Running unopposed, Stephanie Rawlings Blake, vice president of the City Council, was elected president at the council meeting on Monday.
Blake, who won on a unanimous voice vote, will serve out the balance of Mayor Sheila Dixon?s term, which expires at the end of this year.
Blake, who was elected as a councilwoman at age 25 in 1995, said her priorities for 2007 would be reducing crime and taxes.
“I look forward to working with the mayor and the council to come up with creative ways to reduce violent crime,” she said. “I also want to work with the administration to look at the property tax rate,” she said.
Blake also said she would run for re-election in the fall.
Blake was nominated by City Councilman Jack Young, D-12th District. After no other nominations, the council meeting was temporarily chaired by Councilwoman Ricki Specter, who called a voice vote.
Blake was then escorted by some members of the City Council to the mayor?s office, were she was sworn in by Dixon. The mayor called Blake?s election historic.
“Now when you come to City Hall, you will see the pictures of three women: myself, Comptroller Joan Pratt and now Council President Blake,” she said.
Noticeably absent from council chambers when the vote was taken was City Councilman Keiffer Mitchell, D-11th District. Mitchell, who was recently stripped of his chairmanship of the Taxation and Finance Committee and declared himself a candidate for mayor Friday, said his absence was inadvertent.
“I was meeting with constituents,” he said.
Councilman Robert Curran, who has served on the council since 1995, was elected vice president of the council by a unanimous voice vote. Curran was nominated by City Councilman Kenneth Harris, who said Curran had been a mentor to him.
