National League of Cities selects Ellis as president
Posted on Tuesday, November 15, 2011
Bluffton Mayor Ted Ellis picked up a fair share of extra responsibility Saturday as he was elected president of the National League of Cities.
“It is an incredible honor to be selected by one’s peers to lead an organization representing more than 19,000 cities across the U.S.,” he said Sunday during a phone interview on his way back to Indiana. “The contacts I will make this year will be good for Bluffton.”
In his acceptance speech Saturday, he referenced a couple of former Bluffton residents — Martin Walbert, who was the city’s mayor in 1891, and Everett Scott, who played baseball with the Boston Red Sox and New York Yankees and still has the third-longest streak for consecutive games played in Major League Baseball history.
Ellis noted that Walbert participated in a meeting of mayors — a sort of precursor to the National League of Cities. He cited Scott’s willingness to show up and get the job done, day after day, as
an example for those in the NLC.
“Babe Ruth and Everett Scott roomed together for five years on the road,” Ellis said. “It mattered little how many home runs Babe Ruth hit in a game unless Everett Scott was in the infield, throwing opposing runners out one by one, day in and day out.”
He also noted the challenges ahead for the national organization. He noted that the median age in the United States is 36.
“Many of the officials elected on Tuesday and most of our constituents process information in ways different from their parents,” he said. “If the National League of Cities is to remain the ‘go-to’ authority on cities, we must – especially in these times – clearly understand what information
our new generation needs and how best to deliver it.”
Ellis succeeded James E. Mitchell Jr., a member of the Charlotte, N.C., City Council. Ellis has
been serving as the first vice president of the NLC, with Mayor Marie Lopez Rogers of Avondale,
Ariz., as the second vice president. Ellis moved up to the presidency of the group Saturday upon his election at the NLC’s Congress of Cities and Exposition in Phoenix, Ariz., and Lopez Rogers is now the first vice president. The NLC elected a second vice president this weekend — Chris Coleman, mayor of St. Paul, Minn.
“Most of my time was spent doing business,” Ellis said. “I didn’t get to a single seminar.”
Ellis has some more NLC business ahead of him. Part of the president’s responsibilities include appointing chairmen to the 20 or so standing committees within the NLC — transportation;
information technology and communications; energy, environment, and natural resources; and public
finance, to name a few.
Since last Tuesday was an election day, and some incumbents were defeated, Ellis has some holes to fill.
“We lost some pretty good committee members here and there,” he said. “The appointments I thought I was going to make on Monday — that list has changed just a little bit.”
His new responsibilities will involve a little more travel — travel, he is quick to note, that is entirely paid for by the National League of Cities. He described the amount of travel needed as “more than once a month but less than once a week.”
“One thing I didn’t realize at first was that this is going to eat up more weekends than it will weekdays,” he said. “None of these officials want to spend time out of their offices on a weekday.”
Posted in General News
