Mayors from 22 cities in Jefferson County signed a “Good Neighbor Pledge” Wednesday, committing their cities to a set of economic development ground rules designed to prevent incentive bidding wars and counterproductive poaching between the patchwork of municipalities that comprise the county.
With the Good Neighbor Pledge, the mayors hope to end divisive competition and encourage cooperation in recruiting new business from outside the region. Recruiting businesses from one Jefferson County city to another with incentives costs both cities and results in no net gain for the region.
The Pledge is an outgrowth of the Community Foundation of Greater Birmingham’s efforts to encourage regional cooperation and job growth in Jefferson County, an effort that began by commissioning PARCA to research and report on models of cooperation from across the country. The resulting report, Together We
“In the past, our cities tended to compete rather than cooperate,” said Hoover Mayor Frank Brocato. “Today, economic development favors metro areas that work together better as a region.”
The 22 cities represent over 75 percent of the county’s population, including the City of Birmingham, Bessemer, Hoover, Mountain Brook, Vestavia Hills, Homewood, Trussville, Argo, Brighton, Center Point, Clay, Fairfield, Graysville, Lipscomb, Midfield, Mulga, Pleasant Grove, Sylvan Springs, Tarrant, Trafford, Trussville, Vestavia Hills, Warrior, and West Jefferson.
The signing of the pledge took place in the Jefferson County Commission chambers and featured Birmingham Mayor Randall Woodfin, Jefferson County Commissioner Steve Ammons, and Jefferson County Mayors Association president, Center Point Mayor Tom Henderson. They were joined by other commissioners and mayors from cities big and small.
The agreement grew out of conversations within the Jefferson County Mayors Association, which were facilitated by the Community Foundation. Of the various cooperative approaches described in
In Metro Denver’s effort to unite its sprawling and fragmented region around a unified approach to economic development, one of its first steps was creating a Code of Ethics that spelled out what is acceptable and what isn’t when cities are working to recruit businesses. Denver’s agreement aimed to stop cities from fighting over local business relocation and focus instead on a collective approach to attracting new business from outside the region.
In addition to the Code of Ethics, Denver developed a Metro Mayors Caucus, an issue-oriented regular meeting of area mayors which facilitates communication and cooperation among the region’s cities.
Both ideas helped launch the effort that bore fruit Wednesday. The conversations at the Jefferson County Mayors Association spawned a committee chaired by Mountain Brook Mayor Stewart Welch, which examined Denver’s Code and gathered other examples from across the country including local government agreements in place in Milwaukee, San Diego, Dayton and Cuyahoga County, Ohio; and the Fort Wayne region of Northwest Indiana. The committee then drafted a version for Jefferson County.
The Pledge is not a legal document but an agreed upon set of principles and protocols. It establishes an Advisory Consulting Committee to serve as a forum for interpreting the pledge in real-world situations and resolving disputes that might arise.
The mayors pledged not to initiate contact with a business located in another Jefferson County city with the intention of enticing that business to relocate. And if a business is seeking to move from one Jefferson County municipality to another, the mayors pledged not to offer financial incentives to encourage the move.
On the other hand, the Pledge encourages mutual aid in efforts to
The Pledge does not apply if a local business is expanding and establishing new operations that will not result in job loss in the original municipality.
Along with the Pledge itself, more comments from the various mayors are available in the news release distributed Wednesday.