Photo by Solomon Crenshaw Jr.
Brandon Sims, the city of Homewood’s IT director, speaks to the Finance Committee on April 15.
Homewood’s new information technology director, Brandon Sims, asked the City Council’s Finance Committee on April 15 for more money to better secure the city’s digital resources.
Sims asked the committee to amend the city IT budget from $66,000 to $140,000 to improve security. For example, he said the city doesn’t have a standardized set of software licenses and multi-factor authentication systems, and he’d like to fix that.
“There’s a number of security and compliance things that we don’t have access to. With our push to get kind of the foundational elements under control, that’s one of the things that I like to do,” Sims said.
Finance Committee Chairman Walter Jones said the upgrade will “bring us a lot more efficiency and security.”
“This allows us to standardize and go, ‘Hey, we’re gonna tell you how you can do multifactor to allow us to get the auto reports that we need,” Sims said. “We can also do things like geofencing, where we can cut it down and say, ‘Hey, we shouldn’t see any logins from China. We shouldn’t see any logins from the Philippines,’ or whatever’s going on.”
The committee sent the matter to the full council’s agenda with a recommendation to approve the request.
Additionally, the Finance Committee:
- Recommended giving permission for City Engineer Cale Smith to hire for a planning technician position.
- Recommended authorizing the mayor to sign a contract with Carr, Riggs & Ingram for accounting work.
- Recommended declaring a 1999 Ford F-450, a 2009 Ford F-150, a 2013 Ram 1500 and various equipment surplus.
Also on April 15, the Public Safety Committee heard a request to condemn the apartment building at 10, 12, 14, 16 and 18 Aspen Cove at The Park at Buckingham. The committee recommended the condemnation to the full council.
The Public Works Committee recommended approval of a request to add 14 parking spaces in the right-of-way at Covenant Presbyterian Church at 65 Old Montgomery Highway.
The Planning and Development Committee recommended setting a public hearing for May 20 to consider a final development plan for Bank of America to construct a single-story, 4,235-square-foot branch with associated parking at 232 Green Springs Highway.
The Special Issues Committee recommended granting a request to erect a tent in the right-of-way at Little Donkey, 2701 18th Street South, in celebration of Cinco de Mayo.
The Special Issues Committee recommended setting public hearings on May 6 for three sign variance requests:
- EVI at 3125 Independence Drive, Suite 300B.
- Birmingham Wholesale at 401 West Valley Avenue. That is the former Compass Bank operation center location.
- Southern Immediate Care at 1944 28th Avenue South.
