The Mayor’s Youth Council has chosen their members and officially begun meeting for the 2024-25 school year at the Bellevue City Chambers in order to give teens a voice for their community.

Mayor’s Youth Council members meet once a month with Mayor Rusty Hike, Police Chief Ken Cleary, and Councilwoman Kathy Welch in order to collaborate and gain new perspective regarding city issues. 

 “The Mayor’s Youth Council works to serve as a body to help bring the perspectives and ideas of youth in Bellevue to the city government,” freshman Tim Bogatz said, “It is our purpose as the youth council to solve issues, create new opportunities and events, and bring a new voice into Bellevue to improve the livelihood of its citizens.”

Students who are members of the MYC get to take on leadership roles within their city and are given a voice. They can also make a difference alongside others on the council.

“It’s just a variety of people and I love it, to meet and connect with someone I would may never have met unless I was in MYC,” junior Gabrielle Shuster said.

Currently, the MYC is starting to get the group up and running since they’ve only just begun meeting at the start of this school year. As members and council members continue to meet, they will become more familiar with each other and begin to fall into a routine.

“Our goal now is to form the council and create precedents for the future, in order to ensure we hit the ground running in the spring,” Bogatz said.

Roles among students have been assigned with Bellevue East junior Tessa Pointer as vice president, and Bellevue West senior Chloe Grabenbauer as president. Police Chief Ken Cleary said that MYC members will form smaller committees so the students can accomplish more.

“Generally speaking, there will be the governing body: the president, vice president and then a secretary-treasurer,” Cleary said, “But then they’ll form committees. They’ll form things like project committee, communications committee. Those committees will meet on the side. They’ll have their conversations about direction, and they’ll come back and report to the council on things that they’ve achieved.”

The MYC consists of Bellevue area students who were selected through an application process. The application was open to teens attending Bellevue East and West High Schools, Bryan High School, Gross Catholic High School, Papillion La Vista High School, or local homeschool/private school. 

“We’ll take applications every year, normally in the months of, I believe, May and June for the following fall semester,” Cleary said, “This year we were a little bit out of date, so we took applications in August and then they were selected from those applicants.”