Photo by Sarah Owens
From left: Chadwick Stogner, George Williams and Melinda Williams during their interview with The Homewood Star on Sept. 17.
As Homewood citizens prepare to vote in the referendum on Tuesday, those opposing the proposed changes to the current government structure have increasingly voiced their concerns.
While the Sept. 24 vote is posed as a yes or no question aimed at hiring a city manager, ward maps and city council seats are also on the line.
If passed, the referendum will create a city manager/council government format and allow the city, under Alabama Code 11-43a-28, to hire a full-time city manager to take over chief executive duties. The current five ward, 11-member council would also change to a four ward, five-member council with one representative per ward and the mayor as the council president.
Many residents have shared concerns over what they see as a decrease in representation, and others favor keeping the city’s mayor/council structure and hiring a city manager under Alabama code 11-43-20.
The city of Homewood collected more than 600 signatures in support of the special election, and Jefferson County Probate Judge James Naftel certified them in July in order for the referendum to be approved.
Opponents of the referendum, interviewed Tuesday by The Homewood Star, say they do support a city manager for Homewood, but they disagree on the method presented to voters by the city.
Instead, they say the council could hire a manager by passing an ordinance, preventing a referendum and not changing the city’s form of government.
“We want to claim that statute for how we govern our city with the city manager,” said Chadwick Stogner, a Homewood resident since 2005. “The way you do that is you just simply do it with an ordinance. And the other side would say, ‘Whoa. Well, it makes it easier to take away.’ Well, no, because that's the other beautiful thing you'll see in there is that it's controlled now by the governing body, which is all of the elected council representatives and the mayor as a unit, a governing body. And so it makes it harder to go backwards unless something's wrong, and then it makes it easier to get out of it.”
Talks of a city manager for Homewood began when two of the three 2020 mayoral candidates campaigned on the idea of hiring one, and Mayor Patrick McCLusky formed an ad hoc committee after he was elected to do research on the different ways the city could obtain a city manager. The committee presented their findings in a report in June 2023, and the council then considered three options.
Each of the three models was labeled by the surrounding municipalities that utilize them, effectively being referred to as the Vestavia, Hoover and Mountain Brook models.
The Vestavia model is the format that the council decided would be the best fit for Homewood, citing that it would align the city with other similar sized municipalities in the state. The Hoover model was decided against as Hoover’s population of over 92,000 is almost four times that of Homewood. They also thought the Mountain Brook format of hiring a city manager through an ordinance leaves room for debate on whether the mayor or city manager has the power in different situations.
However, not all parties agree with the decision, and some feel the reasons provided were unclear or misleading. George Williams and his wife Melinda, residents of Homewood for the last 47 years, feel the city would be better served by keeping the current government structure and hiring a city manager through the Mountain Brook ordinance model.
“The distinction as far as, they’re calling it ordinance based, is that the statute that governs a mayor/council government, which is what we have, exists,” said George. “Inside that, there is a section where it says, if you want to opt to have a city manager, you have to pass an ordinance, and when you do, the following code becomes official for your city. So they're both statutory. It's just that this one you have to pass an ordinance to enact that part of the code, and then that code supersedes some of the other code.”
Melinda also feels that the city could have better communicated the options to residents, saying that the committee’s report gave no clear recommendation and that the city did not share what direction they were leaning towards until several months later.
“They simply handed everything over, and then we kind of had radio silence, I think for a while, relative to what their direction was going to be,” said Melinda. “Ideally, they would have communicated all that with the residents of the city to talk about what the options were that they were looking at and why. And that didn't really get communicated very well, which is why, I think, kind of at the last minute, there's been this scramble of well is that really the best way to do it? You've decided that you want to do a four councilor version of the council/manager form. They had a six councilor option, but they didn't go there with that, and a lot of folks were not happy with the drastic reduction.”
City Council president Alex Wyatt said the city has shared information on its website and held over a dozen public forums or meetings over the last few years that residents could attend to learn more and ask questions about the city manager situation, but he recognizes that their communication efforts have not reached every resident.
As for the number of council members, under the statute that the referendum is proposing, the city could choose to have a four ward, five-member council or a six ward, seven-member council. Wyatt asked the state of Alabama for a map detailing what the four wards would look like, but many residents are upset that they were never given a map showing what six wards would look like.
“If you have five people to go to, you have statistically a lower chance of finding one or two people in that five that will listen to you and get on the same wavelength, as opposed to seven,” said George. “So, even if we go with the model that the city council has proposed, if they had chosen six representatives plus the mayor, then we would have had seven and it would have given more opportunity for people to get a sympathetic ear when they go to the council.”
While councilors have argued that the four ward, five-member plan is the best fit for a city of Homewood’s size, and 11 representatives is unusually high, some citizens still favor more representation over what is considered standard for city government structure.
“I think if they had come to suggest that this form of government change should be done, and six plus one was the right number, I wouldn't have been as happy about it, but I would have probably just said, ‘Okay, fine, all right,’” said Melinda.
George also pointed out that the ad hoc committee’s report indicated that such a change would likely result in resistance or a lack of understanding from the community, and that the city would need to clearly communicate to prepare people for the shift.
“That preparation has not been made at all,” he said. “And the other aspect of that is the aspect of transparency. That would have been very transparent if they had started reaching out to the community two years ago the way they have in the last two weeks, then they could have engaged the community and said, change is coming, and let us help you understand it. Let us prepare you for it.”
Stogner also mentioned his concerns over the manner in which the councilors have promoted the referendum, stating he’s had trouble clarifying whether they are acting in a personal capacity or as a city.
“They've overstepped the bounds of what cities are supposed to do when they're putting a referendum before the people,” he said. “They're supposed to speak, not as a city. They can speak in their individual capacities, but it's almost been a complete mobilization of the entire Homewood government to push vote yes for city manager.”
A group of community members opposed to the proposed government change have also banded together to promote their message, forming a political action committee called Better Homewood. To view their full stance, visit https://betterhomewood.com/.
The Williamses are involved with Better Homewood, but Stogner is not directly associated.
Overall, all three of them made clear that they support a city manager for Homewood, but they feel that the proposed plan is not what’s best for the city.
“If it's voted yes, it puts all the power in the hands of the city council, and the mayor doesn't have any veto power,” Melinda said. “If you can maintain the same form of government that we have now, the mayor continues to have veto power, and there's that check and balance with legislative and executive that is healthy, I think, in a community.”
Stogner mimicked those feelings, saying Homewood is the most amazing place he’s lived and that the current government structure better distributes power for the benefit of the community.
“When you consolidate power or or you consolidate the people that can participate in the power, you don't see that beauty,” he said. “And so that's all we're asking, we are good, we are set up well, and we're a smart community. Just give us the options and let us make the choice. We think that this referendum has pushed us into a false choice, and it's like, ‘Well, you better vote on it now. We won't have this opportunity again.’ It's very unfortunate that this is how it's played out.”
