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By NOAH WORTHAM | Managing Editor 

ALABASTER – With their right hand held aloft, a group of teens hoping to learn more about the city in which they live were sworn in as members of the 2024-2025 Alabaster Teen Council.

The newest Alabaster Teen Council took their oaths and were sworn in by Mayor Scott Brakefield on Monday, April 22 before the start of that night’s city council meeting.

“We have high hopes for you and everything that you do to continue your development but also to make our city better,” Brakefield said. “Everything that you do, you can choose to make every person around you and everything around you a better place. It’s up to you and you have that choice.”

The mission of the Alabaster Teen Council is to provide local youth with an opportunity to impact the community while learning about local government and to create active and informed teenage citizens.

“It is a very interesting opportunity for them,” Brakefield said. “I always tell them on the first day that I meet them, ‘Raise your hand if (your) parents said you need to apply for this, this will look good on a college scholarship.’ And everybody reluctantly raises their hand. So, I tell them, ‘You’re going to use us for that, but we’re going to use you to educate you on your community.’”

The program intends to transform their view of the role of local government by exposing members to municipal responsibilities, volunteerism and through executing outreach peer events.

Brakefield said that the goal of everyone who serves the community should be to make this the best place that it can be.

“Once they finish college and they’re looking to settle down, we want them to choose Alabaster when they come home,” Brakefield said. “Their leadership and the qualities that they’ve exhibited up until this point show us that they’re going to do great things. So, we want them to come back and to continue to do great things here in the city of Alabaster.”

The Alabaster Teen Council first began under the leadership of Alabaster Mayor Marty Handlon in 2014 as a way to engage the city’s youth and educate them on what it takes to run the city. The program has grown over the years with the inaugural teen council consisting of only 12 members and the latest iteration now featuring 35 members.

Each year, the teen council is open to all Alabaster high school students, including public, private and homeschool. The students each serve a one-year term on the council that begins and expires each year in April.

The council aims to create an informed group of students who are familiar with municipal issues, to develop lasting relationships between students and city leaders, sustain youth presence in a broad range of impact and decision-making areas across the community, develop future civic leaders and to organize events for community teens.

The following students were inducted as members of the 2024-2025 Alabaster Teen Council:

• Akaree Barbour
• Maddie Baxley
• Lauren Blackmon
• Tatum Boothe
• Kaylah Brown
• Cooper Burks
• Brooks Byars
• Kaitlyn Burnett
• Anna Campbell
• Fred Casillas
• Sully Cole
• Samantha Edwards
• Allison Ellis
• Zayden Felton
• Rex Gann
• Sasha Gann
• Jaelyn Gilleylen
• Ada Hasenbein
• Simone Jones
• Brody Logan
• Dylan Logan
• Leah McKay
• Hannah McKay
• Madison Nichols
• Morgan Nichols
• Hannah Moseley
• Blair N’Joroge
• Thuy Nguyen
• Holly Norwood
• Ansley O’Neal
• Emily Reid
• Cooper Southern
• Kaelci Thuri
• Logan Thrasher
• Ximena Vega