Mayor’s Message: State of the City 2025

State of the City 2025

This past year has been an exceptional one. While there are five or more outstanding accomplishments, one stands out above all of the rest.

That honor goes to the Bellevue Beach Park expansion. Tom Dupont, local businessman, sold the City of Bellevue the lot that runs between Van Voast and O’Fallon Avenue along the Ohio River. In many cases, property like this changes hands once every 50 years. We are very fortunate that Tom wanted the city to have it rather than a developer.

In second place comes the development along the Ohio River. Now that interest rates have come down .75 percent recently and the purchase of Assured Partners which took place today around three hours ago, the riverfront development is now on track for 2026. The front of the project along Fairfield Avenue between Berry and Lafayette will be businesses. Next to UDF will be a 60-room boutique hotel. We do not have a confirmed hotel group at this time. Behind and above the businesses will be apartments.

Third on my list is the marketing success of our city. You can have many great things happening in your city, but if no one knows about it, it might as well not have happened. Thanks to Marketing Director Melissa Morandi, our social platforms for the City of Bellevue set new records this year. Combined, they had over 7 million views during the past year. Our previous yearly record was 1.5 million. The 50-plus events and initiatives that the city ran in 2025 brought record amounts of people and media attention to our city. We even won the title Best Farmers Market from The Best of NKY awards.

Fourth in line is Bridging Back Business. Originally, this program was designed to bring customers from Ohio back to Bellevue. The loss to local businesses was staggering during the 100-day closure of the Daniel Carter Beard Bridge. We contacted Meet NKY, the tourism group, to see if they were interested in helping us. This brought a pleasant surprise because they were in the process of arranging a meeting with the Northern Kentucky Chamber of Commerce, MeetNKY, and several prominent business leaders in Northern Kentucky for the following day. We were then asked to pitch our idea to the whole group. The outcome of this meeting was that the other four cities adopted our plan and even liked the name, Bridging Back Business, that our Marketing Director gave it.

Fifth in the top five is the Bundle Up Bellevue campaign. In previous years, the city raised money to support both the Bellevue Independent School Food Pantry and the Saint Bernard Food Pantry. This year, we took a different approach to ensure the campaign had an even greater impact to local families.The Bellevue-Dayton Fire Department, through its union, Local 3751, was collecting donations for toys and food for six families from Dayton and six families from Bellevue. This translated into 39 children they chose to help. Kroger supplied the food, and the Hensley and McClintick families helped with the toy collection. We turned our efforts toward making this event even bigger and better by collecting over $2,500 to add a new coat, hat, socks, and a pair of shoes for each of the children.

I know how many hours it takes to run an event of this magnitude, and I am so proud of our Fire Department and their families for making this happen. I especially want to thank Fire Chief Brent Schafer and his wife, April. Santa Claus and Mrs. Claus would not be present at our events without them. Next time you see the five or so firefighters eating at a restaurant, buy them lunch or dinner to show your appreciation. Even easier is to walk over and thank them for all they have done for our community. They have helped with several events this year.

Our Police Department is also a great source of pride in our small city. Officer Mike Brown raises money and collects school supplies with the help of Bellevue Kroger every year for all of the schools in Bellevue. Our department also collects money and food to supply Thanksgiving dinners to those in need. Consider buying our officers lunch or dinner as well. Just thanking them is good also. Chief Jon McClain works hard on Touch-A-Truck every year. There are also many events we run where we depend on help from the Police Department. The police hayride at Fall Fest stands out as one of the more fun events.

Public Works does an excellent job of keeping up with routine maintenance of our city, along with working on all of our extra projects that make our city great. These projects include assembling and installing the 10-foot-tall beach chair; removing barbed wire, fencing, dead trees, broken cement, rocks, garbage, and old tires from our new lot next to the Beach Park; and, cutting new wells and installing trees throughout the city. They worked tirelessly day and night during the snowstorms we had. They helped us launch a festive new tradition, the Snowplow and Santa Parade. This was a crowd favorite and will be bigger and better next year. They also helped set up many other events during the past year.

One thing that allows us to run within our budget yet accomplish more than we could afford to do is the many volunteers. There are several boards that run different functions of our government. Planning and Zoning, Board of Adjustment, Code Enforcement, Historic Preservation, Tree Commission, Fire Board, Human Rights, and the Transit Authority Board are the main boards. The BNA keeps the Avenue bright with flowers. Then there are the 50-plus events and initiatives that the city ran in 2025, some of which required 12 or more volunteers. There were so many people stepping up to help. I cannot thank you enough. Giving your time to make our community better shows you care.

I made parks a priority this past year. Swope Park was totally redone. Will Weber from Southbank Partners worked with us and gifted the city a 10-foot-tall beach chair, recently installed at Bellevue Beach Park as part of Riverfront Commons. Will also assisted us in the cleanup of the new lot we acquired next to the park. There were many volunteers who spent hours working to get this new piece of property looking good. We still have a whole lot to do if you would like to help us. Southbank also trimmed the growth along the river edge of the park and the new lot.

The resurfacing of our roads started later than we expected, and then severe weather came early this year, so all of our roads could not be completed before the winter closing of the asphalt plants. Hopefully, the sections of Division, Prospect, and Lafayette can be done shortly after the plants open in the spring.

River Roots was amazing in many ways. The river sweep, or cleanup, took place the Saturday before the week of events. There were 30 volunteers who showed up at the Bellevue riverfront, where Melissa, my wife Mary Lynn, and I participated in the event. This group removed more than 30 large trash bags of garbage from along the edge of the river. There are still a few larger items we need to go back for in the spring. The riverfront is looking much better as a result of this event.

Our City Clerk/Treasurer Lindy Jenkins instituted a number of changes in an effort to modernize the Clerk’s Office. You can now pay bills to the city online with a credit or debit card. You can now pay over the phone. You can pay at the city’s drop box. A “remote capture” check counter will allow the city to make immediate deposits. We are looking at obtaining new financial software, too. We put the annual property tax bills on a yellow post card with a QR code that can be scanned to allow you to pay property taxes online.

In closing, I can say that the leadership team that runs Bellevue has done an excellent job of moving our city forward. This includes City Administrator Frank Warnock and City Attorney Dave Fessler. Most cities have non-residents in these roles, but Bellevue is fortunate to have long-term residents who care in these jobs. We added a new assistant city administrator to our team, Sam Shelton. All of our staff contribute to the success of our city. Our City Council does a great job with legislation, but is also active in all of the volunteer activities in Bellevue. This is what makes Bellevue stand out among other cities.

We look forward to more improvements in 2026.