Hoover council OKs $328,000 for new sidewalk in Inverness

The Hoover City Council on Tuesday approved about $328,000 for a new sidewalk on Inverness Center Drive.

The sidewalk will be on the east side of Inverness Center Drive and will stretch 1,300 feet (about a quarter of a mile) from just north of the Danberry at Inverness senior living community to the U.S. 280 right of way, City Engineer Chris Reeves said.

Construction should begin by the last week of September and be through by the end of January, Reeves said.

Hoover Council President John Lyda said people at Danberry have been asking for a sidewalk that would connect to the Walgreens at the intersection of U.S. 280 and Inverness Center Drive, and this sidewalk will do that.

Avery Landscape & Associates was the lowest of three bidders for the job.

NEW FLEET MANAGEMENT SOFTWARE

In other business Tuesday, the Hoover City Council voted 6-1 to approve $117,000 for new hardware and software for management of the city’s fleet of vehicles.

Jehad Al-Dakka, the city’s chief operations officer, said this will put equipment in all city vehicles that will track the location, operation and performance of vehicles. The system will automatically alert fleet management to any warnings on vehicles and allow them to better assess a vehicle’s performance, Al-Dakka said.

Because of monitoring, it also should improve safe driving habits and increase fuel efficiency, he said.

Councilman Steve McClinton, who cast the lone no vote against purchasing the equipment and software, said after the meeting he wasn’t necessarily against it, but he still had questions about it and had concerns about the GPS tracking system and that it was too much like “big brother” watching over city employees.

City Administrator Allan Rice said no one is going to be actively monitoring employee’s vehicles and movements all the time, but the system does allow for some accountability when issues arise that need verifying, such as an employee’s location at a particular time.

It should help guard against inappropriate use of city vehicles and equipment, such as someone using a city backhoe at their personal residence to dig out space for a pool. It also would come in handy if a city vehicle were stolen, Rice said.

Having GPS trackers attached to vehicles also will qualify the city for a 5% discount on  auto insurance premiums, he said.

Regarding the “big brother” concern, Al-Dakka said the system also has security protocols that restrict who can view the data coming from vehicles, and it also has an audit function that keeps track of who is reviewing the data.

However, Rice said that city employees should have no expectation of privacy when it comes to their use of city equipment, just like their use of city computers. It’s a matter of not only efficiency, but also accountability and transparency, Rice said.

McClinton also on Tuesday night was the sole vote on the council against modifications to the city’s ordinance regulating fireworks.

Fire Chief Clay Bentley said a change was needed in the ordinance to better clarify the definition of fireworks because the state changed its definition of fireworks last year, and the Hoover Fire Department wants to continue enforcing fireworks laws as it always has.

“This is something we feel strongly about,” Bentley said.

Other cities, such as Vestavia Hills, Huntsville, Mobile and Montgomery, are making similar changes, he said.

Steve Grondin, a resident of Trace Crossings, objected to the ordinance, telling the council he believes its extremely restrictive. He is not against reasonable regulation of fireworks, but the city’s ordinance makes it illegal to both possess, store or sell consumer-grade fireworks such as “party poppers” and “snappers,” he said.

McClinton said he voted against the changes to the ordinance because he believes the ordinance is an example of government overreach.

The City Council also on Tuesday:

• Agreed to pay $25,000 to buy a 1.7-acre strip of land between two other parcels totaling 2.63 acres the city bought along lower Lorna Road near the Cahaba River in April. Greg Knighton, the city’s economic development manager, said this will tie the other two parcels together and allow better use of the land for economic development and recreational uses along the Cahaba.
• Agreed to let the Alabama Department of Transportation install fiber optic lines, message boards, vehicle count stations and pan/tilt/zoom cameras at two intersections along U.S. 31 at Riverchase Parkway East and Parkway Lake Drive.
• Agreed to pay Raymond James $2,500 a year to file annual disclosure reports concerning the city’s debt.
• Agreed to hire CSA Service Solutions to do maintenance and repairs on the Hoover Fire Department’s stretchers as needed.
• Annexed a single-family home owned by Jon Riddle at 3449 Ridge Crest Drive that is surrounded by the city limits on three sides.

Editor's note: This story was updated at 10:58 a.m. on Sept. 8 to remove references to the "first phase" of the sidewalk project on Inverness Center Drive. City Engineer Chris Reeves said this is the only section of sidewalk construction planned on Inverness Center Drive and that references to the "first phase" on city documents were an incidental error.