Hoover council approves half a million in bonuses for city employees

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The Hoover City Council on Monday night approved nearly a half-million dollars’ worth of bonuses for city employees.

The one-time bonuses range from $100 to $1,000, depending on whether employees work full time or part time and how many years of service employees have.

For part-time employees, the bonus is $100 for those with 1-4 years of service, $150 for 5-9 years of service and $200 for 10 or more years of service. For full-time employees, the bonus is $500 for 1-4 years of service, $750 for 5-9 years of service and $1,000 for 10 or more years of service.

The city of Hoover has 605 full-time employees and 66 part-time employees, and more than half of the full-time employees (306) have 10 or more years of service, records show. The total amount of bonuses going to full-time employees will be $489,250, while bonuses for part-time employees total $9,250, for a grand total of $498,500 in bonuses.

Hoover Mayor Frank Brocato said the city government had a very good year last year financially and he and the City Council want to reward employees for a job well done.

Both department heads and city employees in general did such a good job of being good stewards of taxpayers’ dollars during the COVID-19 pandemic, Brocato said. And “I am constantly getting compliments from people about every segment of employee operations about how well they do,” he said.

The city ended fiscal 2022 with record general fund revenue collections of almost $157 million, which was $34 million more than expenditures, Chief Financial Officer Tina Bolt said.

The City Council in June approved a policy to bolster the city’s general fund reserves so they can cover six months’ worth of expenses. The council also set up a “rolling reserve” account to help the city more easily weather potential economic downturns or emergencies if they occur in the future. That policy requires the council to predict a 4% increase in revenues for each budget year and to spend only 70% of that increase and save the other 30% in a budget stabilization fund.

Bolt initially projected city revenues would decline slightly in fiscal 2023 to $155 million, but tax revenues so far are coming in stronger than expected, she told the council Monday night.

As of the end of February (five months into the fiscal year), the city already had received $85.3 million in revenues, which is 53% of the total revenues that had been projected for the full year, Bolt reported. Expenditures for the same period were $49.1 million — just 35% of the estimated budget.

That means the city’s general fund has $33 million more than it was expected to have at this point in the year, putting the city’s expected general fund balance at the end of the year at $115 million, Bolt said. Ten million dollars of that will be needed for capital projects in 2024, she said.

Instead of declining, sales tax revenues were up $2.5 million from the same period last year, Bolt said. That demonstrates continued growth in consumer spending through the end of February, with holiday sales in December providing a substantial increase in city revenues in January, Bolt said.

“Current market trends reflect consumer spending decreased in February, after a large increase during the holidays,” Bolt wrote in a memo to the mayor and council.

“Wage growth among consumers rose unexpectedly in February 2023 but is starting to soften from 2022, driving inflation updwards,” Bolt wrote. “Consumer spending has remained stable in retail but reflects a decline in dining, auto and home stores. Economists predict a recession before the end of 2023. The city of Hoover remains in a strong financial position.”

BUILDING CODE CHANGES

In other business Monday, the council adopted changes to the city’s building code to provide for more “universal design” concepts in future new construction projects. The idea is to require that buildings, facilities and other sites be designed and built so that all people — regardless of their age, size, ability or disability — can access, understand and use them.

The City Council already had adopted the 2021 International Building Code, which included certain “universal design” concepts. However, the action taken by the council Monday went a step beyond the International Building Code in certain requirements, City Administrator Allan Rice said.

City Clerk Wendy Dickerson, who was a member of the committee that came up with recommendations for further changes, said the primary additional requirements involved making ramps for building entrances less steep and lowering the height of certain things for which people reach out — such as doorknobs, light switches, soap dispensers and air conditioning controls — by 2 inches.

The new regulations apply only to new construction projects, not renovations, Dickerson said.

The ordinance approved by the council Monday also said the council is committed to certain additional design provisions in public buildings and/or private projects that receive city incentives, when such provisions are feasible, such as:

  • Clearly designing and identifying building entrances
  • Providing dropoff locations near accessible entrances
  • Making the accessible entrance into a public building the same as the main entrance
  • Providing clear directional signs at the entrance and along the route to the accessible entrance in cases where an accessible main entrance is not possible in an existing building
  • Eliminating steps and eliminating or reducing ramps where possible
  • Making internal building signs in high contrast and with a large font size for all visual disabilities, as well as braille integrated into the lettering
  • Having bathroom features to accommodate all users, such as full-height mirrors and touchless fixtures, faucets and dispensers

OTHER ACTIONS

The City Council also on Monday:

  • Implemented a new pay scale for public safety workers to address various aspects of the general employee pay scale that were deemed unfair for certain public safety workers and to make sure certain additional job duties were properly compensated. Those changes are expected to cost the city an additional $264,193 per year, but some public safety workers will see no changes in pay, Rice said.
  • Approved several other personnel budget changes, such as new positions, position upgrades and elimination of positions, with a net cost of about $281,000. Most of the extra cost is associated with upgrades of eight positions in the Fire Department and an upgrade in the pay scale for custodians.
  • Approved a budget amendment to account for a $141,400 grant the Police Department received for night vision equipment and a $120,000 cost for paying essential personnel to work on Juneteenth — a newly recognized city holiday that remembers June 19, 1865, as the end of slavery in the United States.
  • Agreed to pay $23,800 to Screenworks NEP for rental of a temporary video board for use at the SEC Baseball Tournament.
  • Agreed to allow Capella Pizzeria to sell beer and table wine for consumption on or off the premises at 4700 U.S. 280, Suite 13.
  • Transferred a license for Mr. Chen’s Authentic Chinese Cooking to sell beer for consumption on or off the premises at 1917 Hoover Court to the new owner, Jx Enterprise, and agreed to allow the same owner to sell table wine there.
  • Appointed Councilman Casey Middlebrooks as the council’s voting delegate to the Alabama League of Municipalities’ annual business meeting on May 12 in Birmingham.
  • Joined Brocato in recognizing Dan Mikos for 20 years of service on the Hoover Board of Zoning Adjustment
  • Joined Brocato in recognizing Hoover 911 Director Linda Moore for receiving emergency number professional certification from the National Emergency Number Association
  • Joined Brocato in recognizing April 9-15 as National Public Safety Telecommunicators Week and April as Fair Housing Month.