Auburn's Student Government Association hosted the mayors of three Alabama cities for its “Capitol on the Plains” event Thursday, Feb. 18. Mayor Ron Anders of Auburn, Mayor Leigh Dollar of Guntersville and Mayor Tommy Battle of Huntsville answered student questions about life and local government.
When asked about what experiences prepared the mayors for their careers, Dollar said that her upbringing had been a factor. Her father was mayor of Guntersville when she was born, and she would later go on to fill the same position as the first female mayor of the city.
“My parents always taught me to give back to the community that raised me,” Dollar said.
She also said that she held leadership roles throughout high school and college.
Anders credited his parents too with some of his preparedness for local government, and Battle said there is no such thing as “a naturally born leader.”
Both Anders and Battle cited their work in customer service management — working at his father’s bookstore for Anders and owning a restaurant for Battle — as helpful to their political careers. These experiences led to and prepared them for other opportunities, they said, allowing them to get to know people and practice leadership skills.
In advice to students, Anders emphasized investment in relationships with peers during college.
“There are outstanding people that are walking the same sidewalks, parking in the same parking lots, going to the same events that you are right now,” Anders said. “So take advantage of that, and get to know them.”
When asked about handling the COVID-19 pandemic as mayors, Anders said he was “working from a playbook that didn’t exist.”
Anders said the beginning of the pandemic was a huge challenge both for public health and for Auburn’s economy. While he said it was difficult to navigate, and that the loss of the 2020 football season economically was “frankly a disaster for us,” Anders added it is important for him as mayor to “continue to talk about promise and hope.”
Dollar described the difficulties of communicating information during the pandemic and mediating between opposing viewpoints.
“One of the challenges for us is figuring out how people get their information now,” Dollar said. “You can put it out there, but you can’t make people read it.”
Battle said that adaptability to working from home was a big factor.
“COVID put an emphasis on why we needed to be connected and why we needed to connect our whole city,” Battle said, crediting the fiber-optic internet infrastructure that allowed many Huntsville citizens to work from home.
When asked to comment on the selection of Huntsville as the home of the United States Space Force, Battle said that he felt “fortunate and honored” for his city to be chosen.
“We’ve been doing space [in Huntsville] since the 1950s when we designed the rocket engines that took man to the moon and brought him back,” Battle said.
The aerospace industry is Huntsville’s livelihood, Battle said, and he encouraged Auburn engineering students to consider Huntsville as their future home.
All three mayors described their average “day in the life” as busy, filled with meetings that often begin at breakfast.
“You might be dealing with a drainage issue one minute to bringing in a company the next minute to dealing with garbage the next … you just never know what fire’s going to pop up during that day,” Dollar said. “But it’s all fun.”
When asked to describe one of the most impactful moments of their tenure, Dollar cited the construction of the Guntersville City Harbor, a project that she has been working on for eight years.
Battle mentioned the location of Space Command and the a new Toyota plant in Huntsville, but he said some of his favorite moments have been serving at charities like Huntsville food distribution center Manna House.
Anders recalled the mourning of the loss of an Auburn police officer in 2019. During the funeral procession, Anders said the road the entire way to the gravesite, a distance of several miles, was lined “wall to wall” with people paying their respects.
Anders cited the vaccine clinic as his other most impactful moment.
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Emma Kirkemier, junior in English literature with a minor in journalism, is the campus reporter for The Auburn Plainsman.
