Photo courtesy of Kenneth Cox
Kenneth Cox
Kenneth Cox has lived in Hoover for 16 years and has been quietly serving in various leadership positions, but now he feels called to step up to a higher level of service and is seeking a spot on the Hoover City Council.
Cox, an athletics administrator who spent 16 years as a track and field coach at Birmingham-Southern College, is one of four candidates for Hoover City Council Place 4 in the Aug. 26 municipal election.
Others are Clint Bircheat, Copeland Johnson and Gene Smith.
Cox said mentors in his life, especially his father, have always impressed upon him that he could either be a part of problems or part of solutions, and he’s always tried to be part of solutions in various coaching, administrative and leadership roles he has had.
“For me, it has always been trying to make a difference and being a positive light and an example,” he said. “I want to reflect positivity, and I want to reflect getting things done — not just for the sake of popularity or to be noticed, but really to do what we’re called to do, and that is to serve our community.”
Cox originally is from Fuquay-Varina, North Carolina. After graduating high school in 1995, he was part of the track and field team at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill. After graduating with a bachelor’s degree in communications in 1999, he worked six years in phone sales and management for Nokia in Charlotte and Atlanta and then returned to his love of track and field as a coach at Emory University. He then briefly served as a track and field agent before recruited to coach at Birmingham-Southern.
At BSC, he was an assistant coach for one year and then promoted to head coach for 15 years. He also served four years as associate athletic director until the college shut down in 2024.
Since then, he has worked in several other athletic administrative roles, including manager of the Transplant Games of America and senior games manager for the World Police and Fire Games. He also is a meet director for the Birmingham Indoor Icebreaker and 2026 NCAA Division III Indoor Track and Field Championship at the Birmingham Crossplex.
In Hoover, Cox was in the third class of Leadership Hoover in 2019-20 and now serves as chairman of the board for the organization. He also is secretary for the Hoover Downtown Redevelopment Authority and serves on the boards of the Hoover Parks and Recreation Foundation and Boys and Girls Clubs of Central Alabama.
Cox said that’s one of the things that separates him from other candidates in his race — he’s already been doing the work. And “that will not change once I get in office,” he said. “That’s who I am.
“In my experience, leaders are not just people that are going to stand in front and give out orders or tell people what to do,” he said. It’s more about being a living example of service, he said.
Cox said the biggest issue facing the city of Hoover right now is getting all the leadership on the same page.
“We have to come together,” he said. “Yes, we might have our differences. Yes, we might have different backgrounds and different perspectives … but at the end of the day, if we are going to move the organization forward, if we are going to move the community forward — in this case move the city forward, we’ve got to agree that working together is better for the whole than allowing our differences to prevent us from doing what we are called to do and what we’ve been elected to do.”
His commitment is to create a united front to have a positive environment, he said.
“There’s so much divisiveness in this world. There’s so much divisiveness in politics,” Cox said. “We don’t need divisiveness in our community.”
On a more concrete level, one of the biggest needs in Hoover is an arts center, Cox said. As he has been knocking on doors as a candidate, he has heard incredible demand for that, he said. People have been pushing for this for a decade or more and they want the arts to be just as appreciated as athletics and the business community, he said.
He believes it will take more than the $17 million already allocated toward that project, he said. He also wants to involve the arts community more in the planning process for it, he said.
The city also needs to move forward with the idea of better identifying a “downtown Hoover” and getting a plan together to redevelop the Riverchase Galleria and Patton Creek shopping centers.
“Why are we building new businesses and why are we breaking ground and continuing to build new construction when we have this eyesore in the Patton Creek and the Galleria?” he said.
It’s great to have new development, but something needs to be done for existing areas that are vacant, he said.
The city’s economic development team has been working hard on this, but there are a lot of different property owners involved, and “it’s very, very complex,” he said.
When asked if he would favor a property tax increase for Hoover schools, Cox said city officials need to listen to their school board for recommendations of what is needed in the school system and listen to the city’s chief financial officer and the community at large.
“If it’s profitable for our city and our school system and we’re not compromising the integrity of other areas of our city that are going to be impacted by this, then I’m all for it,” Cox said. “I’ve got kids in the school system. I pay taxes, and I’m an advocate for our schools to have what they need. To not have the resources is unacceptable.”
Read more about the other candidates running for Place 4 — Bircheat, Johnson and Smith.
