The crowd packed into council chambers erupted into applause and cheers when the Selma City Council awarded Mayor James Perkins Jr. appointment powers. A dog even barked in all the excitement.

Perkins was awarded the power to hire most of the city’s department heads by an 8-1 vote at last night’s council meeting.

The mayor, clearly pleased, addressed the crowd after the vote.

“To the citizens of Selma, thank you,” he said.

The vote was all but a formality by the time the City Council passed the ordinance. A majority of council members, in earlier interviews all said they supported giving the mayor appointment powers.

Councilman Johnny Leashore said before the vote, that it was simply an issue of following the will of their constituents.

“I think the majority of this council sitting here now ran our campaign on one thing that we would restore the appointment powers to the mayor,” he said during the meeting.

Leashore said the city showed its support for the measure not only by electing the council, but by electing the mayor by such an overwhelming majority.

Council President George Evans agreed, and said contrary to some reports, he supported giving the mayor appointment powers.

“Be careful what message people bring to you,” he said, before the vote. “Because I am going to support this power.”

Councilman Reid Cain, in a statement he read to the council, said he researched the issue and decided to vote for it.

“A council with appointment powers only creates negative emotions,” he said, citing the friction that results from split decisions on appointments. Cain said that the council would be reduced to a “personnel board” if it retained appointment powers.

The only dissenting vote came from Councilman Cecil Williamson, who said the council decided when Mayor Joe Smitherman was in office to remove the appointment powers. Smitherman had appointment powers for less than a year before they were stripped.

“Now that we have a black mayor, they (supporters of the ordinance) want him to have the powers,” he said, in an interview before the meeting. “That is a hypocritical double standard and it smacks of reverse racism.”

Williamson declined comment after the meeting.

After the vote and subsequent celebration of the mayor’s new powers, the city took action to appoint City Treasurer Cynthia Mitchell and City Clerk Lois Williams to new terms. The clerk, the treasurer and the municipal judges are the only positions the council still appoints.