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By TYLER RALEY | Staff Writer

HOOVER – Following a long and competitive election season, Ashley Lovell has secured a spot on the Hoover City Council following the releasing of the results from the runoff election on Tuesday, Sept. 23.

Lovell defeat Liz Lane for Place 3 on the body, earning the majority of the 8,692 votes that were casted throughout the 17 precincts within Hoover.

Lovell earned 6,351 votes on the day, or 73.07 percent of the vote, to Lane’s 2,341 votes, or the remaining 26.93 percent, winning in landslide fashion.

“I am very excited, very grateful,” Lovell said. “I love this city. This city is one that it created me, it raised me and so to be able to represent the city, I’m just very very excited.”

The results of the runoff election were a reflection of the votes in the general election on Aug. 26, which at the time held three candidates. In the first round, Lovell was just 53 votes from earning an outright victory with 8,148 votes, or 49.84 percent, while Lane was the second-highest vote getter with 4,695, or 28.72 percent.

The new term will be Lovell’s first term with the Hoover City Council, as she replaces long time representative John Lyda, who is currently the president of the council.

Lovell is a native of the city of Hoover and graduated from Spain Park High School. She holds a bachelor’s degree in biology from Birmingham Southern College with a minor in business.

In her professional life, she works as a senior manager of sales and marketing at Lincare, which provides home respiratory therapy treatment methods for patients to help with their quality of life. Lovell has worked with Lincare for the last 14 years.

Having in been in the corporate business realm throughout her time at Lincare, Lovell hopes to use her experience to help Hoover thrive from an economic standpoint.

“Being in corporate America for 14 years, business is something that’s near to my heart and so I’m just looking forward to having the opportunity to aggressively recruit business to the city of Hoover so that we can get the business in our city thriving, and so that’s what I’m looking forward to,” Lovell said.

On the new Hoover City Council, Lovell will serve alongside Robin Schultz, Gene Smith, Khristi Driver, Derrick Murphy, Casey Middlebrooks and Steve McClinton, as well as the city’s new mayor in Nick Derzis.

The new face is looking forward to working with the new body in order to help manage the growth that Hoover is experiencing.

“I’m very much looking forward to working together as a team for the common goal of Hoover,” Lovell said. “Smart development has always been near and dear to my heart and it’s what got me started in this whole process, so the idea of encouraging growth in Hoover (is my goal), but also making sure it’s done in a smart way because I want to set this city up to be one that my children and all the other children who are growing up want to come back to.”

The newly-elected official gave praise to all of her supporters after the long campaign trail and expressed her joy to get to work once she begins in November.

“I am absolutely grateful,” Lovell said. “I started out in this whole thing passionate about my city and I’m equally as passionate about it and so I’m very grateful to the people of Hoover who believe in me and I won’t let you down.”