Birmingham will spend up to $502,000 for about 200 delegates to attend the 2023 Neighborhoods USA Conference in May in El Paso, Texas.

The Birmingham City Council voted this week to approve the spending, but not without questions over whether it is worth the investment.

The council passed a resolution authorizing the mayor to expend funds up to $502,000 for registration of up to 198 neighborhood association officers and volunteers from Birmingham’s 99 neighborhoods, not to exceed two per neighborhood association, along with three city employees serving as community resource representatives, to attend the NUSA Conference in El Paso, May 24-27.

“Just remember that with over $500,000, there’s a lot that we can do in neighborhoods (rather than) sending 200 citizens to El Paso,” Council member Hunter Williams said.

He said sending 23 or fewer community representatives to NUSA conferences might be a better strategy, and use the savings to resurface streets and sidewalks and install speed bumps.

“We could do a contest: with this $500,000, we’ll put in a sidewalk to whatever school doesn’t have one and the kids are walking on the street,” he said. “Or we could go to El Paso.”

The council delayed the vote a week to add requirements that delegates report back on what they learned at the conference.

“I’m hopeful that (with the reporting requirement) we’ll see the benefit of sending individuals to NUSA,” said Council member J.T. Moore. “Hopefully moving forward we’ll be able to see the benefit and our neighborhoods will benefit from it.”

Williams said the requirement for delegates to report back on what they learned was not in place last year, but it had been in previous years. “No one has actually ever done the requirement,” he said.

“I’m really going to be interested in reading these reports,” said Council member Valerie Abbott. “I’d be curious to see what we’re getting out of it.”

Council President Wardine Alexander said delegates have implemented programs they learned at the conferences. “I have seen some results that came out of the NUSA conference with the Germania Park neighborhood,” she said. “They got the idea of junior code enforcers. We use those youth in the summer to assist with code enforcement.”

If delegates share what they learned, it could be beneficial, she said. “There are many opportunities there,” Alexander said.

NUSA was founded in 1975 to sponsor workshops for neighborhood representatives from around the country on how to improve their neighborhoods. Birmingham has hosted the NUSA conference three times, most recently in 2018.

The NUSA conferences have been held as far away as Alaska in 2011, when Birmingham sent 168 delegates at a cost of $373,000. The conferences typically draw about 1,000 delegates from across the country.

Birmingham’s delegation has sometimes caused controversy. In 2001, Birmingham delegates sued over election results for the 21-member board of directors that governs the organization. In 2003, delegations from other cities accused the 226 Birmingham delegates of skipping workshops to attend a campaign fish fry sponsored by political candidates on a hotel patio in Chattanooga. That year, Birmingham’s delegation made up nearly a quarter of the 945 delegates.