The Tuscaloosa City Council will vote to adopt or reject the tornado relief and rebuilding plan known as Tuscaloosa Forward tonight at its regular weekly meeting.
In a special morning meeting of the council last Tuesday, John McConnell, Tuscaloosa’s director of development services, presented parts of and additions to the plan as well as several arguments for the necessity of its adoption.
“This plan is a competitive edge,” he said. “[It] opens the door to funding resources that we all need.”
McConnell said Tuscaloosa needs to be on par with other damaged areas that are in competition for relief funds from a number of federal agencies.
“We’re at a crossroads,” McConnell said. “We can either go back to what we were doing April 26, which has a proven record of not doing what it had to do to help areas like the 15th Street corridor, or we can take the first step in the right direction.”
He emphasized the idea of the Tuscaloosa Forward plan only being a first step to recovery for property owners in the city, and was supported by councilman Bobby Howard, who said there had been a great deal of misconception surrounding the plan.
“A lot of people expect immediate change, and not a blueprint for the future,” Howard said.
McConnell said every current building ordinance in Tuscaloosa is based on a plan adopted in 1972 and that the adoption of the Tuscaloosa Forward plan would place the city in an appropriately modern condition.
“It is the first logical step to move from 1972 into 2011 in terms of commercial codes and zoning,” McConnell said.
Not everyone present supported the plan, though. Some business owners were dissatisfied with its many new regulations and codes for commercial property, zoning and signage.
After the presentation, before the council dismissed those present without taking questions or comments, Councilman Harrison Taylor asked for show of hands from those satisfied with the Tuscaloosa Forward plan, and then from those who did not like it, and the two groups were fairly evenly divided.
Councilman Lee Garrison encouraged the apprehensive to look past their worry and support the plan because it is essentially the only plan on the table.
“A lot of what’s on here may or may not ever happen,” Garrison said. “The funding may not happen. The elected officials may change. You just don’t know exactly what’s going to happen ten years down the road, but it’s better to have a plan, even with anxiety associated with it, than to have no plan at all.”
The plan’s proposal for the creation of a walking trail that marks and memorializes the path of destruction caused by the tornado that devastated the city in April has been gaining popularity in the community, but McConnell and the city council advised citizens to be cautious with their enthusiasm for the planned walkway, which they said was currently purely conceptual.
Mayor Walt Maddox and McConnell stressed that the walkway would take years to finish and might look nothing like it’s expected to. They also said it is complicated by easements, purchases of property and a lack of desire to force it on anyone opposed to it.
“The city has no intention or desire to place this in someone’s yard who doesn’t want it,” Maddox said. “It doesn’t make sense from a practical standpoint, and it doesn’t make sense from a moral standpoint.”
The council will vote to accept or reject the plan during their regular weekly meeting tonight at City Hall. The meeting begins at 6 p.m. Tuscaloosa residents will have an opportunity to speak during the meeting.
If You Go
What: City Council meeting to vote on Tuscaloosa Forward plan
Where: City Hall
When: 6 p.m.
