Photo by Jon Anderson
Hoover Mayor Nick Derzis
Hoover Mayor Nick Derzis is asking the Hoover City Council to pass a $184 million operating budget for fiscal 2026, which essentially is equal to the budget from 2025.
However, Derzis is waiting until early 2026 to present most of his capital budget requests because he needs more time as a new mayor to assess those requests, so proposed expenditures likely will rise.
Derzis and his finance staff are projecting $191 million in revenues for governmental funds in fiscal 2026, which is $11.5 million more than was projected in the 2025 budget, interim Chief Financial Officer Melinda Lopez said.
The mayor’s budget emphasizes public safety, including $2 million for 27 new police vehicles, seven new firefighters and paramedics, three new police officers and an additional court magistrate.
Those new positions, along with three personnel upgrades, are expected to cost the city about $1 million, Lopez said.
There also is additional money allocated to hire several new contract employees for the Hoover Municipal Court, including an assistant judge, assistant prosecutor, another public defender and two judicial analysts, City Attorney Charlie Waldrep said. The lead prosecutor would get an $18,000 raise to $93,000, and the city judge would get a $2,890 raise to $98,600.
There has been a big increase in the number of cases in Municipal Court, and the city needs to add a second court day each week to handle the caseload, Waldrep said.
Derzis is proposing to hire retired Jefferson County Circuit Judge Teresa Petelos as a custodian of police records and lead legal analyst for the Hoover Police Department (for $72,000) and former Hoover school board member Kermit Kendrick as an assistant legal analyst for the Police Department (for $60,000).
The proposed 2026 budget also includes a 1% cost-of-living adjustment for city employees (which should cost about $900,000), additional money for tourism and marketing, and more money for lobbying the state and federal government (from about $60,000 to $240,000), Lopez said.
Derzis said he would like to give city employees a greater cost-of-living pay increase, but he and the finance staff are concerned a higher amount might put too much pressure on the budget.
As for the lobbying money, Derzis said he has terminated the contract with the city’s previous lobbyist and will be hiring a new one. He thinks more money is needed because he sees other large cities in the state receiving a lot of money, and “I just want to make sure we get our fair share.”
He believes whomever the city hires will pay for themselves with money brought in from their lobbying efforts, he said.
Regarding the new public safety employees, new police Chief Clay Morris has said the department actually needs to add nine or 10 new officers. The Fire Department needs more people because two fire stations currently are having to essentially shut down at times when personnel are tied up transporting people to hospitals, Derzis said. “It shouldn’t have ever happened like that,” and this should prevent that from happening in the future, he said. “Public safety is a priority.”
Derzis also is proposing to restore operating funding that has been cut from city departments in previous years. Many departments apparently had to cut spending by 10%, Lopez said.
In addition to the city’s governmental funds, the mayor is proposing to spend $22.7 million from the city’s propriety funds, which includes the sewer system and insurance funds. That compares to $21.9 million in the fiscal 2025 budget.
The City Council has scheduled a special meeting for 11 a.m. on Monday, Dec. 29, to vote on the mayor’s proposed budget.
