since our current mayor has spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on travel - in some cases lodging at luxury hotels at taxpayers' expense. As Mayor, I will work with the City's Chief Information Officer to make my travel schedule and expenditures easily accessible and searchable on the city website.

Hundreds of thousands of dollars a year go into paying for Mayor Bell's security detail, which takes uniformed cops off our streets. These officers could be patrolling our neighborhoods, but instead, they're protecting the Mayor on the taxpayer's dime. The Mayor of Birmingham doesn't need a full-time security detail, and as Mayor, I would eliminate the security detail and have those officers reassigned to our highest-crime neighborhoods.

Lastly, deeply concerning allegations regarding "pay to play" allegations and intimidating contractors requires that the city revisit its nepotism policy to ensure that no one closely related to the Mayor has any perceived influence on city contracts. As Mayor, I will work with the City Council to adopt a nepotism policy that would ban any close relatives of mine from working in any roles that could potentially influence city contracts.

As a lifelong Birmingham resident, I am optimistic about the future of our great city. We must implement an all hands on deck approach if we truly want Birmingham to be the best version of itself. Achieving this takes a renewed commitment to openness and transparency. That is the only way to bring pride and trust back to City Hall.