Fire department serves as start for Hoover mayors

The city of Hoover has had 10 mayors in its 50-year existence, and half of them have been associated with the Hoover Fire Department.

The first mayor was Don Watts, who was an active member of the Hoover Civic Club when the city incorporated in 1967, according to a book on the city’s early history by Bluff Park resident Heather Jones Skaggs.

Watts and the first town council served only one year so that the town could get on the same election cycle as other municipalities. 

The next three mayors all were members of the original town council, and all were members of the Hoover Volunteer Fire Department as well.

Councilman Ed Ernst ran against Watts in 1968 and beat him to become Hoover’s second mayor, but Ernst stayed in office only about a year before he resigned. Ernst had health issues and “didn’t feel like he was qualified, and he would rather step down,” said John Hodnett, who was on the council at the time, according to interview transcripts for another book on Hoover’s history put together by the Hoover Historical Society.

O.E. “Brad” Braddock was council president and stepped in to serve the rest of Ernst’s term.

It was during Braddock’s term that the first freestanding city hall (separate from the first fire station) was built in 1971 on land along U.S. 31 donated by insurance man William Hoover, according to “A History of Hoover, Alabama and Its People,” by Marilyn Davis Barefield.

Braddock won the mayor’s election in 1972 but later died of a heart attack in 1975.

He was replaced by Hodnett, who was council president and Braddock’s next-door neighbor.

Hodnett, in interview transcripts, said it was Braddock who made the initial contact with businessman John Harbert about annexing the 3,000-acre Riverchase development into Hoover, including land that now holds the Riverchase Galleria.

Hodnett, with assistance from then-Council President Frank Skinner and then-City Attorney Jack Harrison, completed the Riverchase negotiations.

Some residents “thought that we were going way out on a limb and we were going to bankrupt the city by taking in Riverchase,” Hodnett said in an interview for the book. “Now [in 1990], I think it provides two-thirds of the income to the city.”

Skinner was the only Hoover official to run for office again in 1980, and he won the mayor’s seat. He kept that job for more than 18 years and is the city’s longest-serving mayor.

Skinner, who once served as assistant fire chief, is widely credited as the architect of much of Hoover’s growth. He oversaw massive annexations, including the Bluff Park and Shades Mountain communities, thousands of undeveloped acres owned by U.S. Steel in what is now central and western Hoover, and the Greystone community and key commercial sections of Inverness to the east.

People criticized the city for going that far east, but “we made money on it,” Skinner said. “It made business sense.”

Skinner’s administration also oversaw construction of the current Municipal Center, Public Library, Recreation Center and Hoover Metropolitan Stadium, and it pushed heavily for the widening of Alabama 150 and construction of the “Galleria flyover” exit on Interstate 459.

Investigations into city affairs by the FBI and state attorney general’s office cast a shadow on Hoover City Hall for more than two years and resulted in Skinner resigning in February 1999 and pleading guilty to a misdemeanor campaign finance violation.

Then-Council President Brian Skelton was appointed mayor for the final 20 months of Skinner’s fifth term.

Councilwoman Barbara McCollum beat Skelton in the next election, becoming Hoover’s first female mayor. She oversaw the annexation of 1,700 acres for the Ross Bridge development and the purchase of a former 380,000-square-foot BellSouth warehouse on Valleydale Road for use as the Hoover Public Safety Center.

Tony Petelos, a former state legislator, defeated McCollum in the 2004 election. Supporters said he brought peace to a quarrelsome city government and successfully brought Hoover through a downturn in the economy by keeping a rein on spending and cutting contributions to Hoover schools when the school system received a large chunk of money from Jefferson County.

Petelos also fought off lawsuits claiming that police and elected officials were trying to drive Hispanics out of the city.

When Petelos became Jefferson County’s manager in 2011, the City Council appointed its president, Gary Ivey, to take over as mayor. Ivey pushed through tax incentives to help with renovations of the Riverchase Galleria and touted the recruitment of new retail businesses and two free-standing emergency rooms.

Ivey last year was challenged and beaten by Frank Brocato, the city’s first paramedic and fire marshal who spent 42 years with the department before retiring in 2015.

Two other key city leaders, new City Administrator Allan Rice and Council President Gene Smith, also are Fire Department alumni.