One would think all the revenue pouring into the city from The Great Moonpie drop….rise….whatever it was, would more than cover all these sporting events.

Well put Ala.Patriot.  In the Sept 8 Mobile Bay Times, they quoted the mayor as saying that it was fundamentally unfair for city residents to subsidize those who live outside the city and receive full city services without paying the same taxes. This was in response to the Ala.Sup.Ct decision in the Dickson Camper lawsuit. Maybe they forget that those in the 3 mile police jurisdiction pay 2% sales tax which goes to the city to cover the expense of police and fire. Those in unincorporated areas, pay their fair share of taxes.  Other than police/fire, what full city services are offered in the PJ - trash and garbage are not collected in the PJ, except right before a vote on annexation!  Maybe they should work on keeping businesses and the Senior Bowl, instead of additional land grab.  Some blame the small towns around Bham as the cause of its problems and preventing Bham from growing, maybe they need to look at it from another direction, if there were no small towns surrounding Bham, then those residents would not only leave Bham but also the whole area.

The city leaders should be looking inside of the city limits for more revenue instead of trying the easy way out and roping in unwilling and potentially hostile citizens that have already seen how utterly unscrupulously and unfairly that the mayor handled the past two annexations.  No one wants increased taxes, more rules and regulations, and to have absolutely no sayso in their choice of entering the city or not.  The city has various ways of raising more capital within the city, and they should be looking at those opportunities very closely.  The city has absolutely nothing to offer the citizens residing in the unincorporated areas of Mobile County that they don’t already have.  All the annexation would be is a land grab and forcing the people to pay higher taxes and face criminal charges if they shot fireworks, burnt their trash, or target shoot in their own yards.  Many people read these posts and comment on them both at work and at home, as well as at church, the stores, and the schools.  Everybody is aware of the mayor’s (and hence the city council’s) unethical methods of obtaining biased votes from people that will not be affected financially (if at all) because they are already receiving government housing, food stamps, and various other freebies that everyone else has to dig and scrape up money for.  The people in the county know this now, and will try their best to block any further annexations if they can.  Mobile is losing the trust of the people rapidly. JMO