Mobile County Commissioner Merceria Ludgood held her ground in a pointed exchange with a city contractor during the commission’s April 14 meeting, pushing back over a proposed $200,000 increase to a contract tied to the county’s campaign to lure former Mobile residents back home.
The dispute centered on a proposed amendment that would add $200,000 to a contract connected to a program known as BPM, which runs the “Come Back to Mobile” campaign. The initiative has been soliciting resumes from professionals who grew up in or once worked in the Mobile area, encouraging them to return as the region positions itself for a wave of industrial investment. Ludgood questioned the contractor, Jane Birdwell of Birdwell Photography & Multimedia, over the proposed funding increase during the meeting.
The “Come Back to Mobile” push is not the only local effort chasing the same goal. A separate group, Mobile Works, has also been collecting resumes from would-be returnees, meaning two recruitment campaigns have effectively been operating in the same market at the same time.
The recruitment push comes against the backdrop of what local officials and business leaders have described as roughly eight years of a “brain drain” in Mobile — a steady departure of trained professionals from the area in search of opportunities elsewhere. County leaders are hoping to reverse that trend as several major employers in the region prepare to ramp up hiring.
Companies including ThyssenKrupp, EADS, Northrop Grumman and Airbus have all figured prominently in discussions about the region’s next wave of industrial and aerospace jobs. ThyssenKrupp’s steel operations and the aerospace companies’ expanding presence in the Mobile area have fueled expectations of thousands of new positions in engineering, manufacturing and skilled trades, and that expectation is part of what has driven local leaders to make sure the workforce is in place to fill them.
Commissioners also took up a range of other business during the same meeting, including matters involving The Cimarron Club, complaints from homeowners about two new subdivisions, home insurance reform efforts in south Mobile County, a dispute involving a group of mounted horses, and recognition presented to Lamar Advertising and Clear Channel Radio.