Editor’s note: This story originally appeared in the Nov./Dec. issue of the LINK Reader, our print publication.
With a population on the decline for the past three decades, it is not a surprise that the City of Bromley is seeing less civic participation. City council meetings draw less than a handful of people and in election years, campaigns are waged mainly through name recognition and historic neighborly ties. The city council is often so challenged to find enough candidates to run for its six seats that currently there are three members from the same family serving – two duly elected and one appointed to fill a vacancy in the current term (all three are running for election this year).
The city now has just over 700 residents bunched together in just over a third of a square mile surrounded by the neighboring cities of Ludlow to the east, Villa Hills to the west, Crescent Springs to the south, and the Ohio River to the north. Its population peaked in 1990 at 1,137.
It once had its own police department but is now served through a contract with Park Hills Police. Its volunteer fire department was also dissolved in recent years and now the Ludlow Fire Department answers its calls. Even longer ago, its school district went away, and students in the city are now districted to Kenton County Public Schools.
Now the dwindling number of residents see public services provided by professionals who wear the uniforms of other cities.
So, what is the point of Bromley?
“We’re ten minutes from anything. This is like a central hub for families,” said Mayor Mike Denham, who was first elected to council in 2016 and then appointed mayor following the resignation of Donnie Job in 2017. Denham was unopposed in 2018 and is now seeking a second full four-year term.
This time, though, he faces a challenger.
“I want to see the community start to be more proud of their city,” said Zachary Kordenbrock, who moved to Bromley in 2015. “I’d like to explore any avenue for more business and more revenue for the city that we can without raising taxes on the current taxpayers.”
Kordenbrock said he’s going door to door, getting to know residents and their concerns – a anomaly in Bromley elections, typically.
“Bromley is a very tiny town. They don’t need to be that much involved. It feels like a get in and get out attitude,” Kordenbrock said. “I would like the city to care more about its role in the neighborhood and engage more with voters. You can’t make people go to city meetings but as mayor I could walk around the neighborhood just as I was campaigning, and ask questions.
“People are relieved to see somebody caring about their problems. I’ve heard people say I’m the closest to city government that’s ever knocked on their door.”
Mayor Denham concedes that there’s not much to a Bromley campaign, historically. He’s lived in the city for 58 years.
“If people want to know you, they want to know you’ve been around and if they ain’t seen me in the last 50 years or known of me, that would be awful odd,” Denham said. “If we were bigger like Ludlow, I could see me doing (a campaign).”
Councilman Mike Kendall, a Denham ally who is also seeking reelection, added that the mayor is pretty well known through his work as the longtime owner of heating and air conditioning businesses.
“It’s almost like he’s put almost every furnace in every house in Bromley because everybody knows he’s the guy to go to,” Kendall said. “He’s that well known around here.”
“You’re running on your name basically,” said former Councilwoman Gail Smith, who is looking to return to council in this election after leaving to become the city clerk/treasurer for a time. “I think a lot of times you’re elected because of your name down here because we don’t really run a campaign as a big city politician would. I’ve never seen anybody out campaigning on any particular issue.” Smith has been on council for most of the past couple of decades. Her father once served as mayor.
Denham and Kendall both sought elected office after spending decades as volunteer firefighters before growing suspicious of the way former Mayor Jobe was handling the city government. Jobe was also fire chief at the same team. Their suspicions, and those of former Councilwoman Gail Smith (who is also looking to return to council this year) were corroborated when Jobe was indicted on state theft charges related to his time in office. Jobe resigned both positions in the city and was awaiting trial when he died last year in a motorcycle crash near Pioneer Park in Covington.
The legal issues the former mayor faced are now mostly in the past, as far as the current government and election are concerned.
“I don’t think people realized that could happen in a small city. They were shocked,” Mayor Denham said. “I think they’ve pretty much moved on.”
But like Denham who was motivated to run for office by what he suspected was a wrong, so, too, has Kordenbrock entered Bromley politics. While accounts differ from the city’s perspective and that of Planning & Development Services of Kenton Co. (PDS), which handles code enforcement for the city, and Kordenbrock, the issue at the center of the political newcomer’s campaign is a lien that was placed on his property.
Kordenbrock said that a lien was placed on his home by the city through PDS after he failed to pay a fine associated with an immobile truck and high weeds. He claims that he was never notified about the legal proceedings against him until the most serious action was taken and he was forced to pay more than $1,700 to correct the issue.
The next month, he went to his first Bromley city council meeting to confront city leaders. He said that he had read minutes from years of previous council meetings and had never found any reference to a more serious action than the one taken against him.
The meeting turned heated and police escorted Kordenbrock out of the room.
He has continued to attend meetings since.
“I feel like if the city is doing an injustice, you should express your views professionally,” Kordenbrock said. “You have a right to talk to your city about grievances that you’re having against it. I felt like if I was beating around the bush than maybe I would have been out of line, but I had index cards written out about things that I saw and they didn’t want to hear, but that’s just my side of it.”
The city’s side is that Kordenbrock was given ample opportunity through PDS to rectify the code enforcement issue and the associated fines prior to the lien being placed.
“He was saying stuff that PDS contradicted,” Mayor Denham said. “They’re saying all this is on (Kordenbrock). We engaged appropriately.”
Regardless of the issues of the past, both candidates are looking to the future.
“The personal issue is not the only reason I’m running,” Kordenbrock said. “There’s a lot more abandoned buildings in the city of Bromley than I feel there should be. I think it’s not just Bromley, it’s a common problem throughout Northern Kentucky. People just aren’t interested in buying homes anymore, especially ones that aren’t able to be moved into. They need some work to match up to the efficiency for the day.”
Kordenbrock, a UPS driver, found his home in the city in 2015 while driving a delivery route through there. He lives at his home now with his fiancée and dog. “I always liked Bromley and how quiet the town is.”
“We don’t have our own police anymore. We don’t have our own fire department anymore. The people who live in Bromley, they like having their own identity, their own entity,” Kordenbrock said. “It would be hard to get the police and fire department back but if there’s any path to make that happen, I would completely support it.”
Kordenbrock also wants to see more investment in the small community. Mayor Denham said that a new zoning process being led for cities across the county by PDS, a program titled Z21, is to be implemented in Bromley to do just that by maximizing development potential through better zoning.
“It will make it more attractive for businesses to locate in the city,” Denham said. “Businesses would have to go through an ordinance or a zone change and if we have all that in place, it really cuts down on the time.”
Bromley is not home to many businesses but it does have one large employer in petroleum giant BP, which has a significant operation along the Ohio River. If the city were ever to lose that and its tax revenue, it would be in trouble, Denham said.
“We would have to nail down every dollar,” he said. “You always worry about the cost of everything. All the services are going up and we have to adjust to that.”
Denham said that the city is exploring a new, smaller city building since the current one is dated and no longer needs the additional space that once housed the volunteer fire department. The city could also opt to renovate the existing structure on Boone Street.
But what if the city ends up in a position of not existing – and not needing a building at all?
“A lot of it has to do with just the pride of being your own little community but I don’t know if that’s a real justification,” said Smith, the former council member running in this year’s election. “I’ve often said over the course of the years that all of Northern Kentucky should really look at consolidating services and doing away with some of the smaller cities. I think our taxes would probably be lower. It just seems to make sense at this day and time with the cost of everything.”
In the meantime, the city progresses. A new sidewalk repair program is to be rolled out to complement significant improvements to Bromley’s Main Street and park.
“What we’ve been trying to focus on, me and my council, is making the city more vibrant, to upgrade everything,” Denham said. “We did the Main St. project (with state funding) with new lighting and sidewalks, we’re concentrating on the ballpark, the Center Park, a new pavilion and building with restrooms in it. We moved the basketball court to where the baseball field was, and we installed soccer fields.
“My main goal on the council is to get this part done because it’s really that center of the city.”
Kordenbrock said that he’s receiving positive feedback for his campaign in a city that he describes as getting younger. “When it’s your duty, it’s your responsibility. So whether you agree with people or whether they like you, you still have to listen to them because you are elected to do it. You have to do the duty.”
BROMLEY CANDIDATES
Mayor
Michael Denham (incumbent)
Zachary Kordenbrock
City Council
(Elect 6)
Gail Smith
Reagan France (incumbent)
Michael Kendall (incumbent)
David Radford (incumbent)
Tim Wartman (incumbent)
Dianne Wartman (incumbent)
Matthew Wartman (incumbent)
Keith Williams