The following is a presentation of FCB Faith. This is Keeping America First with Bishop John T. Coats and Reverend Cheff Chimmision on FCB Faith. Good morning, and we are happy to have another episode of Keeping America First. We have a dynamite guest with us today that's going to share with us many of the exciting things that are taking place in the area of the country that he represents. A special guest, none other than mister David Moore, who is the President of the Lorraine County Commissioners in Lorraine County, Ohio. Good morning, David, how are you? Hey? Good morning sir, Thanks for having me. That's awesome. Hey Dave, could you tell us a little bit about what's going on and some of the exciting things that are taking place and in Lorraine County. Oh We got way too much to talk about, really be honest with you. How about this, how about how much? Starting off with? How about starting off with this exciting news about a mall, the Midway Mall that's going to be developed. What happened was we've had a blighted mall for over twenty years, and all the people used to do beforehand was talk about it you know, so we did something about it. There's multiple owners, so we had companies like the Cleveland Clinic that was interested, but it was under multiple owners and they want to make sure they protect their brand. And so what we thought, Okay, we need to get involved through our Port Authority and through the commissioners working in partnership with some lost revenue ARPA dollars and instead of just giving it away like the previous administration did with some of the money and not seeing it again. They call it, they call them grants. But what we did is we invested in ourselves and which is what the ARPA dollars was supposed to be used for infrastructure. And so we took the blighted mall and got it under one ownership, the Port Authority. We lent the money to the Port Authority who made the deal. We lost the first buyer, and I believe politics played a part in that one because I was up for re election and the recently we made a deal with or the Port Authority made a deal with one of the developers that was involved in the Hall of Fame down in the Akron Canton area and who's known nationally for developing blighted malls and turned them into productive assets for the community, and so we're excited about that. We're hoping that maybe that should close. Let's see, maybe August September, that's what we're hoping, you know. And a lot of concepts. They're looking at mixed use, maybe one hundred plus homes they're going to be built on the on the side, we're looking at, you know, some manufacturing, and so we're really excited. It's going to be a game changer because it's it's the center of our county. And the reason why it's called Midway Mall is because it's midway between New York and Chicago. So a lot of famous people would stay there when they traveled between New York and Chicago and our hotels, I mean, even Elvis State. I mean, it's just that's the location. That's why it's called Midway Mall. So we know it's going to be a hot market. We have new hotels being built there as we speak. We have an old one we're tearing down using our land bank. And the bottom line is we have three county commissioners that are not politicians. We are business owners, and so we are bringing a different thought process to government, and we're not one to have meetings, you know, you firm committee. It is the biggest thing, the way to kill any project from a committee to discuss what to do with the something. You know, we're just decision makers. We know what's right for our community. We live in our community, and we're just trying to do the best to give back as the best we can. So that's a good point. Now, Dave, you said that one thing that drank this out was politics. That probably played a part in it because you were up for reelection and so forthmpaigns were going on. How does that affect business being done or slow things down? Well, what happens is, you know, the three of us are pro business, you know, and the bottom line is we're looking at what's going to take to make things happen here, you know. And I've done a good job when I first took office at repairing a lot of issues. Let's just say that with other communities, even though it was under one party control. This county has been under one party control for eighty years. And so when we came in and Jeffredell won his election, and what I did is I started to develop relationships with all the all the mayors. I got a great. Relationship with Democrats because the good mayors that are worried about the communities are are forming great partnerships with us. A lot of them they're still two partisan, too political, you know, and to me, I don't care. Like the city of Lorraine. We got this Black River landing, big grand opening on June third. First answer to this year is June fifth. That was all based on partnerships. Now, before I took office, the Lorraine Port and the Lorraine County Port wouldn't even talk to each other, and the mayor and these are all Democrats and they just wouldn't work together because they're all talking about their fightdoms. I come in, I said, look, what's best for the county and what's best for your city is best for the county. I mean, that's all I'm worried about, is what's best for everyone. And by doing that, they saw that you know, I actually, you know, talk to talk and walk the walk. I don't. I'm not. I don't talk politically correct sometimes, but they know where I stand. And so those relationships with Illyria and the mall and Lorraine and their port authority, the townships with this expo center. We put in, you know, a sixty eight thousand square foot expo center for events. I mean that, I mean everything was done via partnerships, and that's that was a big word that I brought to the table in twenty one and I think that was a big reason why I got re elected, being the first Republican Commissioner to ever be re elected since nineteen forty. So I think, yeah, I think yeah. I think it says that we're not partisan, but we are more about getting things done. And there's always a lot of talk. There's so many politicians that talk that they talk really smooth. They tell you what you want to hear. Well, sometimes I tell people what they may not want to hear, but they need to hear. And that's about as blunt as we can be. And it seems to be working. Here in Lorraine County. I mean, yeah, we just had an election with Jeffredell, and you know, the guy is very blunt and we're doing a lot of economic development pushes here. And even in the Republican primary, we had a lot of people that were anti development and they ran against them. But the Democrats we had, I forget what the number was over two thousand voters switched parties just to try to vote Jeff out in a primary instead of the general election because they didn't think they could beat him in a general and he won by eighteen votes out of twenty three thousand votes. I always go back to celebrate every vote matter, you know. So with his victory, we're moving forward with a lot of great projects here in Lorraine County. So on the river, on the Black River, there's a new development that you have mentioned. Could tell us about the pavilion. There's a pavilion that's gonna be built. Yeah, we've been doing this for about ten The City of the Rain and the Port Authority have been doing it for about ten years. They it's been very successful. These are concerts that are cover bands, the most successful one naturally being the Pink Floyd one that gets a higher ticket like twenty to twenty five dollars apiece, but usually the prices are five to ten dollars and you get an evening out in the sun on the river watch the sunset live music. We have anywhere from three to eight thousand people that show up. But the way it was set up, it's a flat land and then there's a stage. It was a portable type stage. Now we have a permanent stage on an incline, so you have good views of the stage on an incline. And it's like this will be going into several phases. And so we're doing a ribbon cutting on June third, first concert on June fifth, and we're really excited and we're actually bringing in some a one talent. Stay tuned. You might want to look at the Lorraine Port Authority's website or Rocking down the River take a look google Rocking down the River and take a look at the series. But it looks like probably I think about sixty percent of the people that attend our concerts are from outside Lorraine County. Oh it's good our Visitess Borrow felt that since because of that draw, we partnered with the city. We partnered with the Port and Rocking down the River and we helped participate in building that and formed a great partnership. You know. We also this summer kicking off. A national or international racetrack on along the Black River for go kart racing. These are go karts that go seventy miles an hour. I mean, there's a whole professional circuit for that. We have that that's kicking off this summer and with the Expo the fair. Also on July eleventh, we have the air show coming up. It's a We're going to spend a lot more money this year. We got some big planes coming in. It's a car show. It's a huge car show airplane and it's been very successful that we have coming up this summer. So there's a lot of activities. The Lorraine County is booming. Lorraine County is growing. We're putting in a Westerly sewer project which is going to bring in hopefully thousands of jobs and build hopefully, you know, an additional thousands of homes. Right now, we have about two thousand homes being built this summer, or at least that have permits, and we're looking hopefully for another ten thousand permits in the next five years. And of course is booming, you know, it sounds like it. There's so much going on now. Going back to that sewer project, the Westerly Sewer project, about how many square feet is it or how many air acres are it's. Going to be about it's a ten mile long miles and it's sixty it's a sixty inch pipe. So right now we're looking at is do about You know, we're gonna design it at about ten million gallons per day, but it has the ability to go up to sixty million gallons per day, which means big companies that are looking for that type of service. We have rural water here that will help assist in that. We were we were one of four sites that what got us going about four years ago. Five years ago, we were talking to Micron. We were one of four sights. Micron was going to come and they wanted to shut down an airport and I said, can't do that. You can. If you do that, you have to relocate our airport. And so they ended up, you know, they ended up going to New York. I heard that they regret that decision. They laid out the red carpet. But we had everything. We have everything here that companies are looking for. We have water, and we have land. But do you want to control that growth? Yes? I do. And by doing this Westerly Sewer project, it's stopping the development coming from Cuyahoga County and taking away our precious farm land and forcing that development between Route two and the Turnpike. So we sit as Lorraine County. Great location for transportation. We're you know, between Cleveland, Detroit, Pittsburgh, Columbus Cincinnati. We have a great location for manufacturing. We have one of the best community colleges in the country. We are on the cutting edge of this new economy and we're training our kids in high school for those new. Economy. So we got we are just that. And that's something I worked on twenty five years ago when I did this job once before, which is called Glide at the college. It's a Great Lakes incubator and we have a memes I guess they call it again above my pay scale, but where you can work in there and work on today's chips and get training working with chip factories and all that kind of stuff. The big ten colleges come to Loraine County Community College because of our center, because of the of the machines and the clean rooms they call them that we have here. So I'm really excited about all. The growth potential because we've built that foundation and so we can grow as high as we want. So, mister Moore, you've shared so much with us. Also, downtown Oliria has an event coming up as well, doesn't it in July twenty fourth. You want to talk about that? Oh yeah, yeah, that are celebrating our countries two hundred and fiftieth anniversary. We have hired the Cleveland Pops to come down. It starts at noon. We'll get there. About eleven o'clock. We're gonna introduce some people. We're gonna read the Constitution, the US Constitution, and then we're going to kick off the concert series. They're gonna play for an hour and a half. And you know, there's nothing says in America like hot dogs and apple pie. So we're gonna be giving away hot Dog Heaven, which is the Lorraine County business. We're gonna be giving away five. Hundred hot dogs, and then we're gonna be giving away popcorn from another Lorraine County business, Mama Joe Pies. You know, five hundred free apple pies. Nothing like I said, that says America then apple pie. So this is yeah, the Lorraine County Visitors Borough is sponsoring it, so they're paying for that. And so you're going to have hot. Dogs, you can have popcorn, and you can have you know, apple pie and cookies. We have another Krodowski's which is huge. You know they're providing cookies that are going to be decorated celebrate, so we're excited. It's going to be a way to celebrate our two hundred and fiftieth anniversary. So so many positive things going on in Irraine County. Thank you, Commissioner. More you might want to speak to this one issue right now. Property taxes is a big issue for folks all across the state. Can you talk about what you're doing to help ease some of that a little bit. I was little. I was literally on the phone about ten minutes before our call talking to some people in Columbus trying to get a grasp of the new changes that they did. And what we did last year is we had a the opportunity which we've never had to reduce property taxes. As County commiss there's eighty eight counties in this in our state, and only ten took advantage of that and four took advantage of both. So you had a chance to reduce the homestead exemption for those seniors that are sixty five and older, which doubles their exemption and which means if you double the exemption, it reduces their property tax. And also we had the ability to double the homes the owner occupied credit. So we had that ability, and so we did that last year. We only had forty five stays to do it. We didn't have any hearings or didn't ask anybody permission or what their thoughts were. We just did it because what I did is I took a look at the unvoted on property increases from the reevaluations of our homes and some of people's taxes. Their values went up one hundred percent and the average Lorin County was thirty one percent or thirty one percent increase. And that's just that's hard on our seniors. And it's too bad that you can sit there own your home. And when I'd say own your home, you're investing in Loraine County. You're not renting a home. You're owning a home. You're buying into Lorraine County. You're buying into living and working here in Lorraine County. You've paid your dues. So just to give a little help to a homeowner, to a senior, I'm like, I was all for it. The owner occupied exception that went from two and a half percent, we doubled it to five. So what I've just found out. Is over they've they've done some changes in Columbus, and this is where we're the hot button right now and we're meeting with some people today, is we want We brought it up again, but this time we brought it up earlier so the schools could participate and tell us why they think we should continue to over tax our seniors. That's my words. And so what we did is it was a long meeting, about forty minutes if everybody telling us why they need the money. And I pretty much said, you know, my position is really clear. If I could triple the homes that I would, If we could take away property taxes from sixty five and over, I. Would, But I don't have that power. But the power I do have as one commissioner out of three, and I support doubling the homestead and doubling the interacted by credit. Now, according to the state they have now for the next three to five years, they're going to take that two and a half percent and take it up to ten percent, And which is good, but now what about that there's no shortfall because the businesses that we're getting that are going to make that are going to make up that difference. So there should be no decrease in cash going to the schools and all the other government agencies. And the bottom line here at the end of the day, everyone's screaming no money, no money, no money. Well we're doing it. What we're doing is we're shrinking county government. And that's a key word here. They say all your electeds because we represent we oversee the budgets for all the county electeds. You know, they said you're taking away money. You're taking away money. I'm like, no, the p for tireder paying taxes. So we are shrinking county government and that I mean, if that's all I'm that's all I'm saying. We're just shrinking it. And you know what, there's a lot of things going on in the Ring County. People don't like we got a strike going on in our county. It's a job and family services. They've been on a strike now for twelve or thirteen weeks. They keep coming to our meetings trying to negotiate, which is an unfair labor practice issue. But you know what, we filed unfair labor against them. They filed against us. But the bottom line is we're providing services, but the opportunity that I see here with this strike, and I'll say it first here, is that they're giving us the ability to look elsewhere to provide services. So we're looking at private companies to come in as consultants and get us caught up. So we're saving seventy five to eighty thousand a week because they're on strike. So that money we're saving we're using to bring in private companies to take over the you know, pretty much take over their jobs. If they don't want to work, we'll find somebody who. Well, thank you, Commissioner More. Well, you shared someone much with us. You're doing a lot with the entertainment development. He's in the tax burden rocking on the river, I'll tell you, Lorraine County is really rocking. Thank you, Commissioner More. I want to have you back just to give us another update that's happen. And again we thank our audience for joining us today and bearing with us. And I'll tell you this was just a very informative interview today with Commissioner David new President of Ryan County Commissioners. Thank you again to our audience and David, we will talk to you again in the future. Thank you so much.
