By Barnett Wright | The Birmingham Times
Even with his most lopsided margin of victory in three campaigns for Birmingham mayor, Randall Woodfin surveyed the landscape inside of City Hall after the August elections and did the unexpected — he began a staff shake up.
The outcome of the 2025 mayoral elections was Woodfin’s most dominant of three runs for City Hall, with the incumbent receiving 75 percent of the votes to the distant-second-place candidate, Jefferson County Commissioner Lashunda Scales, receiving 14.58 percent.
The mayor could have maintained the status quo. But he was laser-focused on efficiencies, said staffers.
“It would be easy to coast, but the immediate thought after winning, … before that morning, was, ‘That’s a lot of trust in us,’” Woodfin told the Birmingham Times in an hour-long interview that took place at his City Hall office ahead of his inauguration on Tuesday. “We have to deliver for our folks.”
While Woodfin would not reveal his staff changes, City Hall insiders say Earl Hilliard Jr., Senior Public Affairs Officer; Sherry-Lee Bloodworth Botop, Chief Resilience and Sustainability Officer; and Sybil Scarbrough, Public Information Officer, Department of Public Works, are among those who are no longer part of the administration.
“Nobody who gets 75 percent [of the vote] shakes up everything,” said one insider. “[The mayor] wants people to be permanently uncomfortable at City Hall.”
Asked about the shake-up Woodfin would only say, “The changes [didn’t mean things] we’ve been doing weren’t working. It’s [about] leveling up to honor our core values of customer service, how we show up for our residents, how we can be more efficient in delivering services, how we show up for our residents.”
During his inauguration at the Boutwell Auditorium on Tuesday, the mayor pointed to leaders who will help guide his administration’s third term. Reappointed to his executive team are Cedric D. Sparks, Sr., Chief of Staff; Ed Fields, Chief Strategist and Senior Advisor; Melissa E. Smiley, Chief Economic and Community Development Officer; and Chaz Mitchell, Chief Financial Officer and Commissioner of Sports and Entertainment.
The mayor also announced three new leadership roles: James Fowler as Chief of Public Infrastructure, Dr. Sylvia Bowen as Deputy Chief of Administrative Services, and Carlton Peeples as Deputy Chief of Public Safety.
Accountability
Woodfin’s hold on the mayor’s office appears to be growing tighter with time. He received 58.95 percent of the vote in beating former mayor William Bell in a runoff in 2017 to become the city’s youngest mayor in more than 120 years. Four years later, he reeled in 64.3 percent of the votes to secure his second term. (Scales finished second then too with 20.77 percent.)
While Woodfin remains popular with voters that doesn’t mean everybody is happy.
Some neighborhood leaders have expressed disappointment because of the pace of some city projects, including the proposed Family Fun Center at the Birmingham CrossPlex. To date, the only visible evidence of that project is a fenced area on the CrossPlex campus.
But those leaders aren’t the only ones who are exasperated. “I share their frustration,” Woodfin told The Times. “But I want to be very clear: I’m a man of my word. If I say something’s going to happen., it may not happen now, it may be delayed, but it’s going to happen.”
In regard to delays with the Family Fun Center project, the mayor said bids came in well over the amount of funding that was in place for the project. He and his team have been in discussions with developers, trying to find an acceptable number, he said.
“We’ve still got to find the additional money, … That project will be completed,” he said.
To help address the problem of long long-delayed projects Woodfin said Melissa Smiley, his chief accountability officer, “will make sure we hold internal and external team members accountable for moving projects and projects coming to fruition,” he said. “[The Family Fun Center] was one of the ones where I put the money in and said, ‘This is going to happen,’ … and then [some] people didn’t honor their part. So, we’re back at the table trying to figure out how to land this plane.”
Legacy
Though the mayor is all in when it comes to delivering for residents of Birmingham for the next four years, City Hall insiders speculate that some of his personnel moves are made with an eye on his legacy. Asked about that, Woodfin told The Birmingham Times: “What I hope to do is just do good work that improves the quality of life.”
“I’m responsible for the work,” he added. “I’m judged on the work, whether it’s good or bad, including from a legacy standpoint.”
But if Tuesday’s inauguration showed anything the mayor wants to build a better Birmingham for future generations. Most of his 25-minute inaugural address focused on what the city would do for its young people.
“In my third term our children won’t just be a part of the agenda, they will be the ‘why’ that drives every decision we make,” he said.
Woodfin cited three things he’d like to tackle before leaving office.
“One is [to] really push and move beyond the legacy of racism,” he said. “There’s a sincere duplication of services within our city limits, [a holdover from the city’s segregated past, that] we’re still paying for. How do we show up for our fire stations and city parks and pools and libraries? We’ve got to make better investments, period. And we’ve got to make them where they work for our community today.”
Another legacy-builder is education “beyond K through 12,” the mayor said. “We [need to] set it up for the next generation to be gainfully employed,” Woodfin said. “Not just career ready, but college ready, life ready.”
That was part of a plan he unveiled Tuesday titled “Cradle to Career where every child walks into school ready to thrive, where every baby born comes home to books and support, where every student sees a clear path from the classroom to college to career … That’s not a dream. That’s a promise. That’s the Birmingham we’re building,” he said.
Lastly, hearkening back to the legacy of Birmingham’s first African American mayor—Richard Arrington Jr., whose two-decade tenure from 1979 to 1999 marked a pivotal era for the city—Woodfin seeks to chart a course for the Magic City and its residents that fosters lasting economic growth and prosperity. He recalled Arrington leading Birmingham through a full shift in its economic identity, transitioning from a leader in the steel industry to a thriving hub for health care and financial services.
“I want to go back and honor what happened, what he [Arrington) inherited, and [how he] reimagined all these brownfields that produced thousands of jobs [in the city],” Woodfin said. “Ensley Works, those … [brownfields] in North Birmingham, and other sites., We want to repurpose these sites [so] we can go back to them, [and] have real, tangible job creation where [that provides opportunities for] Birmingham residents [to] be gainfully employed,” Woodfin said. “… We employ our people, we educate our children, we make our city amenities work for our families. That’s legacy.”
Times freelancer Solomon Crenshaw Jr. contributed to this report
