Photo courtesy of Clint Bircheat
Clint Bircheat is running for Hoover City Council Place 2.
Clint Bircheat remembers growing up in Trussville and looking to Hoover as a place where everything was done just a little bit better.
Now, as a candidate for the Hoover City Council, he’s hoping to help Hoover reset that “standard of excellence” and once again be the city that others look to as the standard bearer, he said.
Bircheat, who is one of four candidates seeking the Council Place 2 seat being vacated by Sam Swiney, said if Hoover can successfully do that, it will have a ripple effect across the region and state. But there is work to be done, Bircheat said.
In his opinion, there has been a loss of common sense in government at a lot of levels, including in municipalities.
Government at the lowest level is really simple, Bircheat said. You need strong public safety and great schools, and you don’t spend money you don’t have, he said. And the people who are elected to office need to work together in unity instead of fighting against one another, he said.
“We all have the same goal in mind. We just have different ways and means of getting there,” Bircheat said. “If we’re going to attack ourselves, it’s going to backfire. We have to work together to get where we’re going.”
The story of the Birmingham metro area has been one of division, he said. “Are we going to continue that narrative of division, or are we going to move forward in a unified manner and show the rest of the city and state how it’s done?”
Bircheat said his goal in running for public office is to make Hoover a place where his kids and other people’s kids can be excited to call home now and want to come back and raise their families in Hoover in the future.
“People just want to make better opportunities for the families and their friends and their community,” he said. “We can ruin that for them at a very fast pace, or we can preserve it, reinvest in it and recast the vision of what is Hoover for the next 50 years.”
The people in Hoover today are living off the hard work of city leaders in the 1980s, 1990s and 2000s, Bircheat said.
“We are living on what they built here and the trajectory they set us on,” he said. “You can ruin that real quickly with poor decisions.”
The two most important issues facing Hoover right now are making sure the schools are getting all the money they need and getting the new Interstate 459 exit built, Bircheat said.
The schools have a healthy reserve fund right now but could use some more money to handle the growth the city is experiencing, Bircheat said. Several schools are over capacity, and others are at or near capacity, and he considers that poor planning on the part of city leaders, he said.
He doesn’t believe the answer is raising taxes, he said. “There’s plenty of money there. It’s just a matter of where is the city spending the money and wasting money in the process.”
He thinks many of the tax breaks given to developers for economic development were bad decisions and could have generated millions of dollars more for schools and other city needs. He also disagreed with how the city is pouring money into the Riverwalk Village development to help the developers recoup their costs there, he said.
Also, he believes money that home builders pay in “front door fees” should be given to the schools in addition to the $5 million allocated from the city’s general fund annually and money spent on school resource officers, he said. Now, the “front door fees” are lumped into the overall contribution amount, he said.
The new I-459 interstate exit near South Shades Crest Road is an economic investment that is going to change the dynamics in western Hoover, Bircheat said. It could be done well, or it could be done poorly, and it will require a lot of creative thinking and new solutions, he said.
Currently, the traffic situation in and around Stadium Trace Parkway is getting too crowded, but he believes the new western bypass road being built between Shelby County 52 and South Shades Crest Road — and a connector road to Stadium Trace Parkway — will help alleviate a lot of those traffic concerns, he said.
“I say stick to the plan and continue to reassess along the way,” he said.
The problem is that the relief plans always seem to come a little too slowly, Bircheat said. Better advance planning is needed, he said.
He also believes the city can do a better job of selling itself to attract more businesses beyond retail stores and restaurants, he said. He works in the cybersecurity industry, and companies in that growing field are always looking for places to call home or expand their operations, he said.
A lot of them are entrepreneurs, and some of them may have revenues of $1 million or $2 million now, but they could be a $1 billion company in 10 years and attrace a lot of well-paid employees who can shop and dine in Hoover as well, he said.
Bircheat, 36, lives in Southpointe and has been a resident of Hoover about eight years. He formerly was president of the Southpointe Homeowners Association for several years and has been active in ministries at Hunter Street Baptist Church, the Hoover City Dad Brigade back-to-school cleanup and other Hoover City Schools activities.
He has 15 years of experience in cybersecurity and currently is head of information security for the Naphcare health care company. This is his first run for public office though he almost ran for the state Legislature a few years ago until legislative district lines were redrawn. He serves on the Shelby County GOP Executive Committee.
See more information about Bircheat here or visit Clint Bircheat for City Council Place 2 — Hoover, Alabama on Facebook.
Read more about the other candidates for Hoover City Council Place 2 — Kenneth Cox Jr., Copeland Johnson and Gene Smith.
The city election is Aug. 26.
