Please take some time to read this if you're a resident of Bluff Park:
 
The Bluff Park community in Hoover is a very unique area.  Our residential base is comprised of more demographics than any other part of Hoover.  In addition to that, Bluff Park also boasts the highest voter turnout of any Hoover community.  Most of our residents are also homeowners, and a home is in the single largest investment most of us will make in our lifetime.
 
It is for these reasons that the study that Hoover City Councilor Gene Smith released on Friday regarding the impact that the removal of school buses by Hoover City Schools impacts us directly, and in a very negative way, regardless of whether or not we have children in the Hoover City Schools.
 
The study can be downloaded here: http://media.al.com/spotnews/other/Hoover%20school%20bus%20impact%20study.pdf.pd f
 
The study is 66 pages long and is incredibly concise.  If you want to skip all of the details and cut right to the chase, go to page 66.
 
This page shows a graph of Home Prices, Home Sales, Retail Sales, Employment, New Home Starts, both projected with bus transportation and without it.  The "without it" side paints a grim picture.  Hoover will suffer.  Home values will drop.  Retail sales will fall.
 
Bottom line, our home's value, our investment, the "nest egg" for some", will drop.  Why?  Two reasons:
 
1.  Poor fiscal management on the part of the Hoover Board of Education and the Superintendent of Hoover City Schools
2.  Lack of investment by the Hoover City Council and the Mayor's Office into our schools system ($51.9M dollars that used to go to our schools from the city has not been done since 2007).
 
Tomorrow the Hoover City Council will have a Regular Council Meeting at 6:00pm.  It will be held in the Council Chambers at City Hall (across from the library).  Mr. Smith will present his report and will have a representative of the company that did the study present to answer questions.
 
If you are a homeowner in Bluff Park, you need to be at that meeting.  You need to ask the City Council and the mayor as to why they have not funded the schools as they had in the past.  If they answer that the schools are not being fiscally responsible, then ask them why they keep appointing members to the Board of Education that allow the superintendent to pass deficit budgets, and why they keep appointing members to the Board of Education who keep allowing irresponsible spending to take place.
 
If we lose the buses, all of us who own homes LOSE.  And if we don't tell the people responsible for making these decisions that we are not pleased with what they are doing, then we have nobody to blame but ourselves.
 
Once again, in cased you missed it:  LOSING THE BUSES AFFECTS YOU DIRECTLY AND NEGATIVELY
 
We expect to see a packed house at the council meeting tomorrow.  We expect to see the Bluff Park area represented well.
 
If you have any questions, please send an e-mail to info@bluffparkal.org