Perception often trails reality, and that’s the way it is with Alabama’s urban development. We tend to think of our state as the small, rural place that it once was — but is no longer. As a result, we haven’t paid enough attention to modernizing the way local public services are financed, organized and delivered.
Alabama is no longer a small state; it has 4.8 million residents, which ranks 23rd among the 50 states. Rural areas remain, but 70 percent of us live in the 11 urbanized metropolitan areas of the state. Suburbanization and the lengthy journey to work tie these metropolitan counties together and complicate the ability to provide effective and economical public services.
For example, the city of Birmingham has 216,000 residents but draws another 94,000 commuters into work every day. This means its daytime population is 43 percent greater than the number of residents. The same workday increase occurs in Montgomery (+18 percent), Mobile (+22 percent) and Huntsville (+27 percent), as well as in the smaller metropolitan central cities. The counties that contain these central cities also gain population during the workday. On the other hand, suburban cities and counties, where many commuters live, lose population during working hours.
Commuters as well as residents use the roads, drink the water and benefit from police and fire protection in both kinds of communities. To complicate matters further, counties as well as cities provide law enforcement, roads, parks and other kinds of services. Commuters vote only in the city and county where they live, not where they work. Without some kind of regional solution, it is easy to see how services can be duplicated or misdirected, leaving needs unmet.
Regional solutions
In other states, two kinds of regional solutions have been tried. One is to consolidate city and county governments, creating an area-wide arrangement in which everyone is represented and pays taxes based on services received. This approach has been successful in such cities as Nashville, Louisville and Jacksonville, among others.
Consolidating particular services is a more limited approach. A common step is to rationalize law enforcement services, which normally are provided by the county sheriff as well as city governments. In Charlotte, N.C., for example, the Mecklenburg County Sheriff maintains jails and serves the courts, while a consolidated Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Department is responsible for crime-fighting.
Alabama’s urban areas would benefit from considering these kinds of regional solutions to the problems caused by population growth.
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