Photo by Jon Anderson
Hoover City Attorney Phillip Corley
The attorney for the city of Hoover on Monday night addressed the question about whether the city of Hoover should bear the cost for legal fees associated with the Hoover Health Care Authority’s effort to get permission from the state to operate an ambulatory surgery center in Riverchase.
Those costs are expected to be more than $1 million.
Bluff Park resident Robin Schultz since June has pointed out that an amendment to the Riverchase Planned Unit Development approved by the City Council related to the Riverwalk Health and Wellness Center actually called for the developer of the project to file for the certificate of need with the state, not the city or the Hoover Health Care Authority.
The amendment, signed by Healthcare Resources Manager Robert Simon and Signature Homes President Jonathan Belcher, stated: "The Developer will seek a Certificate of Need from the Alabama State Health Planning and Development Agency for development and operation of a 'non-traditional hospital' or 'boutique hospital,' with outpatient surgery and other forms of ambulatory care."
Schultz said he believes it’s clearly spelled out there that the developer, Healthcare Resources and Signature Homes, should bear the costs associated with the CON application, not the city. He can think of a lot of other uses for that $1 million that comes from the taxpayers, he said.
City Attorney Phillip Corley, who also has worked with the Hoover Health Care Authority, said Monday night that “to be clear, it’s always been the intention of the Hoover Health Care Authority and the city for the Health Care Authority to apply for and hold the certificate of need for this development, for the city to bear the cost.
“The confusion, I think, stems from a zoning amendment that says the developer will seek a certificate of need,” Corley said. “This statement was based off preliminary information submitted by a partner of the developer in the zoning amendment that was brought forward, the amendment to the Riverchase PUD, but that statement and the preamble to that zoning amendment is not binding on the city, the Health Care Authority or the developer, and it has no effect whatsoever on the development agreement that the city entered into with the developer.”
Healthcare Resources purchased the 91-acre Regions Bank campus in the Riverchase Office Park and plans to convert one of the office towers on the property into the medical complex and make it part of a mixed-use community that includes up to 134,000 square feet of new commercial buildings, 375 age-restricted multi-family residential units (for ages 55 and older), 120 unrestricted multi-family residential units, 102 single-family residential units and a hotel with up to 135 rooms.
REPEAL OF TAX REDUCTION
In other business Monday night, the Hoover City Council followed through on plans to repeal a reduction in the city’s sales tax on groceries that was approved a year ago and supposed to go into effect Oct. 1. State officials this summer informed Hoover leaders that the action taken by the Hoover City Council a year ago did not meet requirements of state law.
Hoover’s ordinance called for the city sales tax on groceries to drop from 3.5% to 3% on Oct. 1, 2024, but state law only allows for the sales tax to be lowered by 25%, which would have required Hoover’s sales tax to drop to 2.625%, city officials said.
Hoover officials had interpreted the state law to say that the tax could be lowered by “up to 25%,” but the Alabama Department of Revenue said if reductions occur, they must be in 25% increments with no leeway, said Councilman Casey Middlebrooks, who initiated the tax reduction a year ago.
Additionally, the state requires that revenues in a city’s general fund must grow by at least 2% in order for a city to be eligible to cut its sales taxes on groceries, and Hoover’s general fund did not meet that standard, Middlebrooks said.
State Rep. Mike Shaw, a former Hoover councilman, told the council Monday night that an effort is underway in the Legislature to amend the state law regarding sales tax reduction on groceries that removes the restrictions put in place by the previous legislation.
Shaw said cutting taxes is difficult and some other cities and counties don’t like to make tough decisions like that and asked for the Legislature to put those restrictions in place so local officials wouldn’t have to make those tough decisions.
Now, state Rep. Danny Garrett, R-Trussville and Sen. Andrew Jones, R-Centre, plan to file a bill in the next legislative session to pull all of those restrictions out for cutting the sales tax on groceries “and put the power in the cities’ hands, which is where it should be. Y’all know what your city needs, and those other cities might not be able to make those cuts.”
Shaw said the details of those bills are still being worked out, “but I plan to support anything that’s going to support the ability of a city to make those decisions.”
