Mayor seeks partnership with City Council to solve city's financial challenges

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Hoover Mayor Frank Brocato tonight held off on recommending a specific solution for dealing with projected budget deficits in the years ahead and asked the City Council to join with him and the community at large to find the answer.

Two weeks ago, Brocato said he would make a recommendation for dealing with projected deficits at tonight’s City Council meeting. Many people were expecting a specific recommendation tonight.

But Brocato, facing accusations that he was trying to ram a tax increase through quickly, tonight said it’s going to take a partnership to come up with solutions.

“This is not a one-man decision,” Brocato said after tonight’s meeting. “We’ve got a City Council sitting up there that was elected by 90,000 people, so we need to bring everybody in and get everyone involved in that decision making. As a mayor, there’s only so many things I can do operationally, but the council handles the money. It’s important that we bring them in and they have an opportunity to share in this process.”

Brocato asked Councilman John Lyda, chairman of the council’s Finance Committee, to call a meeting of the committee in the next two weeks and for the council to work with him and the community to develop a proposed resolution to the city’s financial challenges by the June 4 council meeting.

Lyda said he is 100 percent behind that idea. “I think that’s a very prudent next step,” Lyda said.

Two weeks ago, a consultant with the Porter, White & Co. investment banking and investment management firm told the council the city is headed for years of deficit budgets and no money for capital projects unless something is done to boost revenues or cut expenses.

The city’s revenues are being negatively impacted by an increase in online shopping, and expenses are growing due to additional employees hired by the previous administration, costs associated with the Hoover Metropolitan Complex expansion and an increase in the city’s contribution to the school system, Brocato said. See more on the Porter, White & Co. report here.

Cutting expenses

Tonight, Brocato spent about 10 minutes outlining ways his administration has tried to cut expenses and help the city get its financial house in order.

For example, changes were made in the design of the sports fields at the Hoover Metropolitan Complex that saved the city $5 million, and changes were made to employees’ health care coverage that both expanded benefits and saved about $240,000 a year, he said.

The city has 44 jobs that have not been filled once they became vacant, and some of those positions will be eliminated, Brocato said. The city also has made cuts in overtime expenses and eliminated out-of-state and overnight travel unless it was found to be “mission critical,” he said.

The city is no longer buying luxury vehicles that cost $60,000 to $70,000 and eliminated the Police Department’s helicopter unit, saving about $150,000 a year, Brocato said.

City officials have canceled the Freedom Fest Fourth of July celebration at Hoover Metropolitan Stadium, saving $80,000 to $90,000, he said.

“We continue to challenge our department heads every day to reduce operational costs,” Brocato said. “We’re making cuts at every opportunity, but we can’t cut ourselves out of this without fundamentally changing the city we all know and love.”

Brocato said the city has so many good things happening right now with its school system and new and expanding businesses, and he doesn’t want to lose the momentum.

“We have to be in a financial position to support those efforts and take advantage of those opportunities as they emerge,” he said.

City leaders cannot allow the city’s buildings and infrastructure to deterioriate and don’t need to make more cuts in police and fire services, the library, parks and recreation programs, and road maintenance, Brocato said.

“We cannot let our citizens down by diminishing the quality services they have come to expect from us every day,” he said.

Just last week, Hoover school officials shared about $19.5 million worth of classroom additions that are needed, plus about $72 million of other needs that have not been budgeted.

“We all have to determine what role we can play in helping them address those needs,” Brocato said. “These are the types of challenges we were all elected to address.”

'Rhetoric and political opportunism'

Brocato, without naming names, said “a few individuals are seeking to exploit this situation for their own personal gain.” He understands that’s part of the political process, but “I’m not willing to let rhetoric and political opportunism define our efforts to resolve this issue. We’ve got to do this right for Hoover.

“While we need to be deliberate, we also have to be decisive,” Brocato said. “We cannot wait forever or even until the next election.”

City staff have to start formulating the 2019 budget in May and need to know what kinds of revenues and expenditures to expect to have a budget ready for passage before the fiscal year begins Oct. 1, he said. Council members have had the consultant’s report for some time, and “it's time to act,” Brocato said.

Lyda commended Brocato for giving “one of the most impassioned, engaging and informative speeches I’ve seen from this podium in many, many years.” He said he can tell how much the mayor cares about the future of the city and wants everyone to work together for a solution.

Councilman John Greene said he feels certain every member of the council stands behind the mayor and wants to figure out everything they can do to remedy this problem, and Councilman Curt Posey said he looks forward to sitting down and doing a “deep dive into these numbers and looking at possible solutions.”

Community comments

Former Hoover Councilman Jody Patterson said everyone knows city leaders are talking about raising the city’s sales tax by 1 percentage point, which would increase the city’s sales tax from 3 to 4 percent and the overall sales tax to 9 percent in the Hoover portion of Shelby County and 10 percent in the Hoover portion of Jefferson County.

That’s going to impact his family, he said.

He realizes other cities such as Birmingham, Homewood, Bessemer and Leeds are already at 10 percent, but “I don’t go along with that,” Patterson said. “There’s a point where we’ve got to manage our money. We've got to balance the budget.”

He appreciates efforts that have been made to cut costs already, but “I think there’s room to tighten up some more,” he said.

Paul Braswell, another Hoover resident, said he has been in the Hoover area since 1963 — before it incorporated. Hoover has progressed a lot since then, and “it takes more than it what it used to take,” he said. “I think it’s worth paying extra money to have a better quality of life and higher prices for the homes we decide to sell one day.”