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Bradley Byrne: Hello and welcome to the Matters podcast, powered by the Mobile Chamber, where we dive into the big topic shaping Mobile’s thriving business community. I’m your host, Bradley Byrne, president, CEO of the Mobile Chamber. A special thank you to our podcast sponsor. Visit Mobile for making today’s episode possible today we’re excited to welcome David Clark, the president and CEO of Visit Mobile.

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Bradley Byrne

Hello and welcome to the Mobile Matters podcast, powered by the Mobile Chamber, where we dive into the big topic shaping mobile thriving business community. I’m your host, Bradley Byrne president CEO of the Mobile Chamber. A special thank you to our podcast sponsor. Visit Mobile for making today’s episode possible. They’re offering prizes for local businesses who offer referral for a conference to come to Mobile.

00;00;28;24 – 00;00;49;09

Bradley Byrne

Find out how you can win big with the bring your main home campaign on thebusinessview.com. Today is a very special edition of the podcast because we get to sit down with Mobile Mayor Sandy steps and as he wraps up his 12 years of unrivaled leadership in the port city mayor. Great to have you on the show.

00;00;49;10 – 00;00;56;19

Bradley Byrne

Great to be here. So I warned everybody that neither you nor our script for this. So who knows what’s going to happen.

00;00;56;20 – 00;00;57;14

Mayor Sandy Stimpson

Dangerous.

00;00;57;17 – 00;01;17;16

Bradley Byrne

But I you know, at a recent event where we had this great news, it was coming down. I was thinking, you know, we didn’t just get here yesterday. And when you first took on the mayorship 12 years ago, one of the first things you had to deal with were some financial issues at the city. And if you don’t solve those, you don’t get anything else.

00;01;17;17 – 00;01;19;22

Bradley Byrne

That’s exactly what you find and what you do about it.

00;01;19;23 – 00;01;46;14

Mayor Sandy Stimpson

Exactly. That’s exactly right. And we kind of coined a phrase that if the money doesn’t work, nothing works. And that’s true in business. That’s true. Which is how your home whatever. And so we found the city that had no general fund surplus. I would say that it’s arguable. Arguable that you were we were headed to bankruptcy. We had, pretty much maxed out on our borrowing capacity.

00;01;46;16 – 00;02;08;13

Mayor Sandy Stimpson

And so we realized that we had to get that under control and very, very fortunate for the city and for me. Paul was the finance, director, and I aspire to leave the metro company, which, under the blessings of John Saint, he did. And Paul came in and really, in pretty quick order, realized what we needed to do.

00;02;08;13 – 00;02;35;13

Mayor Sandy Stimpson

And so we we recast the budget that had never been recast before. Usually the an incoming mayor inherits a budget from the previous mayor. Well, Paul made it very simple. Said if we continue on, this will have a huge deficit and we can’t knowingly operate under a deficit. And so we recast that budget and found out that, we had a lot of people that had been given budgets, but they really didn’t know how to budget and didn’t know how to operate within a budget.

00;02;35;14 – 00;02;54;14

Mayor Sandy Stimpson

Long story short. We did a lot of changing. We didn’t have any layoffs, but we just put a hiring freeze in and we quit spending money on things that we didn’t need to spend money on. That was kind of like, it’s it’s got to come to the mayor’s office or come to Paul’s office to get approval to spend money in certain areas.

00;02;54;16 – 00;03;17;10

Mayor Sandy Stimpson

And over a period of the remainder of the year, we ended up, stopping the outflow of cash, and we ended up with a small operating surplus that first year. So, that set the tone, I think, and sent a kind of maybe a shockwave through city government that it was going to be different, that there were going to be cost controls in and we were going to adhere to the budget.

00;03;17;12 – 00;03;21;26

Bradley Byrne

You know, it sounds boring. It was boring. I mean, no, it was not boring.

00;03;21;28 – 00;03;28;10

Mayor Sandy Stimpson

It was it was heart wrenching. For a while. There because we weren’t sure how we will get a grip on it.

00;03;28;12 – 00;03;44;22

Bradley Byrne

Well, and and you picked a great person, Paul West. I a long time friend of mine. And I remember when I heard he was taking your position. I was in the middle of my congressional campaign. I said, have you lost your mind? And he says, well, I’m not the one running for Congress. So he also had that incredible sense of humor.

00;03;44;23 – 00;04;03;01

Bradley Byrne

Oh, yeah, the learning to get through everything. But okay, so you get the financial house in order. Although it took longer than that first year I know. Yeah. Oh yeah. Several years of that. But you also had to deal with an understaffed police and fire department, Underequipped police and fire department. So how’d you deal with that?

00;04;03;04 – 00;04;27;07

Mayor Sandy Stimpson

So, you know, I think the biggest challenge that we had there was we had, too many people in the upper management of the police department, and we were just top heavy. And we also had not been a raise given, to city employees and first responders in seven years. So you had a lot of disgruntled and disappointed.

00;04;27;09 – 00;04;48;01

Mayor Sandy Stimpson

And uninspired, you know, police officers. And so, you know, we we knew that we had to start figuring out a way to get a pay increase, but that took a I that was a measured, measured steps that it took to get, to be able to do that. But first thing we did was I knew that we had to change the leadership at the top.

00;04;48;06 – 00;05;08;06

Mayor Sandy Stimpson

And during the campaign, I had asked Jim Barber, who I did not know prior to decide, and I was going to run for mayor, but, he and, a couple other sought me out and said, you know, if you’re running for mayor, you know, we’re going to support you because there’s got to be a change. You know, we can’t stay here.

00;05;08;09 – 00;05;30;13

Mayor Sandy Stimpson

So, I asked Jim Barber, I said, look, I don’t understand anything about policing, so please write a plan. You know, of what this looks like. And he really produced the first 21st century plan for policing that probably 18 months, two years before Obama’s plan. But it’s really about focusing in on the the real criminals, okay. And not going into neighborhoods and sending me people.

00;05;30;13 – 00;05;54;05

Mayor Sandy Stimpson

You can arrest him a ticket, you can write as, let’s identify the bad guys and then let’s concentrate on getting them off the street. And so we we did that. And so we also through attrition and through promotions, we put different leadership in place and through those leadership changes, I think that we ended up with a little more esprit de corps.

00;05;54;08 – 00;06;16;14

Mayor Sandy Stimpson

And then we found out, that next year that we were able to give a small raise and then, you know, that kind of built. And so I think they’ve been 10 or 11 raises, for the police. And fire over the period of time. But then that came down to the last couple of years, a real general, complete overhaul of the pay plan for first responders.

00;06;16;16 – 00;06;56;12

Mayor Sandy Stimpson

And so when we started the the beginning pay for rookies was, $29,000. And so, we’ve gotten that up to $51,000. So somebody’s coming off the street today, and they can make it through the police academy and pass all the requirements. They start off at $51,000, and that’s the highest, pretty much the highest in the area, although maybe some of the smaller municipalities, you know, have to pay a little bit more, but, because of the pay increase, because of the leadership in the department, now they’re, we’re seeing a lot less turnover and, a lot more people engaged.

00;06;56;12 – 00;07;19;09

Mayor Sandy Stimpson

Well, and I understand that if, that part of that was part of the quest to have a safer city is policing. Yeah, but it’s not our policing. But, I feel really good about it because all of that, come as lead to what would be a 61% decrease in part one crimes since joining on part one.

00;07;19;09 – 00;07;19;24

Bradley Byrne

Now.

00;07;19;26 – 00;07;34;27

Mayor Sandy Stimpson

Part one crimes would be, murder, robbery, rape. You know, the, the violent crimes. And there’s like six, six things in that category, but that’s the things that you really measure, to see what’s happening. Well, let’s go.

00;07;34;27 – 00;07;36;09

Bradley Byrne

Back that 61.

00;07;36;12 – 00;07;57;08

Mayor Sandy Stimpson

1%. Yeah, that is remarkable. We’ve got a graph that we’ve kind of been sitting down because, you know, during an election, you know, we felt like if we put that graph out that somebody was going to say, well, they’re just playing, you know, election year politics. I’m hoping I’ll share that, that someone in the Commerce Department will and Jim Barber will be able to talk about it, but that’s an amazing number.

00;07;57;10 – 00;07;58;06

Mayor Sandy Stimpson

Yeah, yeah.

00;07;58;09 – 00;08;01;15

Bradley Byrne

A lot of people don’t know that. And I think it’s important for you to tell them that.

00;08;01;15 – 00;08;01;28

Mayor Sandy Stimpson

That’s really.

00;08;01;28 – 00;08;24;03

Bradley Byrne

Important. And we need to tell them that because, people value a safe community over just about everything else. Yeah. And and the changes you and Chief Barber and other people have made in your department have made a real difference. I’ll tell you where I saw a difference. When after the George George Floyd event, when cities all over the country were having problems, we had one day.

00;08;24;03 – 00;08;38;18

Bradley Byrne

It was a Sunday, I believe, and, well, things got a little out of hand downtown. But the way y’all responded to it, you could tell professionally eased all the tensions down. By the end of the night, it was done. Yeah, that’s a more marvelous relevance.

00;08;38;20 – 00;09;00;16

Mayor Sandy Stimpson

And we shared the information of what we what we were going to do, with some of the other cities. And they chose not to do it. And all of them had lingering effects, because they didn’t do it. But, you know, and most of the cities you had, individuals coming from outside the city coming in, and they were creating the problem and stirring things up.

00;09;00;18 – 00;09;27;24

Mayor Sandy Stimpson

And, they come in and they’re not, I say, funded from outside sources. They maybe bring an attorney with them. They bring, cash when they get out of jail and all. And so but, you know, they Jim Barber decided that, you know, we were going to make sure that if we arrested somebody for, doing things they shouldn’t do during that time was that they were going to spend a night in jail, because they don’t they’re not required by law to have to see a judge to get, be bailed out.

00;09;27;27 – 00;09;51;05

Mayor Sandy Stimpson

And so when they realized they were going to be spending time in jail and mobile for maybe a couple of days, then all the others left. And it’s really it’s very, very simple. I mean, but, you know, they don’t expect to have to pay a price. They come in and create a lot of habit. But there were other things that, that were done that, ultimately led to the outcome that we got.

00;09;51;05 – 00;09;55;15

Mayor Sandy Stimpson

But Jim Barber was the, you know, the architect of doing that.

00;09;55;17 – 00;10;07;07

Bradley Byrne

So get your financial house in order. Make sure you respond to taking care of his another block and attack one thing, public infrastructure. Yeah. Little seemingly little sidewalks.

00;10;07;09 – 00;10;32;25

Mayor Sandy Stimpson

Yeah, yeah. So, then when one of the first things that we did and it probably it didn’t take effect in 2015, was there had been a penny sales tax, that had been levied prior to my administration. And the money was really directed for capital projects. And so the capital projects could be, you know, it could be paving, it could be sidewalks, it could be fixing parks and all.

00;10;32;28 – 00;11;06;22

Mayor Sandy Stimpson

But because of other constraints, other needs that the city had, some of that money was diverted just to operations. Well, when we passed the I would say the most recent penny sales tax in 2014, maybe leading into 2015, we made the determination that we weren’t transferring that money to operations. It was going to, repair infrastructure or build infrastructure and they did it, the City Council and I credit them with doing this instead of just the mayor having control over the money and deciding, you know, how the money would be made.

00;11;06;22 – 00;11;27;01

Mayor Sandy Stimpson

It out, that it would be divided equally among the seven city council districts, like $3 million each, and that the city council would have some say so input into how that money should be spent. And ultimately the mayor has to sign off on it. And really, it’s not just the city council decided they want to pay this neighborhood to fix this sidewalk.

00;11;27;02 – 00;12;02;24

Mayor Sandy Stimpson

As the city engineering team, they know which streets are the worst. They know which ones are the highest traveled and, where the most accidents are. So that collaboration between the city council and the city engineering department, you know, you come up with a list. Well, that I think had more to do with people all over the city buying into what the Stimson administration was doing because they were seeing projects being done and their, district or their neighborhood that they had never seen done before, that always seen it done somewhere else.

00;12;02;24 – 00;12;35;11

Mayor Sandy Stimpson

And they wondered, why not my neighborhood and, you know, people, it’s not let’s say it’s not, equitable to be spending money on just certain parts of the city. It should be spread out. So I really compliment the council on on leading that. I originally felt like that, that it ought to be voted on by the city, like when we went to, Oklahoma City, I think where they, they did a penny sales tax and all of the money went to pay for a baseball field, you know, so they had mega projects that that tax paid for.

00;12;35;14 – 00;12;39;06

Mayor Sandy Stimpson

But that ain’t how we ended up doing it. But it’s worked out beautifully for the city.

00;12;39;06 – 00;12;53;00

Bradley Byrne

But we’ll well on the city looks better. Oh yeah. You drive around, you notice things. You got this major, project that I hope is getting close to completion of a McGregor that’s going to have a major impact on that part of town.

00;12;53;00 – 00;13;12;14

Mayor Sandy Stimpson

Yeah, but people are going to be shocked when they go around that new, new roundabout. Yeah, I go up there about once or twice a month and look at it and, it’s going to open before, before the, scheduled time when we said it’ll be completed and really, it’s it’s going to be transformative. What are they going to say?

00;13;12;16 – 00;13;18;03

Bradley Byrne

Well, you don’t get to do transformative stuff if you don’t do this block and tackle.

00;13;18;05 – 00;13;18;23

Mayor Sandy Stimpson

Yeah.

00;13;18;26 – 00;13;34;06

Bradley Byrne

And I wanted to start out this podcast talking about the blocking and tackling, because when we get to the next part, we want to take a break. When we get to the next part, we’ll talk about running at the end zone over and over and over and over, which is what’s happening right now. So we’re going to take a break.

00;13;34;06 – 00;13;36;15

Bradley Byrne

We’ll be back in about two minutes.

00;13;37;01 – 00;13;57;27

Bradley Byrne

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00;13;58;03 – 00;14;06;29

Bradley Byrne

Every qualified lead will win. Some include prizes such as cruises, luxury hotel stays and restaurant gift cards. Let’s grow Mobile together.

00;14;07;05 – 00;14;36;15

Bradley Byrne

Welcome back to the Mobile Manners podcast. I’m Bradley Byrne sitting here with mayor Sandy Stimpson, who’s counting down the days here. So we blocked and tackled. We got the offense on the field. We got the quarterback back in position. Ball’s about to be snapped going and the ball goes flying down the field. And all of a sudden during your term in office we get not one not two but three final assembly lines for Airbus when you start as mayor.

00;14;36;22 – 00;14;38;23

Bradley Byrne

We made no airplanes on mobile.

00;14;38;26 – 00;14;39;12

Mayor Sandy Stimpson

That’s right.

00;14;39;17 – 00;14;46;25

Bradley Byrne

Now on the precipice of becoming the fourth largest producer of commercial aircraft in the world. How did that happen?

00;14;46;27 – 00;15;14;25

Mayor Sandy Stimpson

If you go back to the origin of it, I’d say because of the Chamber of Commerce, and I’m very sincere when I say that. But we had when Hallett of the chamber and, and by Hayes with the airport authority and I think they saw something that that maybe most didn’t see that there was an opportunity to, you know, build airplanes here or repair airplanes because we were repairing them already.

00;15;14;27 – 00;15;43;24

Mayor Sandy Stimpson

With aerospace, and I can recall has been part of the chamber. I was on the board of directors at that time, and, I think everybody just kind of shook their thought. They were crazy. Well, so it started with the chamber and what we what they recognize, and I think that others started buying into is it’s kind of like locating a drugstore, a place of business location, location, location.

00;15;43;24 – 00;16;07;28

Mayor Sandy Stimpson

Well, what we had was that, we’d grown up with it, so we maybe didn’t recognize where we had Brookley. Well, the 10,000ft runway, which was adjacent to a deepwater port, the interstates, railroads. So we had all the infrastructure in place. And, because of the tanker, you know, the the competition for, building tankers that, qualified as needed.

00;16;08;01 – 00;16;31;08

Mayor Sandy Stimpson

Anyway, as you recall, Bradley, you were part of that all that conversation, I think Joe Bonner was actually the congressman at that time. But, you know, we just kept selling and we kept as we would go to airshows, you would learn more about what? You know, what, EADS or Northrop Grummon or whoever was, you know, what time what they what they were expecting to see.

00;16;31;10 – 00;16;57;14

Mayor Sandy Stimpson

And so we were able to refine the message and refine the message and get more people to come. And finally, they realize that, you know, this was the place to build the tankers, as it was said yesterday, that, you know, some bureaucrats made a decision after we won it legitimately straight up twice, that we would not build tankers that, Boeing would be building the tankers somewhere else.

00;16;57;16 – 00;16;58;02

Mayor Sandy Stimpson

And they’re yet.

00;16;58;02 – 00;16;59;18

Bradley Byrne

They’ve not done yet.

00;16;59;19 – 00;17;29;10

Mayor Sandy Stimpson

But they’ve not successfully done. And, so, you know, we, we’re very fortunate that there were some people involved with those companies at that time that decided, you know, we like Mobil, we like what we saw, of the team Alabama, which was was, the United States delegation was the governor was the legislative leadership, the county commission, the city council, the mayor.

00;17;29;12 – 00;17;54;00

Mayor Sandy Stimpson

They were all all singing off the same sheet of music. And they were all, you know, same, you know, come to Mobil. And knowing that we were open for business, you know, they finally made the pitch, to build, the A320 here and a lot of fanfare when we went into that, from the groundbreaking standpoint, there was tremendous amount of excitement.

00;17;54;00 – 00;18;11;08

Mayor Sandy Stimpson

And I think that the probably the toughest decision was the Airbus board of directors, you know, first time they had ever ventured outside of Europe to build airplanes and and to choose Mobil. What a what a compliment. I don’t think we realized what we had called, you know, at that time.

00;18;11;10 – 00;18;25;26

Bradley Byrne

Well, what we call it was bigger than we understood. Oh, because I don’t know about you, but I was there at that first ribbon cutting, 20, 15, just ten years ago. Yeah. I don’t know about you. I didn’t foresee as being where we are today this quickly.

00;18;25;26 – 00;18;58;28

Mayor Sandy Stimpson

Anyway, nobody saw it and us didn’t see it. I mean, they said it. They told us yesterday they did not see it. But what happened was, was that the results and the outcome was much better than what they expected. And I, attribute that to what I say is part of the DNA of our workforce. I mean, there’s just a lot of this seems to be a lot of pride in our workforce, from the shipbuilding and, standpoint to whether we’re making chemicals, making lumber, making paper.

00;18;59;01 – 00;19;31;11

Mayor Sandy Stimpson

We just have people that are willing to work and put the, shoulder to the, you know, to the grindstone and go for it. And so, no, nobody recognized that, but the world knows it. Now, with the wall that Airbus has said and the recent, the publications that have picked up on this and Airbus suppliers that we had an opportunity to talk to the other day, there’s no way to predict what the future growth of the, aviation, aerospace is and mobile.

00;19;31;14 – 00;19;55;22

Bradley Byrne

Well, let’s you mentioned ship build. Let’s talk about that now. There were already building ships over there at all still. Yeah. When you showed, they were building the troll combat ship, which they just completed that program, as you know, and the expeditionary fast transport vessel, which was the, dual hull vessel. Now they’re making like 6 or 7 different types of ships for the Coast Guard and the Navy and components for submarines.

00;19;55;27 – 00;19;59;15

Bradley Byrne

Yeah. Just blew up how that happened.

00;19;59;18 – 00;20;28;04

Mayor Sandy Stimpson

Well, frankly, I, I don’t think that any of us have all the answers exactly how it happened. But, you know, it’s really comes back to people, you know, it comes back to, having the the elected officials, the business leadership and the workforce. Everybody is looking for workforce. And what what what the chamber has done under your leadership as we had all these components of workforce, but it just didn’t seem like that everybody was really collaborating.

00;20;28;05 – 00;20;29;18

Mayor Sandy Stimpson

How were you able to pull all that together?

00;20;29;19 – 00;20;43;12

Mayor Sandy Stimpson

they’ve been very, very pleased with the workers and workforce in mobile. Well, that’s a direct reflection upon, I’ll say, the leadership that’s pull all that together. But it’s also what’s in the hearts of those, those those men and women that are out there doing the work.

00;20;43;15 – 00;20;44;23

Bradley Byrne

It really is in their hearts

00;20;44;23 – 00;20;57;17

Bradley Byrne

the shipyards made that big shift from only aluminum ships to steel ships. And now they have two facilities going up out there. And said he played a role in making sure that that they got what they needed to make that happen.

00;20;57;19 – 00;20;58;06

Mayor Sandy Stimpson

Well,

00;20;58;06 – 00;21;20;16

Mayor Sandy Stimpson

a lot of times really, decisions are made just strictly on survival. I mean, your back is to the wall. There’s no way to go forward. And aluminum ships, you know what they’ll LCS problem was, was going out. Okay. So they had to come up with something. And that creates an opportunity to be more creative and, be willing to take risk.

00;21;20;19 – 00;21;57;21

Mayor Sandy Stimpson

And so I applaud the leadership at Austal and the and the Navy, you know, for recognizing that, it’s a beautiful shipyard. Okay. And they were doing things that other shipyards were not doing. So the combination of the the Navy recognizing that also willing to do it, you know, is is and I’ll say the support from the community, you know, it all all comes together into a pot and and it comes out and so but I think maybe the biggest game changer is, the talking about building the submarine, the major components of submarines.

00;21;57;21 – 00;22;14;27

Mayor Sandy Stimpson

I mean, that, that changes the requirements for the skill level and our workforce. And that will raise the bar, for what we have to do in our community colleges. And the pipeline has got to look like. But there’ll be incredible job opportunities associated with that.

00;22;14;28 – 00;22;34;06

Bradley Byrne

You know, know that already on. And and we see more coming. Another big area of growth for us is and logistics shipping. And we just had a big celebration where we celebrated the fact that our, our channel is now 50ft, making us the deepest channel on the Gulf of Mexico. Amazing.

00;22;34;09 – 00;22;50;21

Mayor Sandy Stimpson

Yeah. You know, we heard all heard, Senator Shelby talk about how he had the idea, you know, he was in Singapore. Talk to them about that, dredging that channel and 50ft and asked him why. And they said, so we can handle the biggest ships in the world. And he came back and said, well, why can’t we do that?

00;22;50;23 – 00;23;17;27

Mayor Sandy Stimpson

And he we had ran into a bunch of naysayers of why we couldn’t do it. But Senator Shelby been Senator Shelby, he wont be daunted by the funding and the collaborative effort between here and the governor. Because it was going to take some state money in order to get all the federal money. And, the governor was very interested in an infrastructure package now for Rebuild Alabama, which was the gas tax.

00;23;17;29 – 00;23;26;28

Mayor Sandy Stimpson

And had she not push that along with Senator Shelby and gotten the votes to pass that, you wouldn’t have had the deepest channel on the Gulf?

00;23;27;01 – 00;23;51;14

Bradley Byrne

Well, we’re the fastest growing container port in the nation. You know, we’re going from 600,000 trees the way you measure containers to a million real quick here, you know, and, APM terminals that does support along with the Port Authority says they want to go to 3 million. Well, we’ve done the calculations here. In order for that to work, we’ve got to build 50 million more square feet of Class-A warehouse space.

00;23;51;14 – 00;24;04;11

Bradley Byrne

Yeah. So Bradley Byrne won’t be the president. The chamber when we build the last little 50,000,000ft². But, what all that does for the future of mobile in addition to aviation. In addition, ship building is unbelievable.

00;24;04;13 – 00;24;25;24

Mayor Sandy Stimpson

Yeah, it really is. That’s why the, the other infrastructure project we’re talking about later, probably just do the bridge to make it all work. You really need the bridge. But but going back to, the port, it was said yesterday doing the ribbon cutting, how important the port is to the entire state of Alabama.

00;24;25;25 – 00;24;40;29

Mayor Sandy Stimpson

We call it the Port of Mobile. But it’s the it’s Alabama’s port, and it’s positively impacting everything. But something we can’t lose sight of is that the container port we will like comes to the container port, but it is a commodity.

00;24;41;00 – 00;24;43;26

Bradley Byrne

Just I run it because the man who invented that is from here.

00;24;43;26 – 00;25;09;19

Mayor Sandy Stimpson

Yeah. That’s right. Malcolm. Malcolm Lane. But you there’s there’s only marginal money that’s made handling containers. And so we have invested heavily in the container port, and we really need to make sure that we don’t forget the bulk cargo. Right? I mean, and and I have a fear that, that we’ve gotten excited about in the fastest growing container port.

00;25;09;19 – 00;25;26;17

Mayor Sandy Stimpson

And we can take the biggest container ship, but we can’t forget about coal, grain, lumber, steel and other things that go through that port. Because at the end of the day, from a profitability standpoint to the state of Alabama, those are more important than the containers.

00;25;26;17 – 00;25;32;21

Bradley Byrne

You know, they the port told me that we’re the number one steel port in the country and the number two coal port. Yeah.

00;25;32;24 – 00;25;38;25

Mayor Sandy Stimpson

But if we don’t take care of the docks and we don’t spend a lot of money on maintenance, you know, find out that that product is going to go elsewhere.

00;25;38;28 – 00;25;51;14

Bradley Byrne

So we’ll talk about the bridge. I hesitate to talk about the bridge because we haven’t been able to make a true announcement. Yeah. That’s right. We’ve announced a lot of money coming for the federal government. Yeah. Go to it. Yeah. And that happened.

00;25;51;17 – 00;26;12;28

Mayor Sandy Stimpson

I mean, you know, I got to go back to, you know, how many times have we been to DC asking for money, you know, for the for the bridge, and then we’ll forget, I’d say, remind myself that Senator Shelby took me to the woodshed. I’d be talking about the bridge, and I’d say, Sandy, I support. And if you’re confused, it’s the ports, Andy.

00;26;13;00 – 00;26;40;15

Mayor Sandy Stimpson

And then third. And I say, finally, I got it, Senator support. But, you know, during the first Trump administration, the first tranche and $25 million, federal grant was given to a name for grant, which was, you know, a kickstart and then the state of Alabama’s, you know, been putting some money in along the way. And then really kind of out of the blue, 500 plus million dollar grant was given during the waning days of the Biden administration.

00;26;40;18 – 00;27;00;08

Mayor Sandy Stimpson

And my understanding is that money was really allocated for another project. But they had timed out, hadn’t spent the money, and so they had to find a place to put it. And our project was probably the most likely to be able to get done because of all the right of way have been purchased. And so much work had already been done.

00;27;00;08 – 00;27;40;12

Mayor Sandy Stimpson

Most of the engineering. And so that was a huge boost. But from the time we got the first $225 million grant, and then the decision was, to go forward was not approved by, you know, one of the MPOs. And so that just really stopped the project. But today, as I look back on and what I believe, and I think it could be validated as it because we paused, and, and really it was because of, opposition to the toll, that has cost us a billion, maybe a billion and a half dollars, and we would be two thirds of the way complete with that project right now, had it not been for,

00;27;40;14 – 00;28;13;12

Mayor Sandy Stimpson

the I would say, misdirected individuals who just think the federal government should pay for everything. And really, there are so many infrastructure projects all across this country that they’re they’re just as viable as ours. And so you’re only going to build these mega projects, with the traffic counts. We have, you know, with toll support. Yeah. And, you know, so we’ll see how we’re we’re here in the last lap of the funding and, but it it hasn’t, all been nailed down.

00;28;13;12 – 00;28;16;29

Mayor Sandy Stimpson

And we’ll see what happens as we go forward in the next in the coming months.

00;28;17;01 – 00;28;39;13

Bradley Byrne

Okay. So we’re going to cross the end zone on that one. But we got some fun stuff. Yeah. Like we had the great dedication this summer. The Hall of Fame wall. Yeah. More members of Major League Baseball Hall of Fame. Anybody else? America. And we’ve got great statues down in front of the convention center. We celebrated Amtrak with some service between Mobile and New Orleans.

00;28;39;13 – 00;28;43;13

Bradley Byrne

By the way, I heard this. They’ve already had 36,000 people ride that train.

00;28;43;15 – 00;28;46;25

Mayor Sandy Stimpson

And heard that. That’s amazing. That’s that’s way over what they.

00;28;46;28 – 00;29;10;03

Bradley Byrne

Way over what they planned out. And you’ve got underway, you’ve got an airport move into Brooklyn this time next year. You’ve got a new civic arena that’s coming up out of the ground as we speak, that we hope opens to the beginning of 2027. We’ve got a host of these things that we’ve just kind of gotten started, and that’s really the fun.

00;29;10;03 – 00;29;15;19

Bradley Byrne

That’s the that’s the touchdowns where you’re in the end zone by yourself, just laughing at it.

00;29;15;21 – 00;29;38;14

Mayor Sandy Stimpson

Well, really, that train, you know, and all those things contribute to the quality of life. I mean, when, when we have the major entertainment, shows, when I say music, entertainment, they come here, you know, that’s a game changer. And when you have the hockey that will be going on, you know, that’s something that our citizens don’t have the opportunity to participate unless they go to, you know, Pensacola now.

00;29;38;16 – 00;30;00;24

Mayor Sandy Stimpson

And so, those are the kind of things we recognize that you have to have a safe city, but then you have to have things that, contribute to the quality of life. And that is having an Amtrak that can run to New Orleans on that. That’s the, the arena, the new arena now the airport. I mean, that’s a an airport is not just a quality of life deal, but that’s a huge economic.

00;30;00;24 – 00;30;23;11

Mayor Sandy Stimpson

Oh, yeah, huge economic deal for the city of Mobile. And it’s a little bit behind schedule from what we originally anticipated. But, as you said, it’s supposed to be happening, opening this time next year. And I think there’ll be a lot of fanfare around it. And I think that we’ll see. Eventually you’ll see more direct flights and cheaper fares, which will bode well for our citizens.

00;30;23;14 – 00;30;49;24

Bradley Byrne

Well, this community owes you a great debt. Those of us have known you for a long time are, you know, bursting with pride over what you’ve accomplished. And, we know that you’ve laid the groundwork for a lot of great things to happen after you walk out the door. But I wanted to give you one last opportunity to say whatever’s on your heart to the people will be listening to this about your last 12 years and what you hope for the future.

00;30;49;26 – 00;31;10;05

Mayor Sandy Stimpson

So you know, and you’ve lived long enough. And young people, they hear this, they they don’t live it maybe hadn’t lived long enough to see it, but it’s really about being able to cooperate and collaborate with people and put teams together, with a common objective or a common vision. And I would say there’s, there’s multiple reasons for the success we’ve had.

00;31;10;05 – 00;31;43;29

Mayor Sandy Stimpson

But when we started talking about uniting, you know, one mobile that was to unite this city, right? Everything in that society is about dividing. It wants to divide you on race. It wants to divide your own political party. And from a biblical standpoint, it’s that Scripture says that God commands a blessing. Whether we’re brothers living in unity. And so even though, people would take exception with their words, it’s not all Kumbaya, but we are all trying to make the city of mobile a better place to live for everybody.

00;31;44;02 – 00;32;06;28

Mayor Sandy Stimpson

And so when you have that vision and people start buying into it, you know, whether it’s a safer city, more business friendly, more family friendly, the chamber right now is doing things you know, that maybe they otherwise wouldn’t doing because they’re they’ve bought into that vision. Okay. Right. Businesses are doing the same thing. And so you can’t predict what people will do unto you.

00;32;07;04 – 00;32;40;24

Mayor Sandy Stimpson

But when you inspire them to be part of something bigger than themselves. Yeah. So I would say that, that by casting that vision initially had a lot to do with it and also say that the people that were willing to sacrifice and come to work for a city like Paul wish, I mean, my gosh, and when I look at you and Joe Bonner, you know, I would say that’s an answer to prayer, because my ongoing prayer had been God continue to send the people and the resources to the city, Mo able to transform into the city that he wants it to be.

00;32;40;27 – 00;32;48;19

Mayor Sandy Stimpson

And we’ve known each other from high school. But who ever thought that? No. Maybe one of us ever thought we’d be sitting here doing something like this?

00;32;48;21 – 00;32;51;17

Bradley Byrne

Let’s be honest. Probably wouldn’t have thought that I would be here.

00;32;51;19 – 00;33;12;29

Mayor Sandy Stimpson

But but, you know, that’s that’s what happens. And and I made a comment earlier today and another, situation I just said success begat success. And so as I look to the future, I would say that that, one of the things I’m proud that we’ve changed the image of the city of Mobil, but Airbus helped change that image.

00;33;12;29 – 00;33;30;17

Mayor Sandy Stimpson

People all over the world saying, why did Airbus choose Mobile Alabama, you know, and then they start looking at it. And now from a site development standpoint of those the people that are trying to side help businesses, where to locate when they look at mobile, they say mobile is up and coming. So we’ve changed the image of it.

00;33;30;19 – 00;33;57;22

Mayor Sandy Stimpson

Another thing I would say is that, it’s very gratifying to, to the, to recognize that, that we’ve been part of teeing up what could be a very, very bright future for the city of mobile. Okay. I mean, it’s teed up on all aspects, financially with sound, from an economic development standpoint. The chamber’s doing an outstanding job.

00;33;57;25 – 00;34;16;15

Mayor Sandy Stimpson

Businesses are reinvesting in themselves, which means that those employees there, it means a brighter future for them. And so the best really is yet to come, I believe. But I would in saying that, I would say also that when things are going well, it’s really easy to be complacent.

00;34;16;17 – 00;34;17;12

Bradley Byrne

Yeah.

00;34;17;15 – 00;34;41;15

Mayor Sandy Stimpson

And man, complacency is really dangerous. I mean, when you when you start thinking your good, somebody’s going to come knock your block off. And so I would say that, we need to approach it with a sense of appreciation and gratitude that we have these opportunities, not that we’re that we’re, you know, done all this stuff. It’s like, oh my gosh, you kind of pinch yourself and say, now what are we supposed to do?

00;34;41;16 – 00;34;49;06

Mayor Sandy Stimpson

You know, in order to fulfill the stewardship that we’ve been entrusted with, how do we how do we move this ball forward?

00;34;49;08 – 00;35;20;25

Bradley Byrne

Well, it’s been an absolute privilege to work with you. Yeah. Now you’re not disappearing, you know, going off into the mists of time and still going to be around, and we’re still going to turn to you for something from time to time. But it is a good time for us to celebrate what you’ve accomplished along with your team over the last 12 years, and we want to thank you from the bottom of our heart from that speaking of hearts, from the heart of the mobile business community, this is another episode of Mobile Matters, powered by the Mobile Chamber with a special thank you to our sponsor.

00;35;20;29 – 00;35;36;08

Bradley Byrne

Visit mobile. Be sure to subscribe whenever you listen to podcasts so you don’t miss future conversations about the people, ideas, and innovations shaping Mobile’s business community community. We will see you next time.