MUMBLINGS September 29, 2005

Many in Baldwin were interested in Mobile's mayor race. Sam Jones, long time county commissioner, was victorious with 56% of the vote. He is the first minority mayor for the city of Mobile.

Sam is an able leader and, so far as I know, has never even been accused of doing anything dishonest throughout his 18 years of being a member of the Mobile County Commission. He now faces a challenge to head the city in a new direction.

Mobile mayor for years, Mike Dow, takes credit for the progress he claims has been made in the city but never mentions the things that are negative. Unfortunately, there are too many negatives. There have been many good things happening during Dow's regime.

Hopefully, Sam will continue the good things and correct the things that have not been so good. I believe he has the ability and the determination to do a good job and I have confidence that he will be successful. Unfortunately, he and the citizens of Mobile have a lot to do and a long way to go.

For example, here are some of the problems the new mayor needs to consider in improving the direction for his city.

Alabama has 87,760 children under the age of 18 years of age living with grandparents. In Mobile, grandparents have 14,604 grandchildren under the age of 18 living with them.

Mobile has the highest percent, 26.4, living in poverty, which is the largest of any city in Alabama. 22.0 percent of Alabama grandparents live in poverty, according to a recent poll.

Viewing U.S. census information, it is easy to find that Mobile hasn't done so well. For years, Mobile was number two in Alabama in population. Now she is number three. In 1980, Mobile had 200,452 while Montgomery had 177,857. According to 2004 census, Montgomery has gone up to 200,983 while Mobile has fallen to 192,750. Even in the last five years, Mobile has lost several thousand.

In the last five years, businesses have increased in Mobile County by 27.34% while sales have dropped by 2.65% and employment has decreased 7.72%. Employment in manufacturing was the hardest hit with a decrease of 31.18%.

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Sales are down in retail trade while sales in finance, insurance, and real estate are up.

Let's see what Baldwin has done in the same period. The number of businesses is up 60.70%, employees, up 28.20% and sales, up 28.30%.

In Mobile, indicators are negative for the past five years with the exception of number of businesses, which increased. On the other hand, in Baldwin County of the ten economic categories, all are up except sales in mining and we've never had much mining.

Population wise, it has been estimated this same percentage of increase in Baldwin County will enable Baldwin to exceed Mobile in the next 25 or 30 years.

I have been urged to say something about politics; local, state, and national. With the exception of the hot mayor's race in Mobile, not much talk has been going on about local and state races. You can rest assured this will step up pretty soon because it is only until next Spring the primaries will be held and then, in November, the general election.

See you again soon, I hope.