Nov 27, 2023

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Bad things have happened to Alabama football at Jordan-Hare Stadium against Auburn. Since the Iron Bowl moved to home sites from its traditional home at Legion Field after the 1988 season, the plains has been a place of pain for the Crimson Tide.

It’s where the Kick Six happened, along with multiple other moments that dashed national title hopes for the Tide, especially when Gus Malzahn was in charge for the Tigers.

The 2023 rendition of the Iron Bowl very nearly got away from the Crimson Tide. Alabama was heavily favored entering the game with Auburn coming off a loss to New Mexico State, but didn’t execute throughout the game.

On UA’s final drive, a snap miscommunication deep in Tiger territory had Alabama facing 4th-and-goal from the 31. It seemed the Jordan-Hare demons were going to avoid exorcism for another year.

Then, Jalen Milroe dropped back on a play called “Gravedigger” and found Isaiah Bond in the end zone. Alabama won 27-24.

A major problem has emerged, one that is saddling projects throughout Alabama and beyond: The building economy isn’t cooperating.

The frustrations are felt throughout Alabama, where local governments are scrambling to find solutions to save money without sacrificing big-ticket or even small-size developments and infrastructure improvement projects.

City administrators, managers, mayors, city councils and county commissioners have spent the past couple of years struggling to match project estimates with the realities of the project’s actual costs. In many cases, the estimates haven’t come close to matching up to the construction bids on each project, blowing budgets out of whack.

The resulting public debates focus on whether a city should be dipping into crucial tax reserves to pay for the rising costs to build parks, roads, parking garages, and buildings.

Government agencies are finding they are not immune from rising inflation, supply chain shortages and soaring labor costs that gripped the national economy since the pandemic.

Despite the costly realities, there is some hope that prices might have peaked and that a downturn could be coming.

Residents near Oxford and Heflin say they were blindsided by a proposal to build a new limestone quarry near residential areas, and are organizing to fight the project.

A website noquarryinoxford.com, has emerged in the past weeks to garner opposition to the project, which it calls a “385-acre mega-rock quarry” that it says is “not compatible with surrounding uses,” such as the Cedar Ridge Golf Course and hiking trails in the Talladega National Forest.

The website lists no names or information about who created the site, but provides a direct link for users to submit comments to the Alabama Department of Environmental Management and cites potential deterioration of property values and quality of life as reasons to oppose the project.

Alabama environmental regulations require a public comment period before these permits are issued for new facilities, but residents said they felt blindsided by the proposal. Many weren’t even aware of the project until ADEM’s initial public comment period was nearly over.

On Wednesday, ADEM denied the request for a public hearing, but agreed to extend the comment period an extra 30 days, through Dec. 22.

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