Fort Payne council candidate Wade Hill placed second last week, and is back out campaigning for the runoff on October 4. (Photo courtesy of Wade Hill)
By Tyler Pruett, Managing Editor
FORT PAYNE, Ala. — Fort Payne’s City Council election last week only officially decided that Ballinger and Paris were out. Citizen’s will be returning to their polling locations on October 4th to decide between the 10 remaining candidates on the ballot.
One of the candidates on the council runoff ballot, Wade Hill, sat down with the Southern Torch to discuss his priorities for his first term if elected and how the runoff is going.
Hill received 1475 votes last Tuesday. He was only surpassed by council candidate Brian Baine’s 1953 votes. If Hill and the other candidates get similar results on the night of the runoff, he’ll make up a largely new council, with only two incumbents returning.
Wade Hill was born and raised in Fort Payne and has been serving his town and community for over 40 years. Hill was a firefighter for 29 years; finishing his career as Fort Payne’s Fire Chief. After his time as a firefighter, Hill changed career paths to policing, and served as an investigator for the DeKalb County Sheriff’s Office Major Crimes Unit.
Currently, Hill is an investigator for District Attorney Mike O’Dell’s office. He and his wife Cindy reside in Fort Payne and are members of Whitehall Methodist Church.
Hill has big plans if elected to city council after the runoff. First off, he hopes everyone remembers to return to the polls on the fourth.
“The problem we’ve got now is people thinks it’s over with.” Hill said, “People have been taking signs down, thinking it’s done. We’ve still got five more weeks to hammer this thing out.”
When asked about how he feels going into the runoff, Hill said, “I’m excited about it. We’ve been around to a lot of places in the city, meet a lot of really good people.”
“I placed second last week, but now we are virtually back to zero. We had 2633 good souls vote last week, but we don’t know how many will come back out when October comes around,” he added.
Then we turned the conversation to his plans if elected to the city council for his first term. Hill is experienced with city management and has attended over 500 city government meetings during his career in police and fire.
“There’s some things that are in the process of being done now that I want to see continued. The renovations need to be completed on the Coal and Iron building, also the city is completing the sale of the old Mapco building,” Hill said.
“We’ve got a long term plan to route Highway 35 around the city. That’s a multi-million dollar project that will have to be funded by the federal government through the state,” said Hill.
“They just put two bridges over the Tennessee River and they are going to four-lane up Sand Mountain. Routing Highway 35 around the city needs to be the next thing on the state’s drawing board,” he said.
“Cullman has a half-a-dozen overpasses, Valley Head has one, why can’t Fort Payne get one?” added Hill.
A major goal of Hill’s first term is to see the city complete Patriot’s Park, which is on Highway 35 close to the Rotary Pavilion.
“It’s a major disgrace that Patriot’s Park hasn’t been finished,” Hill said.
“They’ve got a sign and some drawings done, there’s been a committee founded and money raised, but it still hasn’t got done,” said Hill. “It’s basically to honor military, firemen, police, and emergency medical.”
“It’s time we got that done,” he added.
Wade Hill will be one of the names on the ballot for the October 4 runoff. The top five candidates will be named Fort Payne’s new city council.
