Athens Mayor Ronnie Marks, newly-elected League president, and Guntersville Mayor Leigh Dollar, newly-elected League vice president
ATHENS-On May 6, Athens Mayor Ronnie Marks was elected by his municipal colleagues to serve as president of the Alabama League of Municipalities for 2019-2020. He was elected and took office during the League’s annual convention, which was held in Mobile May 4-7.
League Executive Director Ken Smith looks forward to working with Mayor Marks over the next year.
“Mayor Marks was very active this past year as vice president and is an asset to our organization,” Smith said. “He has served on a number of League committees, including our Executive Committee, as well as the Board of Directors for the Alabama Municipal Insurance Corporation (AMIC), a mutual insurance company created by the League in 1989 to provide Alabama’s municipalities with liability insurance. He will continue to serve us well as president.”
Mayor Marks began his municipal service in 2004 as a council member and assumed the position of mayor in 2010 when former Mayor Dan Williams won a seat in the Alabama Legislature. He was elected to his first full term in 2012. During his acceptance speech, Mayor Marks thanked his municipal colleagues for the honor to serve as president and emphasized that being a mayor or council member is the best job in politics because it’s the job closest to the people. “It is where we meet, greet and impact the real lives of real people on a day-to-day basis,” he said.
He has completed the League’s Basic and Advanced Certified Municipal Official (CMO) programs and is currently working on his CMO Emeritus designation, which is awarded to officials who have acquired a minimum of 120 credit hours of Continuing CMO Education through a series of one-day programs designed especially for mayors and council members who voluntarily wish to receive formal training in municipal government. Emeritus status also requires earning a total of 15 points, which can be achieved by participating on ALM policy committees and attending specific ALM and National League of Cities (NLC) events. Through these programs, Mayor Marks has received formal classroom training in subjects such as council meeting procedures; parliamentary procedure; the Open Meetings Law; public records; ordinance drafting; conflicts of interest; the State Ethics Law; duties of the mayor and council; tort liability; the competitive bid law; zoning and planning; annexation; municipal regulatory powers; municipal revenues and expenditures; personnel actions; and leadership development. 
“The job of building our cities and towns is never done,” Mayor Marks said during his acceptance speech. “This is not a marathon, or a sprint. It is a relay race. As we take the baton from our predecessors, with their cumulative strengths and obstacles, we then run with all our might, hopefully building a stronger community for our citizens and our future knowing that, someday, we will pass the baton on to the next leader.”
Based in Montgomery, the Alabama League of Municipalities was organized in 1935 and has served for 84 years as the recognized voice of the cities and towns in Alabama. Representing more than 450 member municipalities, the League works to secure enactment of legislation enabling all cities and towns to perform their functions more efficiently and effectively; offers specialized training for both municipal officials and employees; holds conferences and meetings at which views and experiences of officials may be exchanged; and conducts continuing studies of the legislative, administrative and operational needs, problems and functions of Alabama’s municipal governments. For more information, visit www.alalm.org.
Media Release/Carrie Banks/Communications Director/Alabama League of Municipalities
