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Last week Jefferson County District 3 Commissioner Bobbye Humphryes was enraged when a community sports park was killed for McCalla after Commissioners Shelia Smoot and George Bowman cried foul.
Smoot and Bowman are arguing that the County Commission historically has not paid out money from a Community Development Block Grant (CDBG) equally.
Bowman represents District 1, made up largely of poor Birmingham residents, and Smoot represents District 2 which includes some of the County's poorest cities such as Brighton and Lipscomb.
Prior to 2002 Smoot Contends that the vast majority of CDBG dollars has been spent in Districts 3 under former Commissioner Mary Buckelew and District 4 Bettye Fine Collins with districts 1, 2, and 5 getting minimal shares of the money. Both Districts include a large percentage of unincorporated Jefferson County.
That's changed in recent years as Smoot has fought for just over six-million dollars in projects for her district which include money for major projects in Brighton, Lipscomb, and Midfield.
But Districts 1 and 5 continue to see only a third as much. Bobbye Humphryes explains that the way a CDBG works is that the money can only be spent in areas that do not receive their own CDBG money.
This prevents the county from being able to spend dollars in Birmingham, Bessemer, and Hoover.
Because Bowman represents about 107,000 people in Birmingham, District one gets a smaller share of the pie. Commissioner Jim Carns represents a large portion of Hoover and Vestavia Hills. CDBG money is designed to assist poor areas and thus it's difficult to find areas in District 5 that can receive the money.
A breakdown of the dollars spent between the districts since October 1997 is as follows:
District 1 - $2,150,948.43
District 2 - $6,110,057.68
District 3 - $7,361,603.39
District 4 - 6,580,884.07
District 5 - 1,215,601.75
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