Whitmire on Budget Woes and Kid One Transport
Birmingham’s proposed 2010 operating budget is about $6 million dollars less than the current budget. It includes major cuts to some outside groups such as the downtown revitalization organization Operation New Birmingham and Child Care Resources. Mayor Larry Langford says “times are tough and the cuts are necessary”. But some of the groups being cut from the budget say they were given no warning. Birmingham Weekly’s Kyle Whitmire joins us to talk about the city budget, Jefferson County’s economic woes and the Richard Scrushy Trial. He tells WBHM’s Michael Krall that Mayor Langford’s budget caught many people off guard.
Kyle Whitmire writes the column War on Dumb for Birmingham Weekly. He spoke with WBHM’s Michael Krall.
We mentioned that many of the organizations that got zero-budgeted in Mayor Langford’s proposal were caught off-guard. One of those organizations was Kid One Transport …a non-profit group that provides free transportation to medical appointments for children and expectant mothers. So far this year, Kid One Transport has provided more than four-thousand rides. But executive director Karen Peterlin tells WBHM’s Tanya Ott that if the City Council doesn’t restore funding for her group it will have to turn away hundreds of people.
Karen Peterlin is president and C-E-O of Kid One Transport. The organization provides free transportation to medical appointments for low-income children and expectant mothers. It learned this week that its usual $70,000 allotment in Birmingham Mayor Larry Langford’s budget has been eliminated. Budget hearings begin next week.
~ Tanya Ott & Michael Krall, May 20, 2009.
YouTube agrees to pay Trump $24 million to settle lawsuit over Jan. 6 suspension
YouTube is the latest social media company to pay Trump tens of millions of dollars to resolve lawsuits brought before he returned to power. The money will fund a new ballroom at the White House.
From painting to producing: Birmingham DJ Andrea Really releases first album
Birmingham DJ Andrea Really wasn't always a music producer. She used to be a prolific painter. But when her art studio burned down in 2017, she pivoted careers. Really spoke with WBHM about that journey upon the release of her first album this summer, called Zeitgeist.
A year after Helene, a group of raft guides embarks on a river clean-up mission
A popular rafting river in the Appalachian mountains is still closed a year after Hurricane Helene, because there's just too much debris. Now, rafting guides have come together to help clean it up.
Lesotho’s Famo music: from shepherd songs to gang wars
In Lesotho, a style of traditional accordion music called Famo has become entangled with deadly gang rivalries. Once the soundtrack of shepherds and migrant workers, today it's linked to killings, government bans — and a fight over cultural identity.
Comic Cristela Alonzo grew up in fear of border patrol. ICE has ‘brought it all back’
For the first seven years of her life, Alonzo lived in an abandoned diner in a south Texas border town. Her new Netflix stand-up special is called Upper Classy.
Compass-Anywhere real estate merger could squeeze small brokerages
The deal, announced earlier this week, would combine the two largest U.S. residential brokerages by sales volume.