My parents are retired here in Pelham and my sister who teaches at Pelham High School is also raising her family here. I feel very blessed to have grown up in Pelham, and this community will forever be part of who I am. While going to college and then spending ten years living and working around the world, I learned a great deal and also began to see things from many different perspectives. Howeve
r, I never felt at home anywhere except for Pelham. I wanted to come home and now I want my children and future grandchildren to always be proud of Pelham too. In 1998, before my wife and I decided to build a home over the hill from where I grew up and virtually next door to my sister, we evaluated several opportunities that included what most people would have probably considered much safer and financially beneficial. However, these alternatives would have also meant living somewhere else and we wanted to raise our children in a place that would always feel like home to them. Therefore, we decided that we had to move to Pelham and that we were willing to take the risks that came with creating our own business opportunities in order to raise our kids in the best environment possible. We are very fortunate that our children have been able to grow up here surrounded by family and friends. This was never clearer than when our oldest child got very sick six years ago and we felt a great outpouring of love and support from this community. This was a very painful time filled with prayer and self-refection, but it also provided us with an even stronger faith in our community, our home. This also led to a deeper commitment to find opportunities to help Pelham become the best place possible. In that same year, we realized that we had an opportunity to help address what had become a major flooding problem near where we lived. Although several developers and real estate professionals told us that it would be a terrible decision to buy the property and try to address this problem given all of the issues and approvals that would be required, we decided that we had to try to make this situation better. It took us over five years to get where we are and there were definitely more than a few more people who questioned our sanity along the way. We are still working to improve this area that we named Ingenuity Park and do not want anyone to believe that there still isn’t work to be done, but no house in Stratford Place has flooded since we bought the property and we have now moved into our new headquarters building. The mayor wrote me a letter thanking us for our commitment to Pelham via the development of our lake into a retention pond and the creation an area that acts as a drainage basin in order to minimize the flooding in Stratford Place. We also were awarded the Pelham Commercial Beautification Award for December 2011. As we continue working to improve this area, I hope we can do a lot more to benefit the community. I have also worked hard to help Pelham in a variety of other ways. From volunteering at the park and supporting our school teams to the personal and corporate resources that we volunteered to help the City of Pelham save well over $1M to date on its power and telecommunications expenses, we have tried to make this a better community and free up resources to address the city’s other critical issues. However, I know that we can do more and that it is time for me to give back in a more direct way. Most of my work for the community has been relatively behind the scenes because that is how I thought I could help the most. However, I now realize that my business/financial experience, as well as my significant experience assisting local and state government agencies across Alabama, could be very beneficial to the city. Although I have not served the city in a formal role before, I probably have as much experience working with local governments as anyone in Alabama. We have helped close to 70 governments, utility boards and school systems in Alabama significantly reduce expenses, while also helping many of these organizations evaluate opportunities for enhanced revenue and customer service. I also have many relationships within state agencies and around the state that could prove beneficial to our community. I am a very fiscally conservative person, but I also believe that we have to be proactive in trying to bring more business and jobs to our community in order to improve the quality of our community. Being passive in this area will put us well behind other communities that are working hard to attract and recruit new businesses and significantly improve their schools. It takes money to provide the best services and to have the best schools possible, but in a community like ours, the schools will always be a key to our success and a focal point for our community pride. With three children who have grown up in Pelham’s public schools and who received a good start from the Mother’s Day Out Program at Pelham First Baptist Church, as well as a sister who teaches at Pelham High School, I can probably appreciate the importance of our schools as much as anyone. Needless to say, I think we have to have great schools and a great library if we are going to be a great community. As much as we love Pelham, we are also very aware of the challenges we face as a community. I have said that this is not the Pelham that I grew up in. Although I definitely miss things about the way Pelham was, this city is also clearly better today in a number of ways. However, I believe that most of our residents feel that our challenges have made us take a back seat in some ways to surrounding communities. We can all see the many challenges that we have to address and it will take everyone working together if we are going to solve the related issues and turn them into great opportunities. I think we all understand and agree that this is a critical time for this community. Unfortunately, with many people believing that Pelham is falling behind, the whole community is being impacted in a variety of ways. These are challenging times that have at times clearly impacted our community spirit/morale, but we have all seen those moments when the community has really come together and shown that it is willing to fight for Pelham and for our children’s future. I still believe in my heart and my head that, if we come together, our best days are definitely still ahead us! I do not think that you will ever find anyone with stronger ties to or deeper feelings for Pelham. As much as we have been able to help behind the scenes, I know that it is time for me to take an even more active role in Pelham. I would appreciate the opportunity to leverage my knowledge, experience and great love for this community in order to help Pelham be the community that we all want it to be.
