Infrastructure, workforce among Sullivan priorities

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FAIRHOPE – Continuing city infrastructure improvements and reorganizing the Fairhope municipal workforce will be among Sherry Sullivan’s top priorities when she takes office as mayor Nov. 2.

Sullivan won election in a four-candidate field in August defeating incumbent Karin Wilson and two other challengers with about 58 percent of the total vote.

She said Friday that the weeks since then have been busy preparing for the transition.

“I met with each of the council members to see what their priorities will be and infrastructure, obviously, is at the top of everybody’s list,” Sullivan said. “There are some recreation issues that everybody wants to look at, some recreational opportunities that they want to look at, a master plan for recreation.”

She said the city has started some infrastructure improvements and she and the council plan to continue work to improve services in Fairhope.

“When I ran, I ran on the fact about infrastructure,” Sullivan said. “I wanted to make sure we followed those projects through and those are still in the works – the sewer upgrades as well as completing the electric substation and we’re fixing to start some gas upgrades and there’s the issue with the Public Service Commission and gas. We’re obviously going to have to follow that through. I think they got an extension on that for 30 days because of the storm, because of Sally, to do some of those maintenance things that need to be taken care of.”

An annual audit by the Alabama Public Service Commission in 2019 found that the city had not completed required inspections and repairs of unprotected gas services and reported concerns about cathodic protection, according to a statement by Fairhope Utilities. The City Council voted Aug. 10 to approve a $585,000 bid by Equix Energy Services to improve unprotected gas lines.

She said residents are also looking forward to continued progress with city projects as well as more cooperation between the mayor’s office and City Council.

“I think people are excited. I think the biggest thing they are looking for is being able to have a mayor and council who will work together and move some of these projects forward,” Sullivan said. “The working waterfront is one of them. Obviously, we’re under some time constraints because of the RESTORE money with some of these projects, such as the sewer project. They’ve chosen the engineer for that, so we need to go ahead and start getting that ball rolling. The triangle property, the K-1 center, there’s possibly some grant opportunities there we’d like to look at. There’re a lot of large projects in Fairhope that just, for some reason, haven’t started or they’re just kind of right there on the brink, so being able to look at getting some of those bigger projects started and hopefully complete in the next year to two years, I think, will be exciting for the whole community and the staff because they’ve been working on them for so long.”

Sullivan said she wants to look at some reorganization of the city workforce to use employees to the best of their abilities. “I don’t foresee many personnel changes, just realigning folks basically,” she said.

Sullivan, a former Fairhope city employee for 17 years, said that workforce was one of the reasons that she ran for office.

“I really want to have a team in place that, regardless of who the leadership is, people are very comfortable in the fact that the city’s going to continue on, that we have good qualified people who are doing a good job, who love our community and, basically, leaders who get along to restore that stability back to Fairhope,” Sullivan said. “I think that’s something so many people look for in a small town. That’s what I hope to do and kind of bring our community together again, so there’s not so much divide.”

Sullivan said restoring a sense of pride among city employees is one of her main goals for the upcoming term.

“Whether people want to admit it or not, when you have a government that does not get along, there’s a trickle-down effect and it affects the morale of your employees and just their overall attitude and productivity,” Sullivan said. “I think that’s something that’s lacking in Fairhope, so at the end of four years, I hope I can say that I’ve united the workforce, that they love their jobs, that they’re being as productive as they can be and it’s reflected in our community.”

She said the city budget will be another priority. City officials have prepared revenue projections for the upcoming year. Sullivan expects those figures to be reduced in anticipation of a slower economy due to COVID-19.

“We think revenues are probably going to be down a little because of COVID, so we’re going to underestimate revenues somewhat, maybe 3 to 5 percent, to make sure we’re not overbudgeting ourselves and again look at some of those capital projects and prioritize things,” Sullivan said.

Working with other communities will also be a priority. She said she has already met with Daphne Mayor-elect Robin LeJeune and Spanish Fort Mayor Mike McMillan, who was re-elected to a new term, to discuss how the cities can work together in the future.

“We share a waterfront. There’s a lot of things that we share on the Eastern Shore, Highway 98, some of those things, so it’s important that we keep open lines of communication, whether it be about the MPO or anything to do with the waterfront or more of the regional type issues that we’re going to face,” Sullivan said.