Mayor’s Message: Introduction…

On January 27th a special meeting was held to appoint a new Mayor for the City of Bellemeade.  I presented myself as a candidate and was unanimously selected to fill the role for the remainder of 2020.  Some were in attendance and heard an overview of my vision for the next year.  For those who didn’t, I wanted to introduce myself and explain a little about my goals. 

My name is Andrew Miller.  I have been a Commissioner for the City for 3 years now.  During that time I have been responsible for Public Works, which is mostly trash pickup, road and road sign maintenance and street lights.  I have lived in Bellemeade since 2014.  I have 4 young children (ages 8 to 9 months) and my wife is a neonatology and perinatal medicine fellow at the University of Louisville.  I work just a short distance away in Lyndon as a Software Engineer for a local business where I have been for almost 20 years.

Bellemeade is classified as a home rule city.  What this means is that we maintain a local municipal government with full powers to enact ordinances, tax and enforce.  This also means that we have some rules we have to follow, mostly ones set by Kentucky Revised Statutes but also the US Constitution and Louisville Metro.  John spent the first year of his tenure as Mayor working hard to make sure the city was correctly following these rules.  We passed multiple new ordinances setting out our meeting times and locations, creating our officer positions and establishing executive authority for our Commissioners.  Last month the city passed its first codified book of ordinances, which we will be publishing on our website in the coming weeks.  That effort started under John’s leadership.

My goal for the next year is to take this to the next step.  Not only do we need to formalize and improve our city ordinances, but we also need to formalize our city processes.  We need to have clear and accessible avenues of communication.  The first step in this was reworking our website and creating commissioner email address at our city domain.  We need to have clearly defined roles, and we need to have structure for our meetings and how they are conducted. I want citizens to feel comfortable coming to Commission meetings and expressing their opinions, and I also want being a Commissioner to be something people WANT to do, not something people are talked into doing.

This leads my to my last point: we need your participation.  We are now one Commissioner short of a full Commission.  We have 30 days to appoint and swear in a new Commissioner.  We intend to do this at our next regular city meeting on February 10th 2020 at the NE Regional Library.  I will be sending out more information about this soon.  If you are interested, please reach out to me at AndrewMiller@bellemeade-ky.gov or Mayor@bellemeade-ky.gov (or text/phone at 502-417-0831).  Being part of the commission is a good opportunity to learn about local government and be involved in your community, but it is also a good experience builder and a chance to get to know people in the city and learn how Metro and State Government work.

Thank you and please do not hesitate to contact me with questions.
Andrew Miller