City City employees get bonuses totaling $500,000

By JON ANDERSON

The Hoover City Council in April approved nearly a half-million dollars’ worth of bonuses for city employees.

The bonuses range from $100 to $1,000, depending on employees’ years of service and full-time or part-time status.

For part-time employees, the bonus is $100 for those with 1 to 4 years of service, $150 for 5 to 9 years of service and $200 for 10 or more years of service. For full-time employees, the bonus is $500 for 1 to 4 years of service, $750 for 5 to 9 years of service and $1,000 for 10 or more years of service.

The city of Hoover has 605 full-time employees and 66 part-time employees, and more than half of the full-time employees (306) have 10 or more years of service, records show. The total amount of bonuses going to full-time employees will be $489,250, while bonuses for parttime employees total $9,250, for a grand total of $498,500.

Hoover Mayor Frank Brocato said the city government had a very good year financially in the 2022 fiscal year and he and the City Council want to reward employees for a job well done.

Both department heads and city employees in general were good stewards of taxpayers’ dollars during the COVID-19 pandemic, Brocato said. “I am constantly getting compliments from people about every segment of employee operations about how well they do,” he said.

The city ended fiscal 2022 with record general fund revenue collections of almost $157 million, which was $34 million more than expenditures, Chief Financial Officer Tina Bolt said.

The City Council in June approved a policy to bolster the city’s general fund reserves so they can cover six months’ worth of expenses. The council also set up a “rolling reserve” account to help the city more easily weather potential economic downturns or emergencies in the future.

That policy requires the council to predict a 4% increase in revenues for each budget year and to spend only 70% of that increase and save the other 30% in a budget stabilization fund.

Bolt initially projected city revenues would decline slightly in fiscal 2023 to $155 million, but tax revenues so far are coming in stronger than expected, Bolt said.

As of the end of February (five months into the fiscal year), the city already had received $85.3 million in revenues, which is 53% of the total revenues that had been projected for the full year, Bolt reported. Expenditures for the same period were $49.1 million — just 35% of the estimated budget.

That means the city’s general fund has $33 million more than it was expected to have at this point in the year, putting the city’s expected general fund balance at the end of the year at $115 million, Bolt said. Ten million dollars of that will be needed for capital projects in 2024, she said.

Instead of declining, sales tax revenues were up $2.5 million from the same period last year, Bolt said. That demonstrates continued growth in consumer spending through the end of

February, with holiday sales in December providing a substantial increase in city revenues in January, Bolt said.

“Current market trends reflect consumer spending decreased in February, after a large increase during the holidays,” Bolt wrote in a memo to the mayor and council.

“Wage growth among consumers rose unexpectedly in February 2023 but is starting to soften from 2022, driving inflation upwards,” Bolt wrote. “Consumer spending has remained stable in retail but reflects a decline in dining, auto and home stores. Economists predict a recession before the end of 2023. The city of Hoover remains in a strong financial position.”