New year in Vestavia Hills

On behalf of the city council, we want to wish everyone a happy and prosperous New Year. 

The city council got together at the beginning of 2014 and put together a strategic plan for this past year. In that initiative, we looked at several areas: redevelopment and infrastructure, community recreation, our positive financial situation and governing through electronics.

In the redevelopment and infrastructure area, we identified the need for a community-based city hall, to create a village atmosphere at Patchwork Farms and to rebrand the identity of the city, all of which are goals where we’ve seen substantial progress made. In addition, we wanted to complete some right-of-way projects along Highway 31, and we identified the need to increase staff capacity in our engineering department, which we’ve done.

With regard to community recreation, we wanted to do a comprehensive feasibility study of Wald Park to see what we could do there to improve the overall site; that research study is still in the works. We also wanted to do a citizen survey this past year to gain insight into residents’ views about the operation of the city and also our parks and rec department; this is also underway.

I’m pleased to report that we’ve hit the goals we identified to maintain our positive financial situation. Specifically we wanted to maintain our competitive financial rating and our 90-day reserve. We also wanted to set and work toward sales tax targets to cover growth expenses related to the new city hall. Further, we wanted to review our financial policies with our financial advisory board on a regular basis and we’ve seen that through. In addition, we’ve actualized our goal of regularly communicating the financial status of the city through our Community News and also our website. 

Our final area, governing through electronics, included a major initiative to update the website, which is being completed by Tatum Design. We’ve also implemented a complaint management system, which put into place our Action Center where residents can go in and report on issues of concern from their immediate subdivision or community. 

In January, we will be revisiting our strategic plan and putting together our priorities for 2015. 

Happy New Year!

Your Mayor,

Alberto C. “Butch” Zaragoza