Photo by Jon Anderson.
191216_Rodney_Long
Hoover Mayor Frank Brocato, left, shakes the hand of Hoover City Engineer Rodney Long as he honors Long for 20 years of service to the city during a Hoover City Council meeting Dec. 16.
The man who has been Hoover’s city engineer for the past 20 years has retired, ending a 43-year career in engineering.
Rodney Long was hired as Hoover’s city engineer in 1999 after serving 16 years in the private sector and seven years with Jefferson County. He retired from Hoover at the end of 2019.
As city engineer, Long was Hoover’s go-to guy on matters dealing with traffic, road planning, stormwater drainage and water quality.
“He’s a phenomenal engineer,” Mayor Frank Brocato said. “He’s one of the smartest people I’ve ever met, and he’s just a phenomenal person, too. He’s going to be hard to replace, not only because of his personality but because of his institutional knowledge.”
One of his greatest strengths was problem solving — coming up with proactive ways to address difficult issues, Brocato said, especially with drainage problems. Long not only could figure out the best way to address a problem, but he understood the legalities of what a city could and could not do, Brocato said.
He was well respected by his peers throughout the state, the mayor said. In 2019, he was named Alabama’s Transportation Engineer of the Year.
Long earned his bachelor’s degree in civil engineering from Auburn University in 1976. He spent two years with the Michael Baker & Associates consulting firm in Jackson, Mississippi, doing mostly flood studies and airport design work.
He then worked for Rust Engineering for one year and Jefferson County for seven years. In 1986, he went back into the private sector. He joined Gorove Slade Associates, which became part of Rust Environmental and Infrastructure, then Earth Tech and finally Skipper Consulting. Most of his private-sector work after Jefferson County dealt with traffic engineering, including a lot of work for Walmart around the Southeast.
Long said one of the biggest parts of his job with the city was making sure roads and drainage systems were well built. Long-range road planning and water quality protection also were important elements, he said.
He played a part in the development of the Galleria flyover exit on Interstate 459, as well as the construction of Galleria Boulevard and Ross Bridge Parkway. A lot of his work involved other projects that are not yet complete, such as the five-laning of Valleydale Road, which has been in the works for 20 years and now in the final stages of right-of-way acquisition.
He decided to apply with the city of Hoover because he knew it was a premium place to work with good people, he said. That’s what he will miss the most: the top-notch coworkers.
“I kind of consider them friends and family now,” he said.
His most memorable moments have been all the public hearings and zoning meetings, some of which involved difficult conversations with upset residents, but “it’s part of the job,” he said.
Long moved to the Regal Forest community in Hoover in 1988. He is married and has two children and three grandchildren. He said he’s not sure what he’ll do in retirement — probably a lot of yard work and home repairs he hasn’t had time to address, he said.
