Hartselle City Council Place 5 winner Matt Broom and wife Katy Broom.

By Lauren Thornton Tobin
Hartselle Enquirer

Hartselle resident and financial analyst Matthew Broom won the Hartselle City Council Place 5 seat with 619 votes against Daniel Crowe who garnered 492 votes Tuesday night, according to unofficial election results.

Broom, a first time politician, said he wants to learn as much as he can from the  other council members and the department heads.

“I want to make sure everyone has a strong strategic plan for the future,” he said.

Broom said so far his experience in politics has been interesting and he’s enjoyed learning and meeting new people.

“I ran because I love this town and I think it’s a great honor to serve the people,” he said.

He said one of his main goals is to work with the Morgan County Economic Development Association to bring more jobs to Hartselle.

“I’ve had several friends move back to North Alabama in the recent years and they’re going to Madison or Cullman or different areas, and that breaks my heart a little bit,” he said. “We have a great school system and we educate people and they’re going to work 25 minutes away. We give these people a great education and they leave. I want to move the town in a direction where they want to come back.”

A couple of things Broom wants to bring to Hartselle for residents’ enjoyment is a dog park and public tennis courts. On the business side of things, Broom wants like to see retail growth along the interstate.

“That’s revenue driving by every day,” Broom said. “I view that as straight positive revenue because there are very minimal expenses associated to those (businesses). There’s no upkeep to people driving up and down the interstate.”

With hot-button issues like the wet-dry vote coming up, Broom said he is more concerned with keeping the town safe if residents choose to bring alcohol.

“I want to make sure there are very stringent rules that go along with it and I want to be very protective of the town to make sure how it’s done,” he said. “You look at Cullman and driving through town you wouldn’t know there’s alcohol. We don’t want any advertisements for it and we don’t want bars, lounges or anything like that.”

Crowe, a longtime Hartselle resident and aerospace engineer, said he ran because he wanted to do his part to get Hartselle working differently, but after participating in the race, will most likely stay out of politics.

“It’s really just whatever God calls me to do. I’m not going to totally dismiss it but I prefer to stay out of it from now on,” he said.

Broom and Crowe agreed that they were discouraged by the lack of voter turnout.

“Only 12 or 13 percent of the registered voters actually voted and that was the most disheartening thing,” Crowe said. “I have a lot of passion for doing the right things and getting the city working how it should be working, and getting that feedback was negative and pretty disheartening.”

Both candidates defeated incumbent Ken Doss in the August primary election.