Northport Council President Proposes Permanently Protecting Parks & Public Places

The head of the Northport City Council is proposing new law which would permanently protect the parks and public spaces in the city from being used for any other purpose without a vote of the citizens.

During their Monday night council meeting, Council President Christy Bobo said she is asking the professional staff at City Hall to draft an ordinance that would require a vote of the citizens of Northport - not its five-member council - to change the use of those spaces.

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"I am requesting that the city administrator instruct staff to create a plan to dedicate the Northport Community Center, the Hasson Community Center and Civitan Park as permanent parks," Bobo said. "If the council votes to make these areas public parks, that decision cannot be changed without a vote from the citizens of Northport."

As the Thread has previously reported, the Community Center was once slated for demolition to make way for a coffeeshop and multi-family housing but was spared after public outcry and has since been renovated by the city. 

The Hasson Center has also been the site of extensive upgrades both publicly and privately funded and now serves as the home the Boys & Girls Club of West Alabama in Northport.

"With the opening of the Northport Heritage Museum this past week, Northport has shown its commitment to maintaining and celebrating its historical and cultural identity," Bobo said. "To continue to support the local community I am proposing that this council vote to permanently preserve several of our longstanding greenspaces to ensure that they will continue to be used only for the benefit of our citizens in the future."

Bobo asked City Administrator Glenda Webb to work with city staff to draft the proposed ordinance and said she would like the idea introduced for discussion at the next council meeting on May 5th. Bobo suggested the council could vote on it at their June 2nd meeting.

It is worth noting that until 2023, there was city law on the books which already did offer extra protection to the parks its citizens enjoy. Resolution 93-029, so named because it was adopted in 1993, required a unanimous vote of the five-member city council and the mayor to sell any recreational property like the Northport Community Center.

Selling the property would have taken six votes, but it took just three votes - a simple majority - to repeal those protections in 2023 during the worst of the firestorm over the community center.

This very council voted to do just that, with Woodrow Washington, Karl Wiggins and former council president Jeff Hogg voting in favor of trashing the 1993 law. Councilwomen Jamie Dykes and Christy Bobo voted against the repeal.

Bobo's proposed ordinance would take a step further than the 1993 law and require a vote of the people, not the council and mayor, to use protected property for any other purpose, but the 2023 vote showed that without some additional layer of legal language, even those protections can be repealed by just three council members.

For more news out of Northport and updates on the protections proposed by Bobo on Monday, stay connected to the Tuscaloosa Thread.