Homewood mayor Jennifer Andress swore her oath of office Nov. 3. and already plans to bring the city’s planning conversations straight to the community.
During her nine years representing Ward Five, Andress created a newsletter sent out to residents every two months, to keep her constituents informed. Now as the city’s first female mayor, Andress plans to continue creating transparency and strengthening communication between the city and its people.
This inauguration also officially establishes the new city manager-council government. Glen Adams, Homewood’s first city manager, has worked with Andress for the past eight months to smooth out the transition and revisit community-led planning. City engineer Cale Smith will take over his place.
“People just want to know they’re being heard and represented,” Andress said.
To help achieve this goal, Homewood is hiring a Director of Communications to use public outreach to bring residents information on changes in the city.
“Now we’re going to have a professional who works at City Hall, who will be working to get the message out to our citizens,” Andress said. “We are gonna work on a robust communications plan because I feel like we can get the story out, whatever the story is, so we can communicate.”
City manager Adams pushed to create a comprehensive plan to map future civil projects, as well as updating them every five years with community input. Citizens will be welcome to bring their concerns and have a hand in the makeup of their city. These plans and later revisions will be approved by the city council before they can take effect.
“Everybody gets to come and discuss what they want the city to look like… allowing as many of the citizens of this city to have a say in what the future looks like,” Adams said.
In 2007, the city created a comprehensive plan, but it was never updated. However, with a new communication and transparency priority, Adams planned to get the community more involved with the future of Homewood.
“Do you want to know what the city looks like in 25 to 30 years? You can influence it,” Adams said.
Adams explained the city has hired the Town Planning and Urban Design Collaborative, an American firm specializing in planning and implementing private and public projects to set up and facilitate the meetings. All constituents and businesses in the affected wards at which the discussion is happening will be invited.
“This council right now has given us the funding in the budget to create a comprehensive plan, which is where we have a contract to have somebody come into the city and facilitate meeting with all of the citizens,” Adams said.
These meetings will happen first at the ward level, then between wards and finally as a city-wide discussion.
“It’s neat because then all the citizens are heard,” Adams said.
Samford’s controversial Creekside development surprised much of the community earlier this year, but Andress plans to work with Samford University to balance their expansion efforts with the community’s needs.
“[Creekside] has got to be something the community feels like we benefit from,” Andress said.
Because the comprehensive plan allows both local businesses and residents to bring forth their ideas for future projects, the City is able to easily balance the commercial and community interests, giving residents ample opportunity to voice their concerns and come to an agreement.
“What I told them is, slow down, get involved with a comprehensive plan, share your ideas with the citizens so they can influence the ideas up front,” Andress said.
Although the conversations surrounding Creekside became heated on both sides, Andress and Adams see the issue as an opportunity to work together. For Andress, the community having unique places to enjoy is a priority when it comes to future projects.
“My angle [on Creekside]… is the outdoor recreation aspect of it, the economic development aspect of it and the quality of life aspect of it, because we have to have cool things for us to do here,” Andress said.
With the potential for Creekside to return, many are worried about increased traffic on Lakeshore. Due to growing community concern, Adams has been working to add a divergent diamond interchange, an innovative highway intersection at the Lakeshore and I-65 interchange to manage traffic.
“That’s been 14 years in the making,” Adams said. “Finally, it looks like we’re going to go through with it, and that’s a big deal because it’s going to solve a lot of the flow going north-south on 65.”
Not every decision the city manager advocates for plays out exactly as intended. Adams tried to put $2.1 million into flood management, however, the city opted to use smaller methods like water bars to divert water off of roads. These cost-effective projects were a compromise to help those most impacted by floods while the city continues to plan for bigger projects.
“It’s called quick wins,” Adams said. “It’s finding quick wins to help out people, something to solve their flooding that isn’t going to be financially difficult for us to manage. We’ll do it.”
Despite small projects to mitigate the damage of flooding, several other issues prevent the city from taking any major stormwater management projects. The city doesn’t have the finances required for construction, and construction crews would encroach on residents’ daily lives.
“The truth of the matter is that it’s politically a nightmare to resolve,” Adams said. “Even if I had it, how many hundreds of millions of dollars it’s going to take to do that?”
When not overseeing her mayoral duties, Andress works as the External and Special Projects Director for the Freshwater Land Trust. She is passionate about conserving outdoor green spaces, like parks in Birmingham’s Red Rock Trail System, because of the impact they have on local communities.
“For me, I love the environmental aspect of it, but it’s more about bringing people, improving the quality of life where we live, and then bringing people here and giving them something to do that makes them want to come here,” Andress said.
