'Parking guy' named HH's Employee of the Year
If you’ve been to Huntsville Hospital lately, you know parking is at a premium.
Every weekday, 3,000 to 4,000 HH Health employees squeeze into parking spots scattered across the hospital’s bustling downtown campus, along with a nonstop caravan of patients and family members, hospital vendors and volunteers, nursing students and more.
Getting all those vehicles to fit is a huge logistical challenge.
Fortunately, Huntsville Hospital Parking Coordinator Milton Holt is good at puzzles.
Milton was recently named the hospital’s 2024 Employee of the Year for his behind-the-scenes contributions to making sure everyone who needs a space can find one.
“We’ve got amazing doctors, nurses – so many people who make an impact on patients day to day – so it’s crazy that they would recognize me with an award,” Milton says. “I’m just the parking guy.”
Without Milton, though, patients and visitors would have a harder time getting to the doctors and nurses who provide that amazing care.
He spends his days patrolling the hospital’s labyrinth of parking garages, driving up and down and back again counting the number of open spaces. His tallies provide a crucial snapshot of how full the various garages are on different days.
Let’s say the Orthopedic & Spine Tower garage is only 80 percent full on a typical weekday morning. That tells Milton he can let a few more employees use the deck without compromising parking for the public.
It’s an ever-changing numbers game, as each month HH Health hires about 250 new employees who need parking. Most are initially assigned to the 405 Lowell garage, located on the east side of the campus behind Huntsville Hospital for Women & Children. Getting from there to the Huntsville Hospital and other points west requires a short tram ride.
“New employees put down their preferred location where they would like to park,” Milton explains. “As other employees retire or resign and spaces comes open in those locations, I am able to reassign people based on their seniority.”
“There’s definitely a lot of counting involved.”
Milton joined HH Health as a contract security officer in 2016 after moving to North Alabama from Maryland. His work ethic and leadership qualities stood out, and he was soon promoted to managing the hospital’s fleet and courier service.
As parking coordinator, he is responsible for not only Huntsville Hospital but several other HH Health facilities including Madison Hospital, Decatur Morgan Hospital, Athens-Limestone Hospital and Highlands Medical Center in Scottsboro.
Milton is a friendly father of three with an easy smile and infectious laugh, but he’s serious about parking. If an employee takes a spot that’s supposed to be reserved for patients or visitors, they can expect to hear from him.
“We want to make sure patients have a good experience, and parking is part of that,” Milton says. “If we as employees have to park farther from the door to make sure our patients and visitors get easy accessibility, then that’s what we need to do.”
