Mobile’s Outgoing Mayor on Moving Past ‘Perpetual Potential’

Sandy Stimpson worked in the south Alabama lumber industry for nearly four decades, including as an executive and chief financial officer, before becoming mayor of his hometown of Mobile at the age of 61. Twelve years later — after deciding against running for a fourth term — he’s handing off the baton to Spiro Cheriogotis, a former judge and fellow Republican.

Over the course of his three terms, Stimpson has focused on stabilizing Mobile’s finances, resulting in upgrades to the city’s credit ratings, while investing in quality-of-life improvements and helping to bring in major infrastructure and economic development investments. There have been setbacks and controversies, including a periodic power struggle with the City Council. Some top officials in the area, including a former police chief and a former head of the local housing authority, publicly criticized Stimpson’s administration after leaving their jobs.

But as Stimpson leaves office, Mobile has a lot to celebrate. In just the last few weeks, the city has welcomed the return of Amtrak passenger rail service to New Orleans which was lost after Hurricane Katrina; completed the deepening of a channel serving the fast-growing Port of Mobile; and celebrated a decision by Airbus to double its commercial airplane manufacturing operation in the city. It’s also building a new arena to replace the old Mobile Civic Center and working to open a new airport terminal for commercial flights closer to downtown.

Also during Stimpson’s tenure, Mobile annexed a handful of suburban neighborhoods to its west, which helped stabilize the population, though some core areas of the city are still shrinking. The annexation made Mobile the second-biggest city in Alabama, after Huntsville. At a little over 200,000 people, Mobile is the 126th-biggest city in the U.S.

Stimpson recently spoke with Governing about his time in office. A staff member was present on the call and urged him to talk about his efforts to stabilize the city’s finances. The interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Governing: How has the city changed in the time you’ve been in office, and what changes do you want to take credit for? 

Sandy Stimpson: I’ve got to be careful taking credit for anything. A lot of stuff has taken place during my watch, but some things were already in motion. Like any mayor, you’re in a relay race. I took the baton from the previous mayor, and when we hand it off, we’re leaving the city in better shape than when we found it. I think in every single aspect, we’re in a better position than we were. As I think about things coming to an end, if you’re at 50,000 feet looking down, one of the things is that in years past, Mobile was referred to as a city of perpetual potential. It just seemed like we couldn’t quite get there. We no longer have that moniker. We have a lot of momentum right now. The city is really teed up for dynamic growth from an economic development standpoint and a population standpoint.

What does that momentum look like? What are the pieces in place that make you feel like Mobile is moving forward? 

Recently there was an interview with the chairman of the board of Airbus, who made the comment that in Mobile they’re doubling the capacity for building the A320 single-aisle airplane, their most popular airplane. Mobile is the only place outside of Europe and China that they build those planes. They’re doubling the production capacity here because of the success they’ve had in Mobile. A lot of that has to do with the support that they’ve found from the citizens of Mobile, the support they have from the local, state and federal governments. Ten years ago we had never built an airplane. Pretty soon we will have built our 600th airplane. When this most recent facility comes online, which they refer to as a final assembly line, we’ll be close to producing 20 airplanes a month. We’ll be the fourth-largest producer of commercial aircraft in the world, behind Seattle; Toulouse, France; and Hamburg, Germany. And none of them did that in a 10-year period.

That’s a major corporation that’s done that, but when we look around at our shipbuilding, it’s going gangbusters. It was announced by the U.S. Navy that we’ll be building submarine components out of a company called Austal. We also have a growing university. One year from now we’ll have the most modern and newest medical school in the United States at the University of South Alabama. I could go on and on, but that’s some of the reasons why I say we’ve got the momentum.

Success begets success. When somebody like Airbus steps in and has the success they’ve had, people start saying, why did Airbus choose Mobile? It goes back to the port and the infrastructure. We’re very fortunate here, we have one of the biggest and fastest-growing ports in the U.S. Just last week, we had a ribbon-cutting at the port, so we can now claim that the channel coming into the Port of Mobile is the deepest channel on the Gulf of Mexico [sic] at 50 feet, and so therefore Mobile will be the gateway to America. If you’re coming into the Gulf of America [sic], Mobile will probably be for container ships the first port of call, and they’ll unload some containers here before they go elsewhere, because there’s no other 50-foot channel.

We’ve got the port. We’ve got five Class I railroads that lead to the port. We’ve got two interstate highways. And we have two airports. We’re relocating all the commercial air services from outside on the edge of the city limits back to downtown, so our major airport will be downtown. And that’s where they’re building the Airbus airplanes.


A lot of the big things that are happening in Mobile — like moving the airport downtown, improving Interstate 10, expanding the port, restoring Gulf Coast passenger rail service, building a new arena — are partly under the city’s control but partly due to larger economic forces. What kind of role have you tried to play as the mayor and as a city representative in moving those things forward? 

A mayor has got to be a connector. You’ve got to instill confidence in the direction of the city, so those who are controlling the purse strings at the state level and the national level feel comfortable investing government dollars into some of these projects that we’re doing. The mayor plays a huge role in leading that charge because a lot of these dollars that are spent on economic development or housing or whatever, you’re in competition for those dollars with other cities. The mayor has got to make the case that the money is going to be best spent here, and I enjoy doing that.

Upon being elected we came into a very dire financial situation. The national economy was coming off of a downturn. I was elected in 2013 but the city was struggling. I inherited a budget, and within a month we figured out that we would end up with a $4 million deficit if we continued operating the way that had been cast. We immediately re-budgeted, which I don’t think had ever been done before, and we changed the outcome for that first year from what was projected to be a $4 million deficit to a $4 million surplus.

How did you do that? 

We put a hiring freeze in. We started looking at overtime. We quit spending money on things where money didn’t need to be spent. I’d been in the business world for 40 years. I’d been a CFO. I was very fortunate to bring onto my leadership team a new guy in finance who was really, really talented. His name was Paul Wesch. He earned the nickname of Dr. No.

We just became more fiscally responsible. We also recognized that our employees had not had a raise in seven years and we had to address that. We knew that we probably had to restructure our debt. We were immediately being called upon by the credit rating agencies and there was a discussion about downgrading our credit. Much to our good fortune, because I’d been a CFO in the lumber manufacturing business and we had a city councilor who’d been president of a local bank and the new finance director had a tax degree, through the conversations with the credit agencies, we convinced them that we were going to get our house in order, and they bought it.

From 2013 until 2025, when we started working on the new arena, we borrowed no money. We continued to pay down debt. We continued to contribute to the police and fire pension fund. Next year the police and fire pension fund will be fully funded, which is pretty unusual. The arena is a $300 million project. The money that’s been going to amortize the legacy debt and going to fund the police and fire pension will be redirected to the new debt, so we’ll pay it off in 20 years.

What role does the penny sales tax play in those efforts? 

Part of the money that’s raised from the penny sales tax does go toward debt reduction. But the majority of the penny sales tax goes to capital improvements or repairs to infrastructure — reasphalting roads, rebuilding roads, drainage, sidewalks, fixing parks and recreation centers, installing new splash pads, and so on.

The way the penny sales tax was set up in 2015 was that we have seven City Council districts, and for each City Council district there was an allocation of $3 million into those districts. The city councilor works with the mayor’s office to determine the priorities for how that money will be spent. That was a game changer across the city. In the past, I don’t care what city it is, people see money being spent across the railroad tracks or in some other neighborhood and they wonder why there’s no money being spent in their neighborhood. Once the plan was explained, and we ended up with a five-year plan of what projects we would do with a penny, people started buying into it, and it’s a very robust program. Instead of $3 million annually now it’s $4 million per council district. There’s a lot of roads being paved, a lot of sidewalks. You go into all the parks now and the restroom facilities are nicer, the playgrounds are nicer.

Can you tell me about the annexation? Was that part of your bid to stabilize the city’s finances? 

The previous mayor had done annexations and his motive for doing that was to bring in more revenue to the city. Ours was exactly the same thing. We were able to offer some things to the areas that were annexed. We have one of the best fire-rescue departments in the nation. The annexed area, those citizens wanted our fire rescue. They wanted to know if they call 911 they were going to get the best fire department and an excellent police response. We also get free garbage pickup once a week. We’re bounded on the east by Mobile Bay and the Mobile River. So our growth has to be to the west. That’s where the tax revenue comes from, the new grocery stores and other businesses. It was about securing the future growth of the city.

A lot of cities, including Mobile, are still struggling with population loss in certain parts of town. What are the challenges to building population in the older parts of the city? 

Huge. It’s one of the biggest challenges we face and other older cities face. I’ve been here for 12 years. That means every house in the downtown and midtown areas is 12 years older. That’s one reason why we have focused on improving parks in midtown and downtown areas, the downtown entertainment district, so people will want to live in those areas. They’ll look at an old house and decide, if it’s not a historic structure, they can tear it down and rebuild or they can renovate. But they’ve got to feel comfortable they’re in a safe area and that it’s worth the investment. What we find is that many people, depending on what housing costs today, they’d rather have a new house than rebuild. That’s why we continue to have more growth outside the core of the city. It’s just a challenge.

What do you think is going to turn the tide for the core of the city? It seems like you’ve done a lot of quality-of-life and infrastructure investments. How do you see those things playing into the city’s future? 

It’s hugely important. Right now we have somebody wanting to renovate a several-story bank building into condominiums to facilitate additional growth downtown. We have somebody looking to build a major hotel complex which would have condominiums too. Early on, I was invited to go to the Mayor’s Institute on City Design. While I was there I recognized there’s no great city without a great downtown. We have really focused on blight downtown. We’re about to pass a city ordinance creating a tax on vacant buildings. That’s been a little bit controversial. The property taxes in Alabama are historically low, so you can sit and hold an old building and just wait and see if it’s going to appreciate. We want people to not just sit there forever and let it continue to deteriorate and become more blighted. Among other things, that’s one of our focuses, to try to change the appearance of the streetscapes and parks. That encourages people to move downtown.

What are you going to do with your last few weeks in office? 

The most important thing I can do right now is work closely with the next mayor to help him understand some of the things that we learned. We had put our support behind a candidate named Spiro Cheriogotis, who is a former district judge. And he’s going to do a really good job. He’s been meeting with all of our team, so on Nov. 3 when he gets sworn in, he will be able to hit the ground running with a lot of knowledge.

When you have a mega-project like the airport and the arena, I’m going to offer my services to the mayor if he thinks it’s beneficial for me to try to help keep a pulse on those and report to him. I’m willing over the next year to provide whatever knowledge I can to help him be successful. I don’t want to be the mayor, I don’t want to be in his hair, I don’t want an office here, but by the same token, if I can be of help I’m going to be of help. My last day is Halloween.

Are you going to dress up? 

I hadn’t thought about that. I might dress up. I’m not sure what I’ll dress up as, but it won’t be as the mayor.