Councilman, resident voice support for Hoover Police Department

Hoover Councilman John Greene and a Ross Bridge resident at Monday night’s City Council meeting voiced support for the Hoover Police Department and how officers have handled recent protests.

Ross Bridge resident Wade Morgan said the outrage over the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis is understandable. Floyd died after a Minneapolis police officer kept his knee on Floyd’s neck for more than eight minutes, despite Floyd’s cries that he couldn’t breathe.

“Officers who commit things like this should be prosecuted immediately and to the fullest extent of the law,” Morgan said.

But some of the protests across the country have turned violent, with police officers that had no involvement with Minneapolis being assaulted, attacked and killed, Morgan said. Protesters in Hoover have cursed and screamed at Hoover police officers, standing face to face with them, and thrown things at them — just because they are police officers, he said.

For many people, the only encounters they have with police are negative experiences because they’re either the victim of a crime, they’re a criminal, they’re receiving a traffic ticket or they have been in a wreck, Morgan said. “Any one of those things means you’re not having a real good day,” he said.

But Hoover is fortunate to have officers who are compassionate and professional and “respond without regard to one’s race, sexual orientation or anything else,” Morgan said.

Protesters across the country are calling on cities to defund police departments and put money toward other forms of community service, but Morgan said that’s one of the most insane things he’s heard in his life.

“Defend our police, not defund them,” Morgan said. “Stand behind the men and women that make Hoover a safe place to live, that make Hoover an attractive place to work and relocate business, to build new homes so that people want to move here, to show that public safety is a top priority by your budget decisions and, finally, to be vocal in support of police and individual officers. Public safety should not and cannot be compromised.”

Morgan said he thought it was incredible that Hoover was able to give police officers and firefighters salary increases last year to attract and retain the best officers. He’s also thankful that Hoover police are some of the best-trained and best-equipped officers in the state, if not the nation, he said.

“Hoover police officers do an outstanding job day in and day out, each month, every day, call after call,” Morgan said. Even when faced with hostility, “they’re still out there maintaining the peace while protecting people’s right to express their grievances against the government in the form of protest.”

Morgan said Hoover residents will be watching to see Hoover Mayor Frank Brocato’s 2021 budget proposal and how the City Council responds to it.

Greene, who spent 20 years as a Birmingham police officer, said he thinks he speaks for the entire City Council in saying that they support the Hoover Police Department “100%.”

“I think they have done an excellent job through some very, very trying circumstances,” Greene said. “I just can’t say how proud I am of our Police Department.”

Councilman Derrick Murphy, the lone black member of the council, said he wanted to correct one of Morgan’s statements. He believes that the public has a lot of positive experiences with police officers, such as officers working with kids in schools and changing a motorist’s tire on the side of the road.

Murphy said he has ridden with some officers and seen how they handle different types of traffic stops.

Hoover Mayor Frank Brocato, after the council meeting, said he believes Hoover police officers have performed in an incredible manner and with much restraint, despite being pelted with eggs and bottles of water and urine and having unbelievable foul language and personal insults directed toward them.

“They never overreacted,” Brocato said. “Overall, I think they did a wonderful job. They were very proactive in working with the organizers of the demonstrations and laying out guidelines."

“For the most part, 95% of the people who came to our protests were peaceful and just wanted to get their message out,” the mayor said. “But there was a faction embedded in just about every group that came with the intent of causing damage or getting arrested. Some wanted to get arrested and make it more spectacular by resisting and things like that, and some just walked up to our police officers and asked to be arrested after they broke the law (by stepping into the roadway after being instructed not to do so by police).”

Police did try to keep the protesters on public property because private property owners didn’t want them on their property, Brocato said. And the protesters did not have a permit to walk along the public right of way, he said.

“We don’t even have a Christmas parade or anything like that down Highway 31 because it’s too difficult to manage,” Brocato said. “We certainly can’t afford to have large masses of people walking without any control down Highway 31. It’s a recipe for disaster.”

However, the mayor said Hoover officials are always going to protect the rights of people to demonstrate, and he believes the city has an excellent track record of showing that.

COVID-19 FINANCIAL UPDATE

Also during Monday’s council meeting, Brocato told the council that city spending from the three-month period of March 12 to June 12 was down about $4.7 million from the previous year.

City department heads kept expenses down because city revenues have fallen due to business closures related to the COVID-19 outbreak, the mayor said.

The city administration has identified $15 million worth of cuts to the 2020 budget that can be made, and the council went ahead and approved $5.5 million worth of cuts in operating expenses Monday night.

The administration also has identified $6.5 million in potential cuts to the capital budget, plus $3 million of unallocated cash that could be used if necessary to make up for revenue losses. However, it will be up to the council to decide what capital projects would be cut and whether to use any of that cash, City Administrator Allan Rice said.

The mayor said actual revenue numbers should be provided to the council in next few days, but based on a preliminary review, he doesn’t believe the revenue decline will reach $15 million.

That said, he still wants to keep controls on spending in place, he said. Rice added that the mayor’s 2021 budget proposal likely will be scaled back from 2020 due to the continued COVID-19 impact, but he hopes city officials can be surprised by revenues as the city goes through the new fiscal year, which begins Oct. 1.

In other business Monday, the council:

• Approved plans for a $3 million amenity center to be built by Signature Homes for the Abingdon By the River subdivision in the Trace Crossings community. Signature Homes President Jonathan Belcher said the 3,000-square-foot center will include an indoor/outdoor pool that can be covered and heated, four living spaces, exercise area, event lawn, outdoor putting green and view of a 1.7-acre lake.
• Authorized the mayor to fill seven vacancies for seasonal park and recreation jobs for up to three months, mostly for grass cutting and support for events at the Hoover Metropolitan Complex. The cost should not exceed $50,000, Rice said. Rice noted that the city expects to save more than $200,000 by taking over turf management at Hoover Metropolitan Stadium and an adjacent grass baseball/softball field instead of hiring a private company to do it.
• Authorized the mayor to enter into an agreement with the city of Birmingham for Birmingham and Hoover to assist one another with fire and emergency medical services in areas where the two cities are close to one another, similar to agreements that Hoover has in place with cities such as Helena, Pelham and Vestavia Hills.
• Annexed property at 1919 and 1921 Shannon Road that formerly was home to the Shannon Volunteer Fire Department and changed the zoning from a Jefferson County industrial zone to a Hoover C-1 commercial zone. The plan is to have an office there with some internal storage, City Planner Mac Martin said.
• Postponed consideration of whether to annex 36 acres next to Greystone for a proposed subdivision with 81 homes by developer Alan Howard of AJH Properties until July 20.
• Agreed to start letting special events on private property with live entertainment be reviewed and approved by city staff if the events will last less than three days instead of having to be approved by the City Council.
• Declared nine properties as public nuisances due to high weeds and/or grass, including 3419 Loch Ridge Drive, 1858 Burning Tree Circle, 905 Shady Brook Circle, 2125 Tyler Lane, 1139 Camelot Circle, 2500 Riverchase Galleria, 1776 Southpointe Drive, 1200 Shades Crest Road and 3555 Atdoann Drive.
• Renewed a property insurance agreement with Alliant Property Insurance, with rates increasing 29% to about $60,000.
• Renewed  an agreement with Allianz Global Corporate and Specialty Insurance Co., with an increase of about $1,900 to $14,421, to cover insurance for five police drones instead of four.
• Renewed an agreement with Hartford Insurance Co. for a crime insurance policy to cover things such as employee theft or forgery, with no increase in the premium of $6,266.
• Agreed to pay $93,061 for cloud document storage capacity.
• Agreed to pay $93,376 to replace 30 switches in the city’s telecommunication closets.
• Agreed to pay Charter Communications Operating LLC $2,398 per month for internet service at the Finley Center and the Hoover Public Safety Center.