So if you haven’t read my column this week, which you can find here, I should say first that I’m not actually running for Birmingham mayor. Rather, the question I want to work through, with some help from readers, is what would be the perfect campaign platform if I did? In my column I call it the political version of fantasy football. This is an experiment in political journalism, and I’m hoping you eager readers will help make it successful.

During the next week or so here, I will write daily mini columns on various issues facing the city. My hope is that these little manifestos will start a larger discussion. Readers can critique what I’ve written and contribute your own ideas about politics and public policy in Birmingham. This should be a collaborative effort, with some sort of synthesis at the end. When we’re done we should have a People’s Platform — a kind of touchstone for the mayoral candidates.

Here is what to keep in mind: The fundamental problem in Birmingham is that it is a city with limited resources, and the overarching effect is that people are leaving the city in droves. How do we work within the former to solve the latter?

I’ve broken down the issues to these: Neighborhood Redevelopment, Education, Reconfiguring Government, Transportation, Crime, Homelessness, Econcomic Development and Environment. Again, these are just for starters, and we can add more or adjust some as we go.

Doing this on the blog offers some editorial liberties we don’t have in the regular print paper. Many of the issues I intend to address are sorted arbitrarily and they can’t be so easily untangled. For instance, education is a key component to neighborhood redevelopment, as is crime. Addressing the homeless problem downtown is part of economic development, and restructuring the city government will play key roles in education and transportation. This medium will allow us to tease these issues apart (with the individual posts) while preserving the interconnections (with hyperlinks). I’m looking forward to writing with this new dimension.

— Kyle Whitmire