Hoover mayor, council candidates differentiate themselves at election forum

Samantha Briggs came to Tuesday night’s Hoover election forum clueless about whom she would support when she goes to vote next week on Aug. 23.

But after listening to three mayoral candidates and 15 City Council candidates make their cases and answer questions at the Hyatt Regency Birmingham — The Wynfrey Hotel, the Green Valley resident left with a list in hand.

Briggs was among 350-400 people who turned out for the three-hour forum, which touched on topics ranging from school funding and city planning to transparent government, balanced budgets, economic development and support for the arts.

Full-time mayor?

Mayoral candidate Frank Brocato, a retired Hoover fire marshal, tried to differentiate himself from his two opponents by emphasizing his commitment to be a full-time mayor.

Both current Mayor Gary Ivey and mayoral candidate Steve McClinton have other jobs, Brocato said. Ivey is president and CEO of Crest Cadillac, and McClinton is an investment planner with Security Financial Advisors. Brocato said that, as a retiree, he would have more time to devote to being mayor.

“You’re paying for a full-time mayor. You deserve a full-time mayor,” Brocato said of the job that pays $90,000 a year plus a $500 per month vehicle allowance.

Ivey said he is a full-time mayor and is on call 24 hours a day. He’s rarely at Crest Cadillac because he has good managers working for him there, he said.

Ivey said he’s running on his track record of keeping the city’s budget balanced ever since he took office and he believes he has done a good job managing the city.

McClinton, who served as president of the Hoover City Schools Foundation the past two years, said he’s the only mayoral candidate who has believed in the Hoover school system enough to put his own children in the system and he’s the only candidate that has a proven track record of working with the school system.

“Schools are not just some campaign issue I came up with six months ago,” he said. “I’ve lived and breathed it. My track record has proven it for over 10 years.”

McClinton also said he will be the mayor for all of Hoover, whether residents who were part of the city’s founding or newcomers. He has been disturbed in recent years to see neighborhoods pitted against other neighborhoods and apartment renters pitted against homeowners. It has become an us vs. them mentality, he said.

“True leadership would not let that happen,” McClinton said. “I promise you I’m the only mayoral candidate that has the ability to bring all of Hoover together.”

Union endorsement

Brocato asked people at Tuesday night’s forum if they wanted a mayor beholden to unions, political action committees and special interest groups tied to the $80 million sports complex the city is building, or if they wanted a mayor beholden to the residents in the neighborhoods.

Ivey has touted his endorsement from the Hoover Firefighters Association, the union representing Hoover firefighters. Brocato said he was never in a union and that the union members never considered him one of their own because he was a manager in the Fire Department. He told the union he didn’t want their support or their political action committee money, he said.

Only 17 of the 90 or so members of the Hoover Firefighters Association voted to endorse Ivey, and there are 175 members in the Hoover Fire Department, Brocato said. So the endorsement is hardly representative of the firefighters as a whole, he said. He believes he has the support of the rank-and-file members of the department, but the Hoover Fire Department did not endorse anyone, he said.

Jeff Harris, president of the Hoover Firefighters Association, later disputed Brocato's numbers. He said the union has 133 members, including 103 active Fire Department employees, 24 retirees and six honorary members. Union members voted by email on whether to endorse Ivey, and 54 voted yes, while 14 voted no, Harris said.

All the mayoral candidates were asked what issue they would tackle first on their first day on the job or first day in a new term.

McClinton said school funding. There’s no easy answer to the school funding problems, but it’s clear the schools do not have enough money, he said. He would bring everyone to the table, look at wants versus needs and work together to solve the problem.

“People move here because of the schools, and people leave here because of the schools,” McClinton said.

It seems the current administration is not willing to talk with the school system about how to solve the problem, he said. He will work to make education a non-negotiable priority, he said.

More to the city than schools

Ivey said he has had the same priorities for a long time. While the school system is an integral part of the city, “it’s not just the school system that makes this city,” he said.

It’s also the police and fire departments, parks and recreation and roads, he said.

“People need to feel safe to go out,” Ivey said. “We’ve got to protect our city. We’ve got to protect our kids.”

He has always been willing to talk to the school superintendent about budget issues, he said. Everyone agrees there is a funding problem, so maybe city officials need to look at the city’s capital project needs and the school system’s capital project needs and see which items are needed most, he said.

In a city the size of Hoover with so many departments, “there’s never enough money for any of them,” Ivey said. “Everybody needs more manpower, more equipment, more everything.”

Brocato said if he is elected mayor, on his first day he will call schools Superintendent Kathy Murphy and set up an appointment to meet with her in 30 days. He has already met with her, teachers and parents, and the No. 1 problem he’s hearing is that people are concerned the school system is going to go down, he said.

He believes the city can do better than giving less than 2 percent of its budget to the school system, he said. He’s not in favor of dumping money on the school system, but “schools are very important. If we don’t take care of our schools, we’re going to lose property values and we’re going to lose businesses in our city,” he said. “We’ve got to put that as our No. 1 priority.”

Brocato said he also will take 30 days to evaluate the city’s budget and evaluate city staff to identify a project manager to lead development of a master plan for the city.

Managing growth

Ivey was asked what he has done to manage the city’s residential growth. He said the city does use a 2003 master plan as a guide even though the City Council never officially adopted it.

“You’ve got to be very careful when you lock yourself into zoning,” Ivey said. “What’s good today might not be good tomorrow.”

During his 20+ years as mayor, council president or chairman of the city’s Planning and Zoning Commission, the city has grown by more than 30,000 people. Ivey said people have a right to develop their property, so city officials try to be fair with developers.

However, city officials have been able to negotiate with developers to decrease the density of their developments, he said. For example, when U.S. Steel annexed land for what is now known as the Blackridge development, the annexation agreement allowed for 3,300 homes, but city leaders negotiated that down to 1,100 homes, Ivey said.

City leaders also were able to get Signature Homes to increase impact fees from $1,500 per new house to $3,000 per new house on that property, Ivey said.

McClinton was asked about his experience in managing budgets. He replied that as an investment planner, he manages $35 million of other people’s money.

“I’m entrusted by hundreds of families and businesses with tens of millions of dollars,” he said. “What I do requires a lot of trust and transparency, and I promise to bring that same trust and transparency to run city government.”

Audience reaction

Briggs, a women and gender studies professor at the University of Alabama at Birmingham who moved to Hoover in 2009, said this is the first time she has ever attended a political event in Hoover.

When she first moved to Hoover, she tried to get involved in the schools but got her hand smacked by the “PTA posse” and didn’t feel welcome, she said. She became more interested in Hoover affairs when school officials talked about removing buses and started paying more attention, she said.

She came to Tuesday’s election forum looking for something new, fresh and different, but she didn’t know the candidates well enough to make a choice, she said.

“I can’t say I necessarily got it across the board, but I heard enough to feel comfortable with us moving forward and growing as a city,” she said.

She was intrigued that there are so many first-time political candidates running for office in Hoover this year, she said. “You don’t see that across the board very often,” she said.

Lashaunda King, a resident of the Deer Valley community, said she was struck by the lack of diversity among the candidates. There are no women holding elected offices in Hoover and none running for mayor or council now. Derrick Murphy, a candidate for Hoover Council Place 5, is the only black candidate running for office.

King, who is black, said when the city is being run by a bunch of old white men, it’s not very reflective of the community as a whole. Hoover is a diverse city and should have more diversity in its government, she said.

Listening to some of the candidates’ answers Tuesday night, it was clear to her that some of them do not understand the viewpoint of minorities, she said.

Just because someone is a minority doesn’t mean they want someone to give them a handout or waive an application fee for something, she said. Black people just want the same access to information as everyone else, she said.

Linda Habig, a Bluff Park resident who has lived in Hoover 14 years, said what struck her the most about Tuesday night’s forum was that Ivey seemed to ramble and did not really answer several of the questions he was asked.

“He didn’t come across as a very good speaker,” she said. “He did not pointedly answer the questions.”

She finds it interesting that everyone claims to think school funding is an issue right before the election but incumbents who cut millions of dollars for schools in the past all of the sudden came up with a much smaller $1.3 million increase for schools eight months before the election.

She’s also bothered by candidates who take a lot of money from political action committees instead of directly from individuals or businesses, she said.

Briggs said after hearing all the candidates Tuesday night, she favors Brocato for mayor because of his ties to the community and history of civic involvement.’

“I think he made a strong point to separate himself from traditional everyday politicians, business as usual,” she said.

The audience also heard from each of the 15 City Council candidates seeking the seven seats on the Hoover council. All of the candidates were allowed to give two-minute opening statements and then answer four questions each and give a 1-minute farewell statement at the end of the night.

To hear more about each council candidate and their answers, as well as more from the mayoral candidates, check out the video of the forum on the Hoover Sun Facebook page. It’s divided into two segments due to a false alarm fire alarm that briefly interrupted the forum.

Tuesday’s forum was sponsored by the Hoover Sun, Hoover City Schools Foundation and Hoover Rotary Club. Mike Royer, a longtime Birmingham TV news broadcaster who now is managing editor at the University of Alabama’s WVUA-TV/Channel 23, served as moderator.

Entertainment was provided by a jazz combo from Hoover High School, and the Hoover High broadcasting department provided in-house video services. The Hoover Belles service organization helped welcome guests to the event.

Another Hoover election forum, sponsored by the bluffparkal.org website and Monte D'Oro Neighborhood Association, was held at Shades Crest Baptist Church on Aug. 9. Read more about that forum here.

For more about the candidates running for Hoover mayor and City Council, see candidate bios here and links to more stories on candidates here.

This article was updated at 10:25 a.m. on Aug. 22 with comments from Jeff Harris, president of the Hoover Firefighters Association.