This year, as much as $198,000 will be taken from neighborhood spending allocations to once again finance a NUSA trip. Some on the council are irate that tax dollars will be wasted while residents complain about flooding, abandoned buildings, and an alarming crime rate.

As is so often the case, the grandstanding Councilor Bert Miller was surprisingly candid about why he supports the conference expenditure. While praising neighborhood leaders for outstanding performance in general, Miller made no bones about his motivation as a NUSA cheerleader: “We’re sitting here beating up on our neighborhood people that put us in office, and I’m not going to do that,” Miller said. “I’ve got more sense than that. Let’s support the people who’ve supported us. In a year and a half we’re going right back to these same people to try to hold these [council] seats again. And these people will not forget this day. I support y’all 100 percent!”

Councilor Carol Reynolds, who is adamantly opposed to the expenditure, complained that she had received e-mail from all over the country expressing disgust with the behavior of some Birmingham attendees at last year’s conference. “I cannot support $49,000 a day to go to a conference with the history of representation that has occurred. We have projects that you should be using these dollars for, and this is frivolous!” Perhaps in response to Miller’s confession that he was supporting the delegation in order to ensure his re-election to the council, Reynolds noted that less than one-half of one percent of Birmingham voters participated in neighborhood officer elections.

Miller, who is no stranger to hurling accusations of racism at any who would disagree with him, resorted to a cheap shot in response to Reynolds’ accounts of misconduct. “I hope this is not divided along racial lines about saying our people don’t know how to act, because our people know how to act. I’m very offended by that.” Reynolds vehemently objected, as did Councilor Elias Hendricks, who also acknowledged receiving similar e-mail complaints about some representatives’ behavior, which included, among other undisclosed grievances, fish frys held on hotel balconies in violation of hotel regulations.

Mayor Bernard Kincaid, whose office recommended the conference expenditure, increased the funding of each neighborhood from $3,000 to $10,000 during his first term. Neighborhoods are required to spend at least $7,000 of their yearly allocation on capital projects, defined by state law as “anything that has a shelf life of 10 years or more,” according to Kincaid. Most neighborhoods spend the bulk of their unearmarked money for neighborhood “Fun Days,” local festivals that usually include food and carnival rides. [Reynolds and others on the council have been critical of this type of neighborhood spending as well.] Citing the fact that neighborhood officers serve on a volunteer basis, the Mayor defended the conference workshops and the fact that neighborhood leaders are interacting with other people from other cities. Kincaid described the conference as a “bargain for the city” in maintaining the neighborhoods’ function as “an extension of government.”

Though faced with a $16 million deficit in fiscal year 2004, city officials continue to toss money around like Mardi Gras beads. According to the NUSA web site (www.nusa.org/history.htm), among the activities offered to NUSA attendees at the 1995 NUSA Conference in Birmingham was a junket to the Birmingham Race Course. How betting on dogs soothes the fears of neighborhood residents preoccupied with blight and declining property values remains a mystery. At last year’s conference in Chattanooga, prospective Birmingham mayoral candidates held receptions to entertain neighborhood leaders. Being courted by those who approve the funds to finance such conference trips should give pause to neighborhood officials traveling on the city’s dime. &