Birmingham City Council approves money for Healthy Food Fund
The Birmingham City Council — at a rare evening meeting on Tuesday, April 30 — voted 9-0 to appropriate $500,000 to create a Healthy Food Fund for the city, a key part of the new Healthy Food Initiative that is currently being finalized by Mayor Randall Woodfin’s administration.
The money in the fund will be used to incentivize grocers to locate in Birmingham, according to Josh Carpenter, director of the city’s Department of Innovation & Economic Opportunity.
“We are working on deals now that would use these funds,” Carpenter told reporters.
The Healthy Foods Fund is to be used to help offset the costs of opening stores in the city, including low-income areas, and make it easier for residents to access healthy food.
For example, the money could help grocers with such up-front costs as stock, hiring and renovation or build-out, according to Carpenter.
There are 149,000 Birmingham residents living in food deserts as designated by the USDA, or nearly 70 percent of the city’s population, Carpenter said.
The ordinance passed by the council on Tuesday night amended the city’s general fund budget for the 2019 fiscal year and approved total budget transfers of about $1,882,000. In addition to the funding for the Healthy Food Initiative, there was money for a few other city projects, including a new mainframe computer, two street sweepers and a renovation of the city council chambers.
Carpenter stressed that the passage of the funding for the Healthy Food Fund is a separate step from the approval of the Healthy Food Initiative itself, which he said will be an amendment to the city’s zoning ordinance.
That initiative has been working its way through a series of committee approvals and public hearings and should come before the council for a vote soon, according to Carpenter.
In crafting the measure, the city has been working with grocery companies, some local nonprofits and other stakeholders, Carpenter said.
The Healthy Food Initiative will, among other steps, limit the development of new dollar stores in the city.
The discount retailers “divert customers and revenue away from grocery stores and healthy food, and many grocery stores are forced to close,” he said.
Between 2005-2015, Jefferson County lost more grocery stores than all but two other counties in the state, according to Woodfin.
“We do think that dollar stores fill a need in our community, but they also pull customers away from grocery stores and from getting healthy foods,” Carpenter said on Tuesday.
The new initiative is meant to show that the administration will be “as aggressive in recruiting grocery stores as we are in recruiting the next 500-person tech company,” Carpenter said.
In addition to the Healthy Food Fund, the city has the option of offering grocers other incentives, such as sales tax rebates, he said.
The Healthy Food Initiative will also make it easier to operate mobile grocery stores, like one currently operated by a local food bank, according to Carpenter.
In February, Woodfin said the city will explore allowing community gardens in the city to sell their produce on site and perhaps allow farmers in public markets to operate for longer during the year.
OTHER BUSINESS
The council also passed a resolution in support of Senate Bill 98 in the Alabama Legislature, which would lessen the state’s penalties for possession of marijuana. Among numerous other changes, the bill would would require possession of two or more ounces of marijuana for a person to be charged with possession in the first-degree. The item was submitted and recommended by councilor John Hilliard.
As part of its consent agenda, the council amended the city’s capital fund budget for the 2019 fiscal year and took about $26,730 from other library improvement projects and appropriated it to Wylam Library. The Wylam Library, which is being replaced, held a special closing ceremony on April 26, according to a city news release. Demolition is expected to start in May, and the building, which measures 2,000 square feet, will be replaced with a 6,000-square-foot building. The facility is expected to open in January 2020. “I’m happy to see this $1.6 million project finally become a reality,’’ Woodfin said at the ceremony.