Jon Anderson
Zach Clifton and Among Patel
Left: Zach Clifton is the new finance director for the city of Vestavia Hills. Right: Director of Administration and Innovation Umang Patel also carries the title of city clerk.
The city of Vestavia Hills recently said goodbye to two key city officials with the retirements of Finance Director Melvin Turner and City Clerk Rebecca Leavings.
But the city didn’t have to go far to find their replacements — choosing to stay in house with people who essentially have been in training to follow in the footsteps of the two longtime leaders.
Zach Clifton, who has been Vestavia’s deputy finance director for the past four years, was selected to follow Turner, and Umang Patel, the city’s court director, has been tapped to take on city clerk responsibilities with a new title of director of administration and innovation.
ZACH CLIFTON
Clifton grew up in the Greystone community in Hoover and was a 2005 graduate of Spain Park High School. He spent two years at Auburn University and then finished his bachelor’s degree in accounting from the University of Alabama at Birmingham. He went on to earn a master’s degree in accounting and become a certified public accountant as well.
Professionally, he worked as a teller for Regions Bank while in college and then as a staff accountant for Moses, Phillips, Young, Brannon and Henninger from November 2011 to January 2015. He then shifted to Barfield, Murphy, Shank and Smith, where he ended up running the municipal audit arm of the company.
Then in September 2021, he was recruited to work for the city of Vestavia Hills, with the idea that he would be trained to replace the former deputy finance director, George Sawaya, and later Turner when he retired.
Vestavia Hills City Manager Jeff Downes said Clifton is the first certified public accountant the city has ever had on staff and brings a set of skills that has been very advantageous for the city.
“He has big shoes to fill in Melvin,” Downes said. “Melvin has a stature about him that is second to none, but Zach is very capable. We’re excited about Melvin’s retirement, but we’re also excited about Zach carrying that vision forward.”
Clifton said he enjoyed his work in the private sector and was on track to become a partner at Barfield, Murphy, Shank and Smith but has thoroughly enjoyed shifting to a more family-friendly schedule in the public sector.
He also likes that he has gotten to focus on one organization’s finances instead of jumping around from one municipality to another all the time. He has enjoyed being able to make some changes and see positive results from those changes, he said.
Since he joined Vestavia Hills, they started an online transparency portal to let residents see more details about city finances, including the full budget and capital plan. Vestavia Hills has won an award from the Government Financial Officers Association two years in a row for having an outstanding budget and a certificate of achievement for financial excellence in producing the city’s first annual comprehensive financial report in fiscal 2024, he said. The latter is a more involved report than a standard audited financial statement.
The city also has enhanced its budgeting process, making it easier for department heads to develop budgets, and shifted to a software program that allows city employees to access the city’s financial information from anywhere, he said.
They’ve also made changes to allow businesses to get their business licenses online and implemented a new expense management program to more easily handle reimbursements for travel and other expenses, he said.
“I’ve enjoyed being a part of that,” Clifton said. “It’s really been amazing so far.”
More changes will be coming as they continue to focus on innovation and look for ways to do things better, he said.
Turner has helped prepare him for the finance director role, he said. “He’s been a great mentor and leader for the finance department and the city. I feel as prepared as I can be,” he said.
Downes also has been a great mentor, Clifton said. “They’ve both empowered me to be able to make this my own as I step into this role,” he said.
“I’m excited to see what comes next,” Clifton said. “I’m excited for the positive changes that we’re going to continue to make. I’m looking forward to the growth that we’re planning on the east side of town, and I’m looking forward to making sure the city stays as stable as possible while we do that.”
Jennifer Gray, a woman who was a mentor for him, came on board as the city’s new principal accountant right before Thanksgiving, and the city is close to hiring a new deputy finance director, Clifton said. Both of them live in Vestavia Hills, he said.
Personally, Clifton and his wife, Whitney, live in Greystone and have two sons, ages 7 and almost 2. Clifton said he loves spending time with his wife and boys, hiking, camping, and exploring new places and restaurants around the Birmingham area. He also loves playing video games with his son, building computers and playing golf, though he doesn’t get to golf as much since he has young kids.
UMANG PATEL
Patel was born in Troy, Alabama, but his family moved around a lot when he was young, including stops in Detroit, Atlanta and Canada. His parents bought a motel in Selma and settled there when he was in the first grade. He spent most of his childhood there and graduated from Morgan Academy in 2007. He earned a bachelor’s degree from the University of Alabama in 2011 with a major in accounting and minor in computer science. He then obtained a law degree from the Cumberland School of Law at Samford University in 2014. Initially, he thought he wanted to do mergers and acquisitions or corporate tax law, but life sent him in a different direction.
While he was in law school, he worked as an intern for his contract law professor, Brad Bishop, who serves as Hoover’s municipal judge. That turned into an externship, then a part-time job and a full-time job in 2014.
While working for Hoover Municipal Court, he served as a court analyst. He helped work kinks out of a new software system the court had and helped find ways to improve efficiency in the court, pretty much creating a niche for himself, taking on new roles and responsibilities as needed, he said.
In 2018, he was hired as the court director for Vestavia Hills. “I’ve loved it,” he said. “I really got to use all those skill sets I built up at Hoover and bring it here.”
One of the first things he did at Vestavia Hills was switch to a new credit card processing company that allowed more integration with various aspects of the court. For example, online driving school is now fully integrated with the credit card software.
He found that many municipal court systems are cumbersome for the public, he said.
“My goal was — how do we make it more efficient and a better experience but still hold on to the aspects of justice?” he said. “There are some things that are court required, but how do we make it not as painful for people to just take a driving school — to just make a payment online, do a payment plan — to be able to communicate with the court?”
Under his leadership, Vestavia’s municipal court has gone from paper-intensive processes to a paperless system. Court scheduling is done online; people can communicate with the court via text message and the phone tree recordings that people get can more easily be modified due to artificial intelligence, he said.
Downes said Patel has shown the ability to lead people very well and to be innovative in finding ways to make the court more efficient.
“Bringing that great personality — that great charisma, coupled with his ability to be very process oriented — I think will lend itself well to the city clerk position,” Downes said.
Downes and the City Council decided to expand the city clerk role to make it more interactive with the various city departments and gave Patel the title of director of administration and innovation. He will be responsible for finding innovative strategies for all city departments to make city government more efficient across the board, Downes said.
Patel already has shown a knack for that, with multiple city departments coming to him to learn how their departments can utilize some of the same methods he has been using in municipal court, such as interview scheduling and phone tree adaptation.
Patel said he’s always been someone who shuffled around to different jobs to help the team. Even in youth baseball, he didn’t just play one position but was a utility player who moved around as needed, he said.
“I like being able to just help wherever I can, however I can,” he said.
When Leavings lost her assistant city clerk, Patel helped fill the void by serving as backup city clerk when Leavings had to be out for vacation or outside city business.
“One of the things I’ve always wanted to do is just learn as much as I can from every department, so when I had the opportunity to learn from Becky, I took it,” he said. “She’s considered one of the best city clerks in the state. It was a cool opportunity not just to learn the processes and procedures but to learn the history of the city and how we got to where we are — why we do the things we do. I was just trying to be helpful, and it just kind of grew from there.”
Patel said he’s excited for the challenge ahead and the opportunity to work with other departments in an official capacity. He looks forward to talking with department heads and learning about what processes work for them and which ones don’t.
“My goal is to make the city operate better all around, not necessarily just with the use of technology and software,” he said.
Personally, Patel and his wife, Roshni, live in Hoover with their two daughters, ages 4 and 2. He loves to spend time with his family and to play golf, he said. They also love to travel; his children have been on more than 50 flights, and he has traveled to 15-20 countries, he said.
