Mobile mayor’s office looking at new annexation plan

Mobile Mayor Sandy Stimpson’s office will begin meeting this week with members of the City Council to discuss a new annexation map that looks to add 26,000 people to the population. 

Stimpson Chief of Staff James Barber confirmed the plan to District 2 Councilman William Carroll when the latter brought it up during the announcement segment of the Mobile City Council meeting on Tuesday, July 14. 

The meetings would mark the first time a new annexation plan was discussed since the council defeated a proposal to allow roughly 13,000 West Mobile residents to vote on joining the city in 2019. At the time, the vote fell along racial lines, with four White councilors voting in favor of allowing a referendum and three Black councilors opposed to it. A vote to allow an annexation referendum requires a supermajority of five councilors.

Carroll prefaced his questions to the administration by stating there had been robocalls sent out discussing annexation.  

When asked by Carroll, Barber said there was no set timeline on when an annexation vote would be put on the council’s agenda. Although, Barber did say it would be highly unlikely to come before an Aug. 12 date by which time the council is required to either approve or make changes to Stimpson’s proposed annexation map, before it becomes law. 

“We’re opening conversations to see what information you’d like to see,” Barber told Carroll and other councilors. “We’re already so close to Aug. 12 that I don’t anticipate any annexation votes before then.” 

The previous annexation attempt looked to give about 13,000 West Mobile residents an opportunity to vote on whether or not to join the city. The initial attempt came prior to the 2020 Census and its goal at the time, city officials said, was to grow the city’s population to more than 200,000 and open it up to a number of new federal grant opportunities. 

This new attempt would double that original number and grow the city’s 184,000 people to about 210,000. It would make Mobile the state’s second largest city, behind only Huntsville. 

The new discussion also comes while residents urge the council week after week to replace Stimpson’s redistricting map with one created by the Southern Poverty Law Center. Proponents of the SPLC maps argue that the just over 50 percent Black voting age population afforded to District 7 in Stimpson’s map does not make the Black majority strong enough.