Addressing the Issues....

My last letter stated that I intended to do all I can to make Gardendale the best community in Jefferson County. How can a councilman do that? My opinion is this: BELIEVE in what you are doing and have great passion toward your belief.

The first thing that makes a community great is for people to feel safe while living there. Second, have the opportunities for recreation, arts, and civic events. Third, be able to dine and shop for the necessities nearby.

Police protection is a huge factor in making people feel secure. We have a very low crime rate in Gardendale. The crimes that do occur are usually crimes against property and not people. We can thank our law enforcement guys for that. With that being said, the next administration must be ready to stay ahead of the ball and understand that as Gardendale grows and becomes more diverse, the chances of increased crime will grow as well. We must be willing to continue to train and add officers to the force as the Chief sees fit.

Fire protection is very important as well. The last administration funded a new Fire Station on 31 Hwy and added full time fire fighters. We must continue this trend by putting enough men and materials in place to continue cover our city. The Chief has stated that he needs a firehouse on the west side of town if he is going to be able to keep response time down. For the safety of our citizens, we need to fund these things as well.

Our recreation facilities are top notch at first glance. If we look deeper, we see that our children are using the same baseball and football fields that I played on when I was a child. That was 35 years ago. The baseball teams do not have fields to practice on, and we don’t have a field for kids over 12 years old. The football teams are practicing on the baseball fields. Many nights you can’t find a place to park. If you have a boy and a girl that play, you have to go to two parks on opposite sides of town. As our population has increased over the last 35 years, and the number of children playing sports in this area has also increased, we have not adequately increased our facilities to accommodate them. These problems need to be addressed. Because our kids and the sports they play are so very important to me, I will seek out a place to centralize and expand our football and baseball facilities. I will encourage the council and mayor to seek funding for this expansion.

As a city, we are very reliant on the high school as a place to have plays and pageants. The High school has worked with the city in this area, but a full-time facility would be so beneficial to our city. While a state of the art facility could have been put in with the civic center, this was not deemed a necessity at the time of construction. I recognize the importance of Fine Arts in a successful community, and our residents have so much to offer in this arena. We should consider building a facility that would greatly increase our options for Gardendale’s Fine Arts programs. I would love to see this happen.

Finally, we should address our options for dining and shopping. I will address this issue in a separate post, because the addition of new business is probably the most important issue we as candidates face. This topic needs individual discussion. Stay tuned for that…

I am not griping about our great city. I am merely pointing out some issues that are at the forefront of the lunch-table discussions around town. We have merely “gotten by” in these areas for far too long, and we need to get back to excelling in these areas. If I am given the opportunity, I will address these things with the passion I talked about earlier. I do NOT believe a tax is needed for the funding of these projects. If we bring in more revenue through viable businesses, we will have the resources to make some of these dreams a reality.

Thank You,
Mike “Buckett” Burkett