City Council replaces aging boilers at Vestavia Hills Library in the Forest

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The Vestavia Hills City Council approved two unbudgeted items to improve the city’s infrastructure during its City Council Meeting Monday night. 

First, the council unanimously approved $150,000 for the replacement of two aging heating boilers at the Vestavia Hills Library in the Forest. The 12-year-old boilers are on the verge of failure, and city leaders decided to take action before the fall and winter months, Vestavia Hills City Manager Jeff Downes said.

“We did not have this planned in this budget year; that is why we are presenting it to you all,” Downes explained. “These were the two original exterior boilers, and we don’t want to take the risk going into the colder months.”

Downes said the city was able to secure a reduced price for the boilers through the National Cooperative Purchasing Alliance, a nationwide government purchasing cooperative that helps reduce the cost of goods and services by leveraging the purchasing power of public agencies in every state. 

"This allows us to mitigate this risk and go ahead and get these original 12-year-old boilers replaced," Downes said.

Next, the council approved $30,000 to purchase the OpenGov-Cartegraph Asset Management System. Downes said the system will allow all city departments to efficiently manage their assets, respond more quickly to citizen complaints and help the city plan for future needs more effectively.

“Currently, we do not use an asset management system. We use a series of spreadsheets, and each department keeps information on varying assets,” Downes said. 

These assets include a comprehensive list of items, such as vehicles and other transportation resources, roadways, stormwater assets, underground pipes and the boilers the council approved earlier in the meeting, Downes said. The system will help the city anticipate expenses and improve budgetary planning, he said.

Downes said the Vestavia Hill Public Services Department has been evaluating software solutions for more than a year and determined that its current OpenGov platform used to manage the city’s permitting and budget planning held the potential for managing all city assets. 

Additionally, Downes said the system will integrate with the Vestavia Hills Connect system, which will help the city plan for civic projects. 

"Let's say you're reporting a pothole on Elm Street and you go into Vestavia Hills Connect, it will then issue a work order through this OpenGov-Cartegraph System and then keep a history on that street and all the potholes," Downes said.

The approved $30,000 will allow the city to immediately implement the OpenGov-Cartegrap Asset Management System for the remainder of fiscal 2024. The annual cost of the software platform is about $65,000.“In light of these boiler units and the unanticipated replacement of them, we brought this up as something that would be nice to do now and incorporate into our next budgeting cycle rather than waiting an entire year before we employed this software,” Downes said. 

Councilwoman Kimberly Cook said she had asked Downes some time ago for a capital plan, and this is just one component of that.

"It will allow us to better track our assets, our systems, and so we can avoid having emergency costs that we did not budget for,” Cook said. “We can also do a better job I think of budgeting and figuring out which things are the highest priority. The cost will be more than justified by the utility of it.”

The City Council also on Monday:

  • Approved a resolution earmarking $130,800 for the out-of-court settlement of a lawsuit filed by Cinderella Reeder against the city on behalf of the estate of her late husband, Douglas Hart, who died after being shot by Vestavia Hills police as he fled from police in a vehicle in February 2020. Read more about that lawsuit here.
  • Annexed three properties at 3365 Rosemary Lane, 3509 Pineland Drive and 2768 Altadena Lake Drive. 
  • Rezoned 3022, 3026 and 3030 Panorama Brook Circle from an institutional zone to an R-6 zero-lot line residential district. 
  • Rezoned property owned by Shades Mountain Baptist Church at 2303 Pine Crest Lane from an R-2 residential district to an institutional district.
  • Recognized June as Alzheimer's & Brain Awareness Month and recognized Mrs. Senior Vestavia Hills Sharon Hannah on her recent victory in the 2024 Mrs. Senior Alabama competition.

The next Vestavia Hills City Council meeting is scheduled for Monday, July 8, at 6 p.m. at Vestavia Hills City Hall.