The Honorable Alison Dennington
Mayor, Town of Melbourne Beach

I am 45 years old and have been married for 18 years to Lephiew Dennington, who is a native Arkansan by birth, a radiologist and partner at a local group by profession, and an avid outdoorsman and fisherman, and the most amazing husband and father, by choice and nature. 

We have been happily blessed with 2 smart, strong, and kind boys who both attend public schools here in Brevard County.  For the last 14 years, I have worn many hats as a wife and partner, property owner and as a stay-at-home mother.  

Recently, I was elected for a 3-year term as the Mayor for the Town of Melbourne Beach— the quintessential “small beach town community” that lies between the Indian River Lagoon and the Atlantic Ocean and is nestled into a 1.4 square mile plot of pure Florida heaven.  

I am a native Floridian, born and raised in in a small, solid middle-class family in Leesburg, Florida (Lake County).  I graduated from Leesburg High where I played almost every sport at one time or another, including tennis, volleyball, fast-pitch soft-ball, soccer and basketball. I am fiercely competitive and determined, just like my tenacious grandmother had been her whole life. I am still active in sports, though more so now as a parent and assistant coach for little league baseball and as a volunteer coach for Brevard County U12 and U14 kids USTA team tennis. 

I graduated from the University of Central Florida with a degree in political science, and a minor in philosophy. In 2006, I graduated summa cum laude, on law review, and received my Juris Doctor degree from the University of Arkansas at Little Rock. During law school, I clerked at several large firms, and at the Attorney General’s Office, where I researched and worked on a draft Original Bill of Complaint, Arkansas v. Oklahoma, related to a dispute regarding migratory environmental pollution and the regulatory impacts upon the state. I spent a summer abroad in Rome, Italy, studying international treaty law and negotiation through a joint program with the Hamline University School of Law. My last semester of law school, I took business, tax and natural resources courses as a visiting student at the Sturm College of Law in Denver, Colorado. Thereafter, I became an associate at a private law firm that specialized in complex and high-profile transactions and litigation, mergers and acquisitions, large land-development matters, public and private financing, securities, antitrust and some class action litigation, public records litigation representing various newspaper and media clients, and all kinds of corporate and contractual transactions and litigation matters.  

I left private practice to work as a staff attorney in the six-lawyer legal department of the Arkansas Department of Environmental Quality, where we handled all legal issues including permitting, compliance, and enforcement of all applicable state and federally delegated environmental laws, and all aspects of administrative law, rulemaking, and all HR matters for that agency.

Before running for Mayor, I became interested in our local town government and over time became an active, vocal participant at most town meetings. I started a local informational blog for our busy town residents to increase transparency and awareness about proposed actions and/or changes before the town meetings each month, and recaps thereafter because I was concerned about low attendance and participation.  

As Mayor, I hope to continue to increase transparency and public engagement and participation while simultaneously improving civility.  I believe it is incumbent upon every elected leader, every citizen, and every mother, to use whatever platform or opportunity we are given to constantly learn from and educate those in our community about the importance of being involved in our government at every level, especially at the local level.  

As a Mayor, I also plan to and prioritize tough spending choices and reduce wasteful expenses, with the hope that such fiscal restraint will enable reductions in local taxes. I believe elected officials should constantly remind themselves to be at least as frugal (much more so in fact) when spending the tax dollars of their constituents as when spending directly from their own pockets or their own bank accounts.  

Yet to do that well, we must have an informed citizenry, who must be engaged, interested, and respected despite and even for their various differing views. I believe our duty as citizens starts first and foremost within our homes and schools and next at the local level of politics and government. We must do more, and we must do better, at the local level to learn, to teach, and to foster interest and participation in our children and young adults now, in order to preserve the many freedoms and values we cherish, but too often take for granted when we fail to personally participate.     

Finally, as Mayor, I hope to advocate on behalf of my town for the promotion, protection, and preservation of single-family zoning and local autonomy, and the importance of Home Rule, a right that is expressed in our state constitution. We are lucky to have 3 vibrant churches in our small town with crowded pews, friendly neighbors and children who can safety bike to and from school and friends’ houses, but sadly this may not always be case unless we fight to keep it so.  

The safety and the character of our “Small Beach Town,” and our way of life (and by extension others like it throughout this beautiful state) are important local interests worthy and in need of protection. Local control and local autonomy are critical to the survival of the historic, educational, civic and religious institutions in a community, and thus, to survival of the community itself.