“I nominate myself.”

And that’s how 29-year-old Devyn Keith on Monday became president of the Huntsville city council.

On a night where newly-elected Frances Akridge was sworn into office along with re-elected council veterans Bill Kling and Jennie Robinson, Keith put his own stamp on the evening.

“I always felt that if I believe in myself, I should let everybody else know,” Keith said following the meeting. “It’s like a resumé introduction instead of putting the pressure on someone to vouch for me.

“At the end of the day, I’m going to vote for myself either way. So I took the awkwardness out of it, in my opinion.”

At the council’s annual organizational meeting held after the inaugurations, Keith was elected in a 3-1 vote with councilman Bill Kling dissenting and councilman Will Culver abstaining.

The vote for Keith – in his first term on council -- came after the vote for Culver, who was nominated as council president by Kling. Only Kling and Culver voted for Culver.

Next to the just-elected Akridge, Keith is the council’s most inexperienced member.

“I was blessed to get the support, to say the least,” said Keith, whose District 1 covers parts of downtown as well as parts of north Huntsville. “I think it’s an opportunity for me to continue to grow. You can get very comfortable doing what you do or you can push yourself to be a better councilman. The mayor pushes himself to be a better mayor. Being a president, you get a chance to look at things a lot differently.”

Keith said only Mayor Tommy Battle was younger when first elected to the city council. And while Keith’s age is a constant theme given his office, he laughed and said, “I feel old at 29.”

Culver was elected president pro tem of the council while Kling was elected third presiding officer.

While Kling and Robinson won re-election in landslides, Akridge had to go to a runoff to defeat Mary Jane Caylor to win the District 2 seat vacated by the retiring Mark Russell.

Akridge emphasized the importance of “seek first to understand, then to be understood” as she took her seat on the council.

“I’m going to get back to work reviewing budgets, looking for information on how we spent our money last year,” Akridge said. “I’ll be reading a report from Peggy Sargent, our finance director, about that. It’s one thing to look ahead on how you plan to budget. But it’s also very telling how we did spend our money. So I’m going to be looking over the expenditures we actually did make.”