Jefferson County Commissioners Joe Knight and Jimmie Stephens during the Sept. 8, 2020 meeting.
Joe Knight didn’t want Fultondale tornado victims to miss out on help from whomever that aid might come.
The District 4 Jefferson County Commissioner suggested that a resolution on today’s commission agenda be tweaked to broaden the scope of entities that could come to the north Jefferson County city to assist in cleanup.
Initially, the resolution authorized the Alabama Forestry to help in debris removal from the Black Creek Park area, granting permission to access the city-owned property.
“It may be Forestry or it may be another agency from Alabama, like ADEM or somebody like that,” Knight said. “All this does is gives the ability for these entities to come on their property and use their park in order to get access to Black Creek.”
Knight, whose district includes Fultondale, said Thursday there could be repercussions to not clearing the debris.
“We haven’t really decided whose responsibility it is to go there,” he said. “But somebody has to get those big trees out of that creek or it’s going to back up and start flooding and start blocking roads and flooding these houses that are damaged.”
Commissioners did approve tweaking that resolution and then passed the resolution.
They also approved hiring 12 temporary laborers for road cleanup, which could include cleaning up storm debris in Fultondale. The commission debated that measure during Tuesday’s committee meeting.
Knight later mentioned that Cares Act funds had been allotted to help people pay their residential rent. He noted that storm victims are affected by two emergencies — the pandemic and the tornado.
“We spent a lot of time and a lot of money on rental assistance from COVID funds,” he said. “Now we’ve got this new stream of funds that are going to do the same thing. What I was asking is to look for a way to get these people some help, no matter what the funding source.
“They need some rental assistance just to have a roof over their head,” Knight continued. “We’re (putting) them in hotels but that’s only sustainable for so long. Unless FEMA declares we’ve reached that threshold, we can’t put somebody else ahead of somebody that’s already in line for one of those units. If there’s an emergency declared, then you can make exceptions and we got four or five units that we can utilize these for rental.”
The commissioner said the county spent nearly $2 million in Cares Act funds on rental assistance.
“We have a real emergency need for rental places, short term,” he said. “But let’s see if we can find a way to help them. That’s what I’m trying to do.”
In another matter, commissioners voted 4-1 to deny the application of C&D Landfill to establish a landfill in Mount Olive.
Lashunda Scales cast the lone vote to approve the matter.
Nine Birmingham nonprofits will receive funding from the city’s Building Opportunities for Lasting Development grant initiative this year, despite an overall reduction in funding for the program.
Within about a year, the state has lost almost 10,000 Alabamians to COVID-19.
Currently, there are six people in the race for mayor of Birmingham. The filing deadline is July 10.
The Jefferson County Commission is conducting its duties in accordance with state law, says a report from the Alabama Examiners of Public Accounts.
An epidemiologist at UAB Medicine thinks that Alabama may be headed toward a long-sought goal in the COVID pandemic and may reach that goal sooner than many had expected.
The city of Birmingham is sending two sets of lobbyists to Montgomery — one from Mayor Randall Woodfin’s office and one from the City Council.
