New parks and leisure director finds home in Vestavia Hills

From sports to parks and recreation, longtime high school coach and sports administrator Jamie Lee will call Vestavia Hills home as he serves as the city’s new director of Parks and Leisure Services.

Lee comes to the city after spending 23 years in his hometown of Decatur as a high school coach and five years as a sports administrator for the Alabama High School Athletic Association in Montgomery, he said.

He said he spent his first week at work training and getting to know the facilities, and more importantly the staff, in Vestavia Hills.

“Some of it was training, but most of it was getting to know my staff and learning the infrastructure, the people who are already here and who are going to be a part of the staff,” Lee said. “I’ve been meeting them and getting to know their personalities, who they are and them getting to know me. That was a lot of it.”

While this job is “on a different level” than when he was a sports administrator at AHSAA, there are a lot of similarities, such as managing people and learning their strengths and weaknesses, he said.

“One thing I would say is, coming into this position it’s important to know who your customer is,” Lee said. “The citizens of Vestavia Hills are our customers. When I was at AHSAA, I had to know who our customers were, and they were teachers, coaches and the general public, when you get to championship events.”

Serving in a leadership position before has taught Lee how to be a good listener, which is an important part of leadership, he said.

He said it is important to listen to those “customers” and listen to “what they want and listen to how best we can get to what they want within the infrastructure we have in place.” 

Since he’s visited and worked in Vestavia Hills, he noticed how different it is from Montgomery, he said.

Lee said he’s not sure if it was his job or the location, but his family has never felt the sense of community they feel in Vestavia Hills.

“I’m looking forward to being a part of that community,” Lee said. “My wife and I are moving in. My wife is going to be a special education teacher at Pizitz Middle School.”

“Vestavia is a tremendous city, one of the premiers in our state, for sure,” Lee said. “I met with a bunch of leaders this morning (May 23), and the thing I’ve noticed is once you come here, you’re not leaving. The police chief has been here for 40 years. The fire chief has been there 20-something years.”

When he was at that meeting, he noticed that he was sitting at the table with 10 other city leaders, and there was more than 125 years worth of experience in the room, he said.

“We’ve got a great staff that’s already in place,” Lee said. “They’ve been very welcoming to this point. I’ve met so many nice people. Everybody jumped on board and offered everything they could do to help. They don’t really know what they’ve asked because I don’t know what I don’t know yet. It’s a process for us. I’m very fortunate to be a part of the team. I’m looking forward to it.”