Randall Woodfin is rearing up for his mayoral campaign this year. Photo by Ian Keel/Photo Editor

Community ReporterRandall Woodfin describes himself as “a proud son of Birmingham.” This is hardly debatable given that he has family living in neighborhoods from Kingston to Collegeville and West End to Fountain Heights. For him, giving back to the city that made him who he is seems simple enough, and as a candidate for Mayor of Birmingham, he has big plans for the city he calls home.Woodfin is a graduate of Morehouse College and the Cumberland School of Law at Samford University. He has served as a city attorney for eight years and has spent three years on the Birmingham City School Board, serving most of that time as board president.From back-room brawls to the ongoing Water Works debate, much has been said about the current administration’s two-term tenure at City Hall. The mayoral candidate has spoken to this, claiming that the city’s nearly quarter of a million residents are witnessing a “leadership crisis.”“I see a lot of issues as a lawyer for the city [and] as a school board member,” Woodfin said. “There’s some legitimate issues going on in our community. There’s a different style of leadership that’s needed at City Hall. One that’s collaborative. One that’s big picture.”While he believes that his resume speaks for itself, Woodfin stressed that his candidacy is more about giving back to his hometown.“It’s never enough for a person to say ‘here’s my education, and here’s how long I’ve been doing something,’” Woodfin said. “Qualifications should be based around answering the question of whether or not this [candidate] cares for me, if they are going to work for me.”Woodfin’s platform is composed of four main tenets, but the magnitude of these is demonstrative of where the city stands in his eyes. Education, neighborhood revitalization, small businesses and public safety are the foci of his candidacy, but he makes clear that these are far reaching.“We need an administration that is intentional about improving quality of life for our residents,” Woodfin said. “That currently doesn’t exist. If it did exist, I wouldn’t be running.”As the largest school system in the state of Alabama, the Birmingham City School District operates 43 different public schools in city limits. Last year, only seven of these passed state standards. Woodfin believes that this is the inevitable effect of a city whose adults are either disinterested or uninvolved with the education of the city’s children.“In our community, not all of us are doing our part towards education,” Woodfin said. “We need our parents and our community to play their part.”To change this, he suggests that the city take a greater role in the years before children begin attending school through the use of early child learning centers.“There’s a reason you don’t start driving a car at 30 or 40 [years old],” Woodfin said. “You’d never learn how. This is why we have to focus on fundamental education at an earlier age.”Under his administration, the city’s high schools would also begin offering trade programs for their students, which would allow teenagers to be certified in a specific trade before graduating, thus preparing them for immediate employment if they choose not to attend college.“No child should be embarrassed about where they’re going next,” Woodfin said. “We need to empower them with the options of what they can do next.”Additionally, he plans to have the city break into the “summer space,” enabling students to either become employed or engage in the community.For Woodfin, these plans would also affect what is seen as an ever-growing issue in Birmingham: crime. In 2013, Birmingham was named the fifth most dangerous city in America and the city remains near the top of the list year after year. Through his education agenda, he believes that he can make a large dent in this issue.“Young people need the opportunity to work,” Woodfin said. “If you’re working, you’re not out here committing crime. We have to make this a priority.”Furthermore, Woodfin believes that poverty is much to blame for the city’s crime problem. With a rate over two times the national average, it is estimated that 32 out of every 100 people residing in city limits lives under the poverty line.“We have reached the point in poverty where there’s an overwhelming amount of distress, which turns into reckless disregard for your own life,” Woodfin said. “To fix this, we have to turn back to our communities. We have to provide a way out of poverty.”All of this, for Woodfin, is in an attempt to make Birmingham what it deserves to be. It is about finding the city’s identity, engaging its history and plotting its future.“We can be the manufacturing hub of the South again,” Woodfin said. “With UAB and the Southern Research Institute, we can be a biotech hub. We can have a conversation to become the alternative energy hub of the region.”Woodfin believes that Birmingham can accomplish these things and should accomplish these things. But he also believes that there has to be a change in the way the city is run.“We have to have priorities,” Woodfin said. “The city can’t afford a $1 million security team or a $10 million personal staff. That’s abusive, and it causes us to lose our priorities. Is education a priority? Is crime abatement a priority? Not for the current administration.”Wallace Golding can be reached at wsgolding@uab.edu and on Twitter @WGolding_4.