Mark Bailey is running in the upcoming special election for Montgomery City Council District 3.
The Montgomery City Council recently voted unanimously to vacate Marche Johnson's District 3 seat because she does not live in the district. Candidate qualifying for the special election for the seat is open through July 14. The special election for the District 3 seat will be held on September 1. If no candidate receives the required number of votes, a runoff election will be held on October 13.
Bailey, an NFL sports agency owner who works in health care, told 1819 News recently that he’s lived in District 3 since 2019 and he’s noticed improvements that need to be made.
“I have several properties in the district, and I’ve just noticed that in the neighborhoods that I invest in, there’s not a ton of stuff happening. A lot of things have been neglected in our area so I have a lot of contacts, neighbors, and tenants in the area. We’re looking to kind of get some things done,” Bailey said. “I was planning on running anyway next year when (the seat) was going to come open in August 27. I was planning on running regardless and when the seat came open I had to increase the urgency to plan. I think it’s going to be hard if someone wins this seat this go around, they’re probably going to win it a year from now when it comes back open.”
Bailey has an MBA and is enrolled in the executive law program at the Thomas Goode Jones School of Law at Faulkner University.
Bailey said he wants to address the corridors connecting downtown to District 3 neighborhoods.
“One of the things I really want to address is the thru corridors connecting downtown Montgomery to the neighborhoods within this district,” Bailey said. “You have Highland Avenue, Mt Meigs, North Ripley, Lower Wetumpka Road, and Madison Avenue, if you’re connecting from those neighborhoods to downtown, there’s a stretch on almost every one of those streets where there’s just so many vacant businesses, neglected properties, grass, debris…It’s not attractive. I want to make District 3 more walkable so people in the neighborhoods have businesses, shops that they can come out to along these main corridors that connect to downtown without having to walk through 17 boarded up buildings and five car shops that have vehicles that are overflowing into the street that haven’t been moved in three years. That’s the issue that I really see and that’s where I want to be aggressive in trying to draw investment, businesses to those sections to start connecting the neighborhoods to downtown.”
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