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Hoover zoning board gains a transportation planner with love for sidewalks

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Photo by Jon Anderson

The Hoover Planning and Zoning Commission has gained a transportation planner as one of its members.

Hoover Mayor Frank Brocato appointed Becky White, a resident of Trace Crossings, to replace Sammy Harris, whose term on the commission ended. Her first meeting was Monday night.

White has lived in Hoover for 25 years. She moved to Bluff Park in 1995, had two children go through the Hoover school system and then moved to Trace Crossings in March of last year.

She graduated from Furman University with a bachelor’s degree in art and started work as a draftsman in the late 1980s. She then learned the technical side of doing traffic studies and became a certified transportation planner.

White has been with Sain Associates for 27 years and is now a partner there. She became chief operating officer about a year ago.

White said she has done traffic impact studies for developers for years, mostly retail developments and has given presentations to planning commissions all over the Southeast.

Hoover’s recently retired city engineer, Rodney Long, was familiar with her work and asked her if she might be interested in serving on Hoover’s Planning and Zoning Commission.

She thought it would be a good opportunity to give back to a community that has been good to her and her family, so she applied and was selected. Brocato said there were a lot of good applicants, and White’s background in transportation planning made her stand out.

White said people shouldn’t think she is always going to side with developers because she formerly worked for developers.

“My approach is to make sure we have a good transportation system that makes sure we provide mobility for people — lots of ways for people to get around,” White said.

She also considers herself a problem solver, she said. Even when she was working for developers, “my job was to make sure developers were doing the right thing for the communities they were working in,” she said.

White said the city of Hoover has been blessed with a good network of streets and leaders who are committed to providing a transportation system that works for everybody. She particularly appreciates the city’s commitment to building sidewalks, she said.

“We don’t see that in every community,” she said.

Building sidewalks in existing neighborhoods takes a lot of time and expense and adds a maintenance burden to the city, “but I think it’s the right thing to do for a great community,” she said.

White was appointed for a six-year term on the commission.

At her first meeting, the commission:

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