{"id":30187,"date":"2025-10-17T06:59:36","date_gmt":"2025-10-17T10:59:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wzbd.com\/?p=30187"},"modified":"2025-10-17T12:39:56","modified_gmt":"2025-10-17T16:39:56","slug":"21-students-comprise-new-decatur-youth-council","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wzbd.com\/index.php\/2025\/10\/17\/21-students-comprise-new-decatur-youth-council\/","title":{"rendered":"21 students comprise new Decatur youth council"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p><strong>By BOB SHRALUKA<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>WZBD.com<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>A total of 21 Bellmont High School students comprise Decatur Mayor Dan Rickord&#8217;s youth council for the 2025-26 school year.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>This is the fourth edition of the program conceived by the mayor and launched for the 2022-23 school year. At that time he said, \u201cWe&#8217;re trying to listen to our young people. We want to keep them here. If they don&#8217;t find it here, they will go someplace else.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The council is open to all Bellmont students, with the members chosen after applications are received.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The youth council works directly with the mayor and city leaders, in addition to helping plan and be a part of community activities.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-full\"><img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"481\" height=\"230\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/wzbd.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/Youth-council-25-26.jpg?resize=481%2C230&#038;ssl=1\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-30194\" srcset=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/wzbd.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/Youth-council-25-26.jpg?w=481&amp;ssl=1 481w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/wzbd.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/Youth-council-25-26.jpg?resize=300%2C143&amp;ssl=1 300w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 481px) 100vw, 481px\" \/><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p>The new group held its first meeting in early October. Meetings are held up to twice a month.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cThese future leaders are diving into city government, committees, service projects, and more,\u201d said Community Coordinator Jamie Gephart, who works closely with the council.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Part of the duties of the council are attending meetings of city council, the park board and the economic development commission.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cWe are tweaking a few things in hope we can be more involved in the community this year,\u201d Gephart noted.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>A total of 12 students comprised the initial youth council. The numbers grew to 19 for the past school year.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cWe have been fortunate to have great students apply, which makes it very hard to make tough decisions and not be able to accept everyone,\u201d Gephart has said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Members of the 2025-26 mayor&#8217;s youth council are:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Ashlyn Bauman, Carissa Mickley, Hudson Krull, Kinleigh Coffee, Lillian Garner, Lilly Alberding, Averie Coats, Quinn Buchan.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Also, Oliver Goble, Olivia Bessessen, Maya Schlemmer, Evalina Hernandez, Michael Scheumann.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Also, Alexis Converset, Audrey Grimm, Bridget Juengel, Gabryella Liming, Isabelle Mickley, Katelyn Borne, Hayden Whittenbarger and Everett Colclasure.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>By BOB SHRALUKA WZBD.com A total of 21 Bellmont High School students comprise Decatur Mayor Dan Rickord&#8217;s youth<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":30194,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[13,14,15,21],"class_list":["post-30187","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","tag-bellmont","tag-decatur","tag-featured","tag-news"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/wzbd.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/Youth-council-25-26.jpg?fit=481%2C230&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wzbd.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30187","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wzbd.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wzbd.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wzbd.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wzbd.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=30187"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/wzbd.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30187\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":30215,"href":"https:\/\/wzbd.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30187\/revisions\/30215"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wzbd.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/30194"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wzbd.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=30187"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wzbd.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=30187"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wzbd.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=30187"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}