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Photo by Jon Anderson
A sign welcomes voters to Shades Mountain Baptist Church in Vestavia Hills, Alabama, on Nov. 5, 2024.
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Photo by Jon Anderson
A woman enters Shades Mountain Church in Vestavia Hills, Alabama, to vote in the 2024 presidential election on Nov. 5, 2024.
As the calendar flips into 2025, there are many things to watch in Vestavia Hills. To kick off the new year, we’re highlighting five things worth attention in the new year, including upcoming municipal elections.
The city’s next municipal election is Aug. 26, when voters will decide who will be mayor for the next four years and who will fill the other four City Council spaces.
Normally, the election would have been in 2024, but the Alabama Legislature in 2021 voted to move municipal elections away from the same years as presidential elections, so the current group of municipal officials actually got five years on their terms.
Vestavia Hills mayor Ashley Curry said that, barring some unforeseen development, he plans to run for a third term. The retired FBI agent was first elected mayor in 2016 and re-elected in 2020. He feels the city is in good shape and current elected officials have worked well together and accomplished a lot of good things.
As of mid-December, only one other person had announced an intention to run for mayor. That’s Richard Cheatwood, a former Vestavia Hills police officer who was fired in 2017. Cheatwood said more needs to be done to fix stormwater flooding, and he thinks people who don’t have children in school shouldn’t have to pay taxes for public schools.
The registration period to run for office is June 10-24.
Check out the rest of the articles in our 5 Changes for 2025 series here.
