Author: Dale Liesch

Photo | Ryan Flynn/City of Mobile Mobile Mayor Sandy Stimpson navigates through Perch Creek earlier this week. Ditching his suit and tie for jeans, a ball cap and a fleece pullover, Mobile Mayor Sandy Stimpson smiled while paddling a kayak Monday morning, even offering to race others to shore. “This may be the best gig we have all day,” Stimpson said at a press conference. “This is a step in the right direction in the vision of the Peninsula Group of Mobile — the restoration of Perch Creek.” The city promoted a batch of new funding for the Dog...

Photo |Lagniappe Work to demolish the Roger Williams housing development continued last week in Mobile, as the Mobile Housing Board averages 300 days filling vacant apartments. The Mobile Housing Board of Commissioners shared its concern over the authority’s waiting lists and its decreasing occupancy rate at its Wednesday, April 11, meeting. Currently, the number of families waiting for traditional public housing through MHB sits at 2,700. Another 932 families are waiting on housing choice or Section 8 vouchers from the authority. While the number of move-ins has increased and the number of move-outs decreased, the latter is still outpacing...

Photo | Lagniappe John Walton talks about the death of his son Marshall in a road construction zone in 2015. The resulting Marshall James Walton Highway Safety Act signed by Gov. Kay Ivey last year created the crime of vehicular homicide in Alabama. Johnny Walton doesn’t want another family to go through what his went through more than three years ago. His 25-year-old son, Marshall Walton, was killed by a distracted driver at a construction site on U.S. Route 45 on Feb. 13, 2015. “I think about him every day,” the owner of John G. Walton Construction said at...

Photo | Lagniappe Mobile City Councilman Fred Richardson received a simple majority of votes to become council president last year, but the council remains rudderless. A constituent and friend of Mobile City Councilman Fred Richardson has filed a lawsuit in Mobile County Circuit Court seeking to force councilors into making a decision about who will be the board’s next president. The lawsuit, filed by L.A. Body Art owner Chassity Ebbole, seeks help from the court in forcing the council to stick by historical precedence and make Richardson president because he received four votes to Councilwoman Gina Gregory’s three. In...

Photo | Lagniappe Retiring State Rep. James Buskey was honored by the Mobile City Council for his four decades in state politics this week. It was a very happy birthday for State Rep. James Buskey (D-Mobile) on Tuesday, April 10. To honor his 42 years of service as a member of the Alabama House of Representatives, councilors and Mayor Sandy Stimpson honored him with a proclamation naming Tuesday “State Representative James Buskey Day.” They and several members of the local legislative delegation sang “Happy Birthday” to him. “Thank you,” Buskey said. “This is probably the most surprising thing …...