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Last April, Birmingham News reporters explored the issue of trust as part of the paper’s series about Birmingham at a Crossroads. They talked with citizens and community leaders about the challenges of building trust across longstanding divisions of race, geography and politics.

Along with the challenges, though, the reporting offered beacons of hope, examples of the community coming together in ways that encourage trust. One of those examples was the Three Parks Initiative, a joint effort by three separate parks to raise money together to expand Birmingham’s green space. Instead of competing for donors, the parks agreed to work together.

That effort worked. Community leaders announced this month they have raised enough money to open the Red Mountain Park and the downtown Railroad Park, and to expand the Ruffner Mountain Nature center in eastern Birmingham.

The collaboration was important not only for the $15 million it raised, but also for the example it set. As Kate Nielsen, president of the Community Foundation of Greater Birmingham, told The News, it shows how well the area can cooperate and communicate. “The three parks said, `This is going to be a win for this community. Let’s hold hands and do this together,’” she said.

We are at a critical point in Birmingham, with an energetic new mayor urging an often-skeptical community to do something. Building consensus for progress, though, is going to require building more trust. Trust is not built by announcing grand plans; it is built by working together.

That was an important point Nielsen made to reporters back in April. “It’s working together on something,” she said. “If we can find something to get our arms around and work together, the trust will come. … By action, we’re going to build this trust.”

Mayor Larry Langford is certainly action-oriented, and his quick success in putting workers on the street to clean up 23 communities in 23 days won over many Birmingham residents. It is not just action, though, but acting together that ultimately builds trust.

The leader who says “Let’s find our way together” is more likely to inspire trust, and to follow the right road, than the leader who says “My way or the highway.”

Langford is showing movement in that direction, too. In his State of the City address, he reached out not only to the City Council, but to Jefferson County Commission President Bettye Fine Collins. He also has embraced the idea of an objective review to determine the best site for the dome he is determined to build.

The mayor is right when he says one of the main barriers to our success is our failure to believe in ourselves. Belief is built on experience, and the more we can experience success together, the easier it will be to believe.

Three different parks found a way to work together around their common interest, and the whole community benefits. We should spread that model to other parts of our civic life, across the political divides of our metropolitan area. The more cooperation works, the more cooperation we will see. Tom Scarritt is editor of The News.

EMAIL: tscarritt@bhamnews.com

Birmingham-area leaders say they have finished raising $15 million to open two major parks and expand a third.

“They’ve done an unbelievable job in a very short time with this,” said Steve Jones, chairman of the board over Red Mountain Park. “That’s amazing. I think it goes to show you when you’ve got the right thing at the right time, you really don’t have to sell it.”

Leaders said Wednesday that Red Mountain Park and the downtown Railroad Park will use the money to buy or develop land so they can open. The existing Ruffner Mountain Nature Center in eastern Birmingham will open a visitor and education center and restore a wetland area with its money.

Three years ago, three groups announced major plans for parks in Birmingham and Jefferson County at almost the same time: The city of Birmingham planned a $40 million Railroad Park downtown. A Jefferson County land trust announced a 1,108-acre park atop Red Mountain. Ruffner Mountain Nature Center announced it would expand, restore land and build a treetop nature and visitors center.

City leaders began to discuss the problems of three groups simultaneously approaching national foundations or local corporations with fundraising pleas. So in the fall of 2006 the Community Foundation of Greater Birmingham and Region 2020 announced they would attempt to raise $17.35 million for what they called the Three Park Initiative.

They agreed on an appropriate Phase I plan for each park that was not too ambitious but would be a complete project by itself, said Dalton Smith, executive director of Region 2020.

“We met and agreed that what we want is something that people can see – can put their feet on,” Smith said.

Ultimately, most of the area’s major corporations and philanthropic groups contributed a total of $15 million. The groups decided to stop before reaching the original goal so the parks’ leaders could have the money now and continue fundraising on their own.

The parks have received millions of dollars directly from Congress and corporations, so the total amounts available surpass what they had hoped to get from the mutual fundraising.

At some point, every nonprofit park or other group must build its own list of loyal volunteers or donors, Smith said, and it was time for the parks to do that.

Record green per capita:

When all three parks are open, Birmingham is expected to have a record amount of green space per resident as well as some of the largest urban parks in the nation, bigger than such famed large parks as New York’s Central Park or San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park.

When the three parks banded together to raise money, it showed how well the area can cooperate and communicate, said Kate Nielsen, president of the Community Foundation.

“The three parks said, ‘This is going to be a win for this community. Let’s hold hands and do this together,’” Nielsen said. “This community saw the opportunity for these three parks.”

Smith said the surge of support from community members was so large that when he gave speeches on the parks he often had to stay an hour afterward answering questions, particularly from people 40 and younger.

The donations began in 2005 with U.S. Steel Corp., which said it would sell 1,108 acres of grown-over mining land to a Jefferson County land trust for $7 million – $9.5 million less than its appraised price. The Pittsburgh-based company also offered $1 million in cash to build trails in what will be the largest donation in the corporation’s history.

U.S. Steel allowed the Red Mountain group to take ownership of the land last summer, before it finished paying for it. Jones said the $4.9 million his group receives will allow him to pay off the corporation and begin work on a major trail loop around the property. Railroad Park will receive $8.7 million from the fundraising project, and Ruffner Mountain will receive $1.25 million.

None of the parks has firm price tags or opening dates. Railroad Park has given an estimate of $40 million, while Red Mountain and Ruffner haven’t even given guesses. In addition to its initial projects, Ruffner is planning to buy 500 acres or more and build entrances around the park, which has only one remote entrance.

No end to park journey:

Jones said Red Mountain is working through a to-do list that includes safety measures and restrooms to figure out when it can open.

“We’re still sitting here with a draft master plan,” he said. “Once we finalize it, we can start getting cost figures.”

But he said so many people have come forward with additional ideas for the vast park that he can hardly imagine that it will ever be finished.

“It’s a journey,” he said. “I don’t know if we’ll ever get to the end of it – certainly not in my lifetime.”

EMAIL: kbouma@bhamnews.com

WASHINGTON – A near-final spending bill released Tuesday night has $1.25 million for the development of Red Mountain Park in Birmingham, 1,100 acres of former mining land set to become one of the largest urban parks in the country.

The money, part of the federal transportation budget, will be used to either help pay off the cost of buying the property from U.S. Steel or go toward construction of the trail that will loop around the park, according to Steve Jones, chairman of the Red Mountain Park and Greenway Commission.

“This is really great news, especially for somebody like us just trying to start a park,” Jones said Tuesday.

Advocates of the project had been lobbying Alabama’s congressional delegation to carve out federal dollars to help pay the bill. The land, appraised at $16.5 million, was purchased for $7 million, and development costs are expected to be significantly higher.

The House version of the federal transportation bill approved earlier this year had $250,000 for the park, sponsored by Rep. Spencer Bachus, R-Vestavia Hills. The Senate version had none, but when negotiators from both chambers hammered out a compromise version behind closed doors, another $1 million for Red Mountain Park was added.

Sen. Jeff Sessions, who has been critical of the increasing amounts of earmarks in the federal budgets, requested the money for the park (see his remarks here).

“It is certainly my preference and it’s better government if matters come in through the normal committee process,” Sessions said. “Overall we felt like this would be a great addition to the whole community and … the community was already stepping up with a great deal of investment themselves, so I think it’s a legitimate project.”

Bachus called the money a good investment in the health and economy of the region.

“Red Mountain Park will provide our residents with some of the best recreational and nature experiences in the country,” Bachus said. “Companies looking to locate in a community are increasingly looking for recreational opportunities for their families.”

The compromise legislation must get renewed approval from the House and Senate and be signed by the president before the money is available.

President Bush on Tuesday vetoed a different federal spending bill in part because it contained too many earmarks for special local projects. Although he supports the veto of the labor, health and education bill, Sessions said he hoped the final transportation and housing bill would not suffer a similar fate.

“Just because you have a project in a piece of legislation doesn’t mean you would automatically vote for it if the overall bill, which is billions and billions of dollars, is not sound. I hope we don’t get to that point,” Sessions said.

Some of the other Alabama projects expecting funding, according to the legislation and Sen. Richard Shelby’s office, are: $550,000 for the injury control research center at the University of Alabama at Birmingham; $500,000 for trauma care research at UAB; $250,000 for the Jimmie Hale Mission; $1.58 million to upgrade the Franklin Field Airport in Bullock County; $100,000 to renovate Helen Keller’s birthplace in Tuscumbia; $22.5 million for the expansion of Interstate 85 from Montgomery to Cuba, Ala.; and $4.2 million for the revitalization of downtown Tuscaloosa.

EMAIL: morndorff@bhamnews.com

Red Mountain Park is ready to go at last, after three years of money and hopes raised and lost and raised again.

U.S. Steel Corp. sold the ridgetop land for $4 million down and another $3 million due at the end of February, officials said, during closing on the 1,108 acres Wednesday.

U.S. Steel is holding the mortgage on the land and charging no interest, said Steve Jones, chairman of the Red Mountain Park and Greenway Commission that bought the land. “We’re basically able to close, because they hold the note,” Jones said.

The closing was held quietly and everyone was asked to keep it secret, until word leaked out this weekend to the Birmingham News. Jones said the group was planning to announce the long-awaited purchase at an event on the land in a few weeks.

“We’re trying to put together a public event so we can invite some folks,” Jones said.

U.S. Steel has been working with area nonprofits for three years toward a deal that would make its former mining land one of the largest urban parks in the nation. It will stretch 4.5 miles from Homewood close to the Bessemer line, with multiple entrances that will invite communities on all sides to connect on top of the mountain that has been known as a barrier between rich and poor.

In 2004, U.S. Steel first formally offered the 1,108 acres at a cut rate of $7 million, when it was appraised at about $16.5 million. The corporation offered an additional $1 million in money to begin the fund to build the park.

It is estimated it could cost as much as $30 million to $40 million over many years to complete park construction, depending on what amenities the public chooses. Under discussion have been multiple trails, ballfields, an interpretive trail showing the mining history, a pond and other things. Leaders have agreed to begin simply, with one large loop trail, so that it doesn’t take years to get the public into the park.

Leaders say, they are ready to just cut loose the thousands of volunteers who have signed up to pull weeds, whack through old trails and do other work on the land. None of that was possible until the Red Mountain commission, a state entity, owned the land.

Jones said the ability to work on the land and actually offer jobs to eager volunteers will be a huge boost for the thousands of loyal members of the Friends of Red Mountain group.

“It’s hard to get people fired up about something you don’t have any control over, you can’t go on, you know, you can’t go on the property,” he said.

The deal to buy the park began with a county land trust, now called the Freshwater Land Trust, when Jones was chairing that group’s board. Wendy Jackson, the executive director of the land trust, said the funding was the most extreme rollercoaster she has experienced in her years of nonprofit land purchases.

“I don’t think I’ve ever had too much money appropriated or pledged to have it disappear and come back,” she said.

At first, the money seemed to be pouring in for an obviously popular idea. The Freshwater Land Trust quickly got promises of more than $1.4 million from Congress and $7 million from Jefferson County.

The Community Foundation of Greater Birmingham began raising funds for the park. The Friends of Red Mountain Park, formed from volunteers who walked in off the street and asked to help, started a Web page and raised $10,000.

But as quickly as the group found the money, it began to melt away. Congress cut all ear-marked allocations for this year, wiping out the federal money. Earlier this year Jefferson County reneged on its pledge. This summer the county agreed to a lowered donation of $4.5 million, after the County Commission realized it had a signed contract with the land trust.

When U.S. Steel’s deadline fell in December 2006, the group didn’t have the cash. No one could say much more than that the Red Mountain group still intended to buy the land. A U.S. Steel official said his company wasn’t in any rush to enforce the deadline and had faith in the park boosters to buy the land later.

The group is hoping to get some money from some of the once-pledged federal sources in the new budget year as well as money from the Community Foundation’s drive to raise money from a variety of sources, including local corporations. With all that, officials say they expect to be able to pay the rest of the $7 million purchase price in February.

EMAIL: kbouma@bhamnews.com

The Jefferson County Commission voted unanimously Tuesday to contribute $4.5 million for the proposed Red Mountain Park.

Commission President Bettye Fine Collins and Commissioners Jim Carns, Bobby Humphryes, Larry Langford and Shelia Smoot voted to spend the money.

Collins said the county had a legal and moral responsibility to spend the money for the park.

The commission had agreed in 2005 to pay $7 million over six years to buy and help develop the park, but recently the new commission said it lacked the promised money and wouldn’t be able to pay.

Then last month, the Red Mountain Park Commission, after negotiations with the commission, voted unanimously to accept $4.5 million – as long as it was made as a single cash payment.

Steve Jones, chairman of the Red Mountain Park Commission, said the county’s contribution could spur corporate donations and other private fundraising efforts for the proposed 1,108-acre public park on the crest of Red Mountain. The park could eventually cost $40 million to develop, of which $7 million is the purchase price being offered by current land owner U.S. Steel Corp.

In other business, Collins said the county has renegotiated from $275 to $180 the hourly figure paid to a software vendor for training and consulting county employees on a new financial software system.

BearingPoint Management & Technology Consultants, a Virginia-based company, serves as the county’s software implementation vendor.

On Monday, the county scrapped plans to begin using the system after employees couldn’t get numbers to add up in a last minute test.

Collins said she was confident the system will be ready to go live in two weeks. It has been delayed twice since March.

The county needs more system testing and employee training before switching to the new software, she said.

The software will handle accounts payable, accounts receivable and other financial areas for all county departments.

“Everybody is working overtime; BearingPoint is cooperating, and everybody is set to go,” Collins said. “We want to be sure before we convert that all systems are go. It’s like a launching at Cape Kennedy. Sometimes you have to delay the launch.”

E-mail: bwright@bhamnews.com