By William C. Singleton III
Journal contributor
Residents in Mountain Brook have avoided a municipal election for the second time in a row but will still see new faces on the City Council dais this November.
Last week, the Mountain Brook City Council declared Alice B. Womack as the new council representative for Place 1 and Lloyd C. Shelton as the council representative for Place 5.
The city cancelled the municipal election scheduled for Aug. 26 after Womack and Shelton were the only candidates to qualify for the open city council seats before the July 15 qualifying deadline.
The Place 3 city council seat was also open this year, but no one stepped up to challenge incumbent William S. (Billy) Pritchard III. Pritchard will now serve another four-year term on the Mountain Brook City Council.
Womack is vice president of private client groups for First Commercial Bank and has lived in Mountain Brook since 2000.
She said she and Shelton, who did not attend the July 28 meeting, have been active in the community and wanted to serve Mountain Brook as council members.
“We have both been very involved in the community,” she said. “We’ve both served together with the Mountain Brook Chamber of Commerce. We are both on the finance committee. Lloyd chairs that committee. And we’ve also worked together with the Mountain Brook City Schools Foundation. We’ve known the city council and known the staff here. It’s a great group. We’re excited to be involved and working with them.”
Womack is currently on the board of the Mountain Brook City Schools Foundation. She and her husband, Lowell Womack Jr., have two children.
Shelton also has longstanding ties to the community. A 1980 graduate of Mountain Brook High School, he is the president of the Mountain Brook City Schools Foundation and serves alongside Womack on the city’s finance committee.
An accountant with Lovoy, Summerville and Shelton LLC, Shelton is the current chairman of the Mountain Brook Sports Corporation. He is also involved with the Mountain Brook Chamber of Commerce and the Sunrise Rotary Club of Birmingham.
Mountain Brook City Council representatives are elected at-large and are not compensated for their service. Mountain Brook staggers its election cycle every two years so it can maintain experience on the council, city officials said.
The terms of Mayor Terry Oden, Place 2 representative Jack Carl and Place 4 representative Virginia Smith will end in 2016.
The city also cancelled its municipal election scheduled for 2012 because incumbents Carl, Oden and Smith were uncontested.
City officials said avoiding an election saves the city between $25,000 and $27,000.
Until they officially take office Nov. 3, Womack said she and Shelton will just try to learn more about their duties as council members.
“Up until that point, we’ll just be learning the lay of the land and what the issues are,” she said. “We’ll be learning what’s coming down the pipeline, like the Lane Parke development and the new Piggly Wiggly and other things we need to be aware of.”
