Birmingham City Council delays vote on Northeast Area Framework Plan

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The Birmingham City Council – after a public hearing lasting 90 minutes – voted Tuesday, Sept. 5, to delay action for two weeks on an ordinance changing zone district boundaries in the Northeast Area Communities Framework Plan, which includes the East Pinson Valley, Huffman, Cahaba and Roebuck/South East Lake communities.

The framework plans for future development in the city’s nine communities were created recently with the help of the Regional Planning Commission of Greater Birmingham and with heavy citizen input.

A few area residents, including one from the neighboring community of Leeds, objected to the Northeast Area plan.

They noted that some of the area affected was land in the Cahaba River Watershed owned by the Birmingham Water Works Board – land the Alabama Attorney General ruled in 2001 should be protected from development due to possible damage to the area’s drinking water.

Mac Underwood, the general manager of the Water Works Board, told the council that the board had followed the AG’s instructions and had allowed no development in the affected areas.

“We have not requested any zoning changes in this land,” he said.

However, Underwood and Mark Parnell, one of the board’s attorneys, said that the board is only now preparing to file some of the paperwork connected with the 2001 order in Jefferson County Probate Court.

There have been several reasons for the long delay, according to Parnell, including litigation that followed the 2001 ruling as well as conflicting instructions from several subsequent state attorney generals.

However, Parnell and Underwood said they expect to file that paperwork within 30-60 days, after receiving final approval from Montgomery.

The current attorney general wants the board to finally file the paperwork, according to Parnell.

Council members, including Council President Johnathan Austin, stressed the importance of protecting the watershed from development and of the board filing the paperwork with the Probate Court.

They voted for the two-week delay to give the board more time to make that filing.

Underwood said the board, in addition to obeying the 2001 instructions from the attorney general, supports the creation of a new zoning designation for the land as a conservation district.

City staff began work in July to create this designation and hopes to have something to show to the council within a year, according to Tim Gambrel, the city’s principal planner.

The conservation district “would severely restrict any development” in the affected area, Gambrel said.

Gambrel said the zoning in place on the land is already very strict and said that the few parcels in the affected area not owned by the Water Works Board are ones that would be very difficult for anyone to develop.

On August 8, the council voted to endorse the framework plans for the Northeast Area Communities and the Southwest Area Communities -- both of which had been approved by the Birmingham Planning Commission -- and set dates for the public hearings.

To read more about the framework plans, go to imaginebham.com.