Season of change: Hoover gains 3 new faces in key leadership roles
Over the past seven months, three new people have taken key positions of leadership in the city of Hoover.
Kevin Maddox was hired by the Hoover school board to take over as superintendent of the school system on Sept. 11, replacing Dee Fowler, who retired for a second time. Then on Oct. 30, Hoover Mayor Frank Brocato brought Ken Grimes on board as the new city administrator to replace Allan Rice, who retired Aug. 1 after being placed on administrative leave.
The third major addition was Jennifer Cornett, who started in January as the city’s new chief financial officer to replace Tina Bolt, another retiree.
It’s a season of change for the city, and all three of these new leaders have been busy getting more acquainted with Hoover and diving into their respective roles. With a city as big and busy as Hoover, it’s been like “drinking through a fire hose,” Cornett said.
CITY ADMINISTRATOR
Grimes said while he may not have known all the inner workings of Hoover, he came into this job very familiar with the city. He grew up in Bessemer and remembers the opening of the Riverchase Galleria and the completion of Interstate 459 in the 1980s. He and his wife, Kelly, got engaged at Georgetown Lake.
Grimes previously served as president of the Bessemer Area Chamber of Commerce, then became president and CEO of the Alabama Gulf Coast Area Chamber of Commerce in 2001. He next spent six years as a special projects coordinator for the city of Orange Beach and more than 14 years as city administrator and parks and recreation director there, before moving into a new role of director of external affairs in November 2022.
Then Brocato came calling to gauge his interest in the Hoover job, and Grimes applied and was hired out of more than 50 applicants.
Grimes said he is passionate about local government and wants to finish his career strong, and he believes Hoover would be a good place to do that. “It’s kind of like coming back home.”
Grimes said one of the things that has impressed him the most since coming to Hoover is the level of professionalism he sees in city employees in all departments.
“There is a tremendous pride when they speak of the city of Hoover,” he said. “There is a tremendous history of service. People are proud to work for the city of Hoover. As an outsider coming in, seeing that is huge.”
It shocked him how many employees have been with the city for more than 25 years, he said.
He also is impressed with the level of service given by both employees and contractors, he said. Hoover is a clean and safe city with a great school system, which are foundational building blocks for any city, he said. “The machine is very well-oiled.”
And, as big as Hoover is, it still has that community feel, he said.
Grimes said he spent the first few months getting to know the staff, City Council, area legislators and civic and business leaders, and now he is ready to branch out more to officials in the Jefferson and Shelby county governments, though he already knows the county managers through the Alabama City/County Management Association.
He also has started diving into projects, such as the Exit 9 interchange being built on I-459.
Grimes, who is paid $222,086 a year, said he sees his primary role as managing the day-to-day operations of the city, overseeing personnel, resources, budgets and policies, but he also has to stay in touch with the community at large so he can help make sure city government is meeting the needs of the community.
“I’m trying to improve the city every day for those who live here, those who own businesses here and invest here,” he said.
There are always going to be more requests for resources than there are resources available, so the key is prioritizing the needs and making sure the budget is tied to revenues and the economy, he said. He also wants to look for ways to make government more efficient, he said. Changes happening with garbage pickup right now are a prime example of that, he said.
“I would love to take Hoover from good to great, but it’s already great in so many areas,” he said.
Another goal is to make the city more transparent, he said. “You’re always striving to create trust in your local government.”
Hoover is blessed to have a mayor who is so engaged with the community, Grimes said.
“I’m very impressed with how much he loves this city and how long he’s served this city,” he said. “That’s not the norm — staying in one place that long. His passion shines through.”
Grimes said he also has relationships with former longtime Hoover Executive Director Allen Pate and former Hoover Mayor Tony Petelos, who have been open and willing to share their institutional knowledge. He also has enjoyed developing a working relationship with Maddox and Cornett and is impressed with their strong morals and integrity, he said.
SCHOOL SUPERINTENDENT
Maddox, who spent 11 years as an assistant superintendent in Homewood and five years as a principal there, said he had a phenomenal job in Homewood.
“Had I stayed there and retired from there, it would have been great,” he said. “But this is one of those jobs I considered an opportunity of a lifetime.”
Maddox said he has always had his eye on the Hoover school district. “It has such a sterling reputation for academic success and having great community schools,” he said.
He also knows a lot of graduates from the former Berry High School and is impressed with them and the success they have had in life, he said.
Maddox said that when former Hoover schools Superintendent Kathy Murphy announced she was leaving to become president of Gadsden State Community College in 2020, he filled out an application for the Hoover superintendent job then, but he never officially submitted it. After doing some digging and realizing the Hoover school board at that time was looking for someone with superintendent experience, he decided to hold off.
But when the next superintendent, Fowler, decided to retire and the school board was more open to someone without experience in the top chair and willing to interview candidates privately, Maddox decided to apply.
Coming from a comparable and high-performing school district such as Homewood, “I feel like I know what success looks like and the recipe for it and the ingredients involved in the recipe, and I see all those ingredients here [in Hoover],” Maddox said.
Two of the measures of a great school district are whether the kids are happy and whether the teachers love kids, and Hoover checks both of those boxes, Maddox said. “I have seen evidence of it time and time again.”
It’s rare to see a school district as big and diverse as Hoover have the academic success that Hoover has, Maddox said.
Diversity is amazing but comes with its own set of challenges, he said. Another measure of a great school system is whether all children are learning and growing academically, and the data shows that all groups of children in Hoover are growing, not just one or two, he said.
“We have phenomenal people in this school district — leadership, teachers, staff, people who have been here a long time — who love this school district and who are invested and committed to this school district being successful,” Maddox said.
Maddox, who is paid $230,000 a year, said he’s not the kind of leader who spends a lot of time behind a desk in the central office. He likes to be out in the schools, but one thing he realized early on is that he may not be able to visit each school quite as often as he did in Homewood because of the number of schools and distance between them. However, in the first six months, he has been able to spend an extended amount of time in each school at least twice, plus shorter visits for certain activities, he said.
One thing that surprised him is that, despite its size, the Hoover school district still acts like a family, he said. When a student died unexpectedly in March, schools throughout the district sent staff to the schools most connected to that family, so staff members there could attend the funeral, he said.
While he feels good about what he sees so far, the district in April is surveying all staff to get feedback and hear about any needs and challenges, he said.
One big initiative already underway is the hiring of retired teachers to serve as academic interventionists to help kids who are at-risk or struggling. Federal COVID-19 relief money was used to hire 41 interventionists in the 2021-22 school year, but that money was temporary. Upon recommendation from Maddox, the Hoover school board in January agreed to hire 35 part-time interventionists for the rest of this school year, and 25 more are planned for next year, Maddox said.
Also, the district is hiring 14 more special education teachers, two more speech language pathologists and a couple of additional counselors to help support kids, he said. The school board is digging into its healthy reserves to cover that and believes it can do that for three to five years without spending too much of those reserves, he said.
“We are full-court pressing the things we need,” Maddox said. “We’re focusing on at-risk students.”
Maddox also hired a new chief talent officer in the central office to bolster the district’s recruitment and retention of great teachers and started staffing plans for the 2024-25 school year at least two months earlier than was the custom in Hoover.
He and his staff will continue to keep an eye on the city’s growth and its impact on schools, but he believes they have the classroom space they need for the near future. “Building schools is extremely expensive right now,” he said.
Maddox said he appreciates the support of the mayor and City Council and is working cohesively with them.
CHIEF FINANCIAL OFFICER
Just as Maddox had not been a superintendent before coming to Hoover, this is Cornett’s first time being a chief financial officer.
She began her career with more than a decade in the commercial lending business before going back to school to get a master’s degree in accounting and becoming a staff accountant at Barfield, Murphy, Shank & Smith. After about 2 ½ years there, her husband, Chris, took a job at an obstetrics and gynecology clinic in Opelika, and she started teaching accounting at Auburn University.
Cornett fell in love with teaching, became a full-time instructor and stayed a total of 19 years at the university. About three years ago, her husband changed careers and they moved back to the Birmingham area, this time settling in Mountain Brook, next door to their best friends. This opened up more job options for her, she said.
When the Hoover chief financial officer job came open, she saw it as an opportunity for personal growth but also as a way to keep serving people, she said. “I’m really working for the citizens,” she said.
She has never worked in government accounting before, but as an auditor previously, some of her clients were nonprofits that used fund accounting, which is similar to government accounting, she said.
Cornett, who is paid $174,829 a year, said she sees her primary responsibility as twofold: providing accurate information to decision-makers about the financial accounts of the city so they can make good decisions and ultimately providing accurate information to the public because they are dealing with public tax dollars, she said.
Her team also makes sure the city is following financial reporting requirements for publicly issued debt and following laws related to public finance, she said. She is one of many voices at the table in terms of investment and economic development decisions, such as incentive packages for companies, though those decisions ultimately lie with the City Council, she said.
She is supervising more functions than she has ever done before, but she has supervised more people in her other jobs, Cornett said. One of her primary goals for her first six months is to get to know the people on her team better — understanding where they want to be and helping them get there, she said.
There are 15 people in Hoover’s Finance Department, and probably half of them have 15 or more years with the city and bring a lot of perspective to the job, she said. Claire Hamilton, head of purchasing and budget division, did a great job of serving as acting chief financial officer after Bolt retired and kept things running smoothly, she said.
Also, the City Council brought back former Chief Financial Officer Robert Yeager to serve as city treasurer, and Yeager is serving as a consultant and advisor for the city right now as well.
“I feel like I’m really just scratching the surface,” Cornett said. “The city is big, and we have a lot going on, a lot of irons in the fire.”
Cornett said she is still in somewhat of an assessment phase for now and doesn’t want to cause disruption by changing things just for the sake of change, but she knows there are always opportunities for continuous improvement.
“I imagine in the coming months I will be forming a strategy about what to do next,” she said.
She hopes she will get to add a couple of new people to the finance team so they have time and space to be more proactive, she said. She also wants to be known for transparency, she said.
“Transparency isn’t just about sharing the right information. It’s also about timing,” she said. “If you’re sharing information and it’s six months old, that’s not as helpful in decision making or evaluating information.”
Cornett said she has been received extremely well by city staff and loves the spirit of city employees. “I don’t think I’ve ever worked with a group of people that were so in concert with one another,” she said.
She also has developed a new appreciation for the city of Hoover and how highly utilized city services are, she said. She came into the office one Sunday, and the library parking lot was packed, she said. After taking a turn in the simulator at the police training center, she also has a better appreciation for the work of police officers, she said.
As a new chief financial officer, “I expected I would have to kind of prove myself, and so I’m excited about that,” Cornett said. “I’m excited about the challenge. It’s been fun so far.”