FCB Faith is your rhythm and prey station. I listen, my mom listens, pretty much the whole family. I cannot, I cannot. I canna said, don't, don't, don't, and no, don't. Listen to FCB Faith on iHeartRadio, Odyssey at faith dot com, or tell your smart speaker to play FCB Faith on iHeartRadio. The following is a presentation of FCB Faith. This is the Jeff Glory Nick Show. Welcome to the Jefflori and Nick Show. And we're an informative talk show that is focused on finding solutions to our great cities, nations, and areas that we live in. We wanted to find problems to make our state better, to make our country better, to make our people better. So today we have a great guest and who has been very active, very active in his community, is great from the great County of Lorraine, Ohio, and is none other than County Commissioner David Moore. Good afternoon, David, How are you today? Hey afternoon, gentlemen, Thanks for having me on. So glad to have you on. I know there's a lot going on in the County of Lorraine, in the City of Lorraine. Can you first give us a little bit about your tenure, your history on how'd you get involved with county government and become a county commissioner. Oh, you know, I grew up as a kid, love to play baseball, backyard, barefoot, all that. But in nineteen seventy four, I was also kind of a geek. I enjoyed watching the Watergate hearings and everything out At twelve years old, I think I came out a political junkie. My mother was a huge John F. Kennedy fan, and my father was voted for Nixon, and so basically I was kind of raised that way up in Flint, Michigan, and so I've always loved politics. I'm a business owner, entrepreneur, and when I sold my company back in ninety eight, I decided to dive. In two thousand, I was thirty eight years old and ran for county commissioner. We did it for four years, but my children are young, went back to the private sector, and then I came back in twenty twenty and be came and ran again and we won. And so basically, a county commissioner. Is like a You're the budget authority of all your county agencies, all your county elected officials. We're like, the money that comes from Columbus comes through us, or if we as the taxes are collected from the auditor, it goes to everything goes We're like the stop gap to review. Then the auditor is also another Oh, how do you say it? A version two? Oh? What do you say? Just more checks and balances that are out there. Tell us a little bit about the area that you serve. Lorraine County Lora County. Yeah, we're like, we're the ninth largest county in the state of Ohio. There's eighty eight counties. I would say forty five counties are less than forty five thousand people. So we have about three hundred and seventeen thousand people that live in Lorraine County were outside obviously west of Cleveland, and so you know, there's three county commissioners and the three the three of us kind of run the whole county. Everything, all the money comes through. We vote on the budget with the budget Authority. But we're also in charge of infrastructure, your roads, your sewers, but in the unincorporated areas, so therefore, like your cities, they have their own water and streets and so there's so much excitement going on in Lorraine County because you know, for the last eighteen months, we actually have two businessmen running the county and we've taken politics away because it was so chaos. It was so much chaos the first two years because we had you know, some people when they get elected, you know, it's hard to tell. They get power drunk and they do some crazy stuff. So we do have control and you have businessmen running. And this November is another election, and if I do win, and I am running, that'll be the first time since nineteen forty four that are Republican commissioner has ever won. And so what's irritating a lot of my opposition is that we're tackling issues that Democrats have been trying to do and Republicans throughout the whole state. But what we what I did is I have an approach of partnerships. I've always talked partnerships. So like, for example, in the city of Lorraine, you have a Democrat Mayor Bradley. In the city of Allyria you have a Democrat Mayor Brewbaker. I get along with both guys. We don't talk national politics. That's a safe bet, Okay, but we all have the same goals, which is what can we do as your public service, as your elected officials to maybe make the lives of those that need the most help. And it always we can't. I hear it all the time from business owners transportation, you know, how do you get people right now? They need workers? And a lot of the workers, you know, maybe they got in us, maybe they made support choices or maybe child support, they get their license, bull how do they get to work? How do you know? And a lot of seniors how do they get their groceries? Now? We can't. They can't afford the gas, the car, the insurance, and so our transportation system was horrible. So it took two hours to ride the bus. So like you had to wait for the boss two hours, okay, and if you missed it by five minutes, yeah, wait for another two hours. That was our fixed rate. So what we did is we looked at a company that was the best. The easiest way to explain it is like Uber or lyft, you know, And what they do is it's called a micro transit. And so working with the City of Lorana said, you know your community, I don't, so why don't you tell me what your needs are and what parts of your community needs assistance. In transportation, we did the same with Oliria. We designed these many micro systems. We still have our fixed route system. We worked with Miwaka who gave us a grant for seven million dollars to experiment on this, except it didn't we could. You know, we don't get the money till twenty twenty six or twenty twenty seven. And I'm like, we have a need today. So because of the I call him Sugar Daddy, Joe Biden, we got a lot of money from him from DC sixty million dollars and I said, so why don't we advance the seven million dollars today? Why wait? And within one hundred and twenty days, on July fifteenth, we pulled the trigger. And it's been such a success that you know, and I tell it, I tell everybody. First things First, you get people addicted to a very positive, successful program, and within ninety days it's happening. People love it and other communities want in. Ah, But I said, you got to wait a year so we can figure out the expenses. Because let's say you want to join this program. Well, each community says, yeah, we want it, we want it, we want it. And then you got to say, you know, it's only costing the writers two bucks or a dollar. If you're a senior or e vet, well, if you want to participate, it's going to cost you money because we're not, as accounting going to carry this. This is just a pilot program. And so we're doing and we have real data, like within the first ninety days we've already done over close to eleventh thousand riders. That's amazing, you know that many we didn't have that much on a fixed route system, and so and other things that happened is we had a doctor call us up. He said, you know, my customer base is in the the lower income areas. And he says, and they can't get to me because I'm basically two I'm like two blocks or three blocks away, and we're right next to it is over here in the Amber's area by Giant Eagle, so it's grocery stores. So we had the ability within a week to kind of figure it out, move that micro transit over just enough to take care of those needs. And that's what I love about this. If you can change on the fly, you can make it work. And if you're disabled. These many they're small vans will pull up to your home and you don't have to go so far because usually on a microsystem you got to walk about a block to where that route is, unless you're a disabled individual. So we're excited. We get a lot of press, a lot of a lot of people in Cleveland are excited about it. It's a successful prom because we put we don't at a local level politics after the election should be put on a shelf. Absolutely, And we went. To work as a team. And I hate to use the word bipartisan because it really wasn't. It was your county leaders working together for the common good and. That's what's go ahead. That was I was gonna say, that's the way it should be, too right, right, And so you're providing a good example for other legislative bodies across the state, across the nation. Do you feel as though that business background really helped you to speed up different processes because it seems like in Lorraine County government things actually work. Yeah, I did, because beforehand it didn't. You know, I was here, when I was here in two thousand, I tried to fix transit back then. Okay, so I go to these meetings and they're telling all, this is what's wrong, and this is what's wrong. This is before uber or this thing called the internet, right, And so I said, well, I in the seventies in my community, I used dialer ride. You know, that was something brand new in the seventies, and I couldn't drive, and so we decided to, you know, get involved. I used it. I try to get the county to move towards maybe let's make this more flexible for people. And twenty years ago our fixed rous systems weren't a success. So here it is. I come back twenty years right, I or fifteen years later, I run it and I went again. I go to the meetings again and I sat there and I listened to the one and then got another month goes by. I go to another meeting, and I kind of finally, I kind of take so much, because when you're in business, you got to make decisions, right, And I said, hey, can I. Say something here? You know, twenty years ago, everything you guys are all. Saying was said, oh, look at Denmark, Look at Sweden. I goes, oh, look what they're doing in Vegas, Look what they're doing Detroit. It says, that's fine. We're Lorraine County. We're basically at cultural business is our largest business here, so you know, and the mentality of people that were doing this, so their hearts were in the good place, in the right place, but their business sense they didn't really have the business sense, which is money. And they always felt that, well, if we tax people more and we get more money, it will work. I'm like, no, your budget's five million dollars. How do you make it work within that budget? And they're all looking at me like I was from out of space. I said, no, no, no, we can make this work. And we started doing some research and we found this company and the company's already in seventy seven other communities and so we thought, okay, and it's successful. And they have real time data. They like when you make the call on your phone, you can do your app. You can see them coming, you can say, oh, they're six minutes out. You know the average the average way times out ten minutes and the average right time six. I mean, this is awesome. You might have they're like smaller vans. But guess what, you might have two or three people in the van, but who cares. You're going from point A to point B for two bucks, you can. Be improving transportation. And this has been a real success. Yes. Oh, and it's only been four months and I'm looking I'm looking forward to the rest of the county to really buy into this program. So I'm really excited that for the future in regards to the transportation here in Lorraine County. Oh, thank you, David Moore. We're going to take a quick break and we're going to be right back. We're here with our guests, David Moore, who is a county commissioner in the Great County of Lorraine, Ohio. H David, could you speak to an issue that's been out there for quite some time and many folks have driven past and that Midway mall and they've seen it closed, they watched it decline, and of course malls have declined all across the country. Can you speak to the Midway Mall and what's going to be done there if anything? Yep? Well, sure, what's going on is what the problem has been is everybody has ideas, oh, we should do this, we should do that. The issue at hand is, you know, everyone kept talking about what you should do, who should buy it? Well, in the meantime, within the last twenty years, it got four closed on and everybody thought the mall went for a cheap price. It didn't. There was like seven or eight different legal descriptions, so there was multiple owners. I mean, previous people were trying to fix it and they have no business sense. Kind of goes back to what we're talking about. So as a. Businessman, you know, when you've got to live, you know, you got to create that revenue so that you can pay your bills and pay your staff. You got to come up with creative ways to get things done. And so as a problem solver, what I saw was and I was I've been in real estate since nineteen eighty six, as I kept hearing, well, you know this guy owns it, that they don't like this guy. And so when actually the Cleveland Clinic was looking and they said, no, we don't want a part of that because there's too many. You don't know if a flea market could open up in the mall if they only got. Part of it. So it came to me that we need to have one ownership. So the county, because of our extra ARPA funds, we decided to invest. So we worked into invest in ourselves. So we invested in loaning money to the Port Authority, who then worked a year to start to acquire the purchase agreements and options on all the owners so we could get the mall under one ownership. Once we got it under one ownership, oh everybody wanted. A piece of the pie. So what they did is the Port Authority went out for our f cues like requests for qualifications to say, you know, what would you do with the mall and how much would you give us a round number? And they and we had four of them that looked at it, and some of them were just fantastic, they were sexy, but they wanted us to give them them all as a grant. We're like, no, this is taxpayer funds. It was thirteen point nine million, and I can actually honestly say right now I've gotten word that a purchase agreement that's been signed as of I think yesterday, So this is cutting edge on the news here anyway, and it's the Port Authority is going to be v and whether or not to accept that purchase agreement on October ninth. Now, once that's accepted, that's about seventeen million. And so we got about one point seven million of interest coming back to the county, and so we're really excited because that gives us some time. They'll have time to do some due diligence. I got money coming from the State of Ohio and we're going to be dealing with getting some best's removal money they call it remediation funds from the state. Working with our Senator Nate Manning and the Governor's office, they're well aware of it, and so we're really excited because the main thing is the company is doing this out in Garfield Heights. You know, if you go over four or eighty to the right, it used to be a mall like a Walmart that had all these issues. That's ICP. They're doing this. They're gonna come here and add a new facade, green space. It's going to be beautiful and they're talking five to six hundred jobs at the heart of our county. So this is great news for the county. Yes it is, and this is breaking news and it's so very positive. So we're going to hear more about that. Wow, that's we're going to watch this develop. But can you speak to the issue of communication systems. I know that there's been some talk about maybe issues. There, Oh yeah, a lot of miscommunication. What happened was and I'm trying to write a book about it, but we're still the middle of litigation. You had a vendor pushing just radios, and the key is I said from day one, it's not about radios, it's about communication. It's because as a commissioner, like I said earlier, we're in charge of your budget. Of the budget, but also infrastructure like your sewers, your water, your roadways and communication. So what we did is we went out to bid. It was about twenty seven million, and the bid came back. But the one company that we reversed the contract on that was overcharging us. They were overcharging us on a rig bid okay, and they were charging US fifty eight hundred dollars the radio SEP thirty two, which they sold for and they were charging US thirty eight dollars a month for per radio and it's only five So they were doing this and that was like forty grand a month. I saved by reversing that, we saved the county. Jeff and I did eight million dollars. And by going out to bid, they refuse to bid, So we had three other bids, but guess what, it came in about twenty seven million. But the one bid that aligned with the State of Ohio. The State of Ohio stepped up and said. We will now take over like fourteen million dollars and we'll take over the maintenance for fifteen or twenty years at a cost of fifteen So it only costs US thirteen million dollars and we're gonna have one hundred percent coverages not only county wide, but in about seventy seven buildings because the problem is when you go into these buildings, you don't have the radio frequencies. Well, now we will have it in all of our buildings because all the new buildings have to have bdas and the stuff so they can communicate. So I'm really excited because we saved just that radio deal alone, or they call it communica, they say radio, but it's communicators is you can use any radio you want. And we saved over twenty two million dollars a taxpayer funds. So we're that's and breaking ground. It will be fully operational in June of next year. That's really important for the voters to know and for the residents to know. So that's good that you're getting this information out. And while we're talking about saving money, how about the issue of property taxes because I know a lot of folks are concerned now because of the high taxes. Can you kind of speak to what you're doing there to help residents with property. Tax because in August everybody got these letters from our county auditor and he basically, you know, he said, oh, we only average thirty one percent increase. I have calls for people getting ninety three percent increases. I mean, people are just jumped because they sent the letter about your property evaluations going up, but not how much your taxes are going up. So what we did is there's some funds that we have on the inside millage that we can reduce to help mitigate that increase. Because nobody knows yet what that increase is because they'll recallulated in November. But I in order for us to help out, so what we did is we suspended certain property taxes like the TB tax. You know, we got a million bucks in the account we don't need, we don't need to collect it for ten years, so we suspended that. We're looking at suspending the inside millage by at least half so that we can at least mitigate those increases for people. So that's some of the work as commissioners we can do. So I'm looking forward at least helping as much as I can. Oh, this is good to know. And man, I hope our listeners are really taking all this in. And David, I know that you're up for re election yes November fifth. What are some closing words that you would like to share with our audience. Well, the main thing is this, I do love the job. You do get a lot, you do get beat up a lot, but you know what, it's things like we just talked about today that you know, here's an issue that's been going around for almost twenty four years that needed to be fixed. And by creating this partnership method of doing I hate to say doing business, but working within the government with a business mind, we've been able to help thousands of people. And we've been able to and that's just one step. Sewers is a huge issue because the City of Vermillion they got a seventy six million dollar fine. So we're in the process of creating a county white sewer plan bring them in and then that way we can mitigate the costs for everybody with one price. So that's something else. The townships, you know, they felt like they've been ignored, So I worked on putting out together some money for them for their conventions there that they built out at the fairgrounds. To the tune of like twelve we helped them with a ten million dollars Port Authority loan. I'm working with all these national international companies to bring chip factories here. We're looking at were we were so close to about a year ago to bring in a company with five thousand jobs, but it went to another state. But now we are on the map with the largest megasite in the Midwest. So we're on the map because we got a lot of land and we got the Lake Erie water and that's what the looking for. So yeah, I was I'm glad you did mention Lake Erie. Man. I was going to ask you to just kind of speak to that a little bit, so I know that plays a large part in the economy there in Loraine. How are you utilizing the lake? And then we're going to wrap up right here. Well, the main thing is what they're looking for is these new companies want they I mean, I've heard the numbers, how many millions, like twenty seven million gallons of water a day for these chip factories. And they process them clean up, but when they discharge them it's so pure it's not good. You have to actually let them re. I don't know what the word is, but you can't just dump them back in ditches. So there's a process. And so we have the asset for example Kuyahoga County. You know they're on the lake. You would think right that that would be the spot, but they don't have the land, and there's all these tests on movements that they don't want to be close to freeways or trains or airports. So that's why we're positioned perfect for this kind of economic development and those types. It's like our Ford plant building this ev plant. Now we already we just announced Piston company coming in seventy nine new jobs owned by I'm a Detroit Pistons fan, so it's Minnie Johnson. If you remember the nineties, you. Know I'm the big business guy. I'm from Michigan, so of course i am. And so he's bringing his company here. So what's happening is not only are we with Ford and hopefully Chip it's those other smaller companies that bring jobs, and so the sewers are important so that we can fix the housing crisis, because once you put. The sewers in, you can get more homes built with the desks. And since I'm in that business too, it's a density issue and that's what we're working on, housing, transportation and jobs and saving you government taxes. Thank you so much, County Commissioner David Moore from the Great County of Lorraine, Ohio. Thank you for sharing with us. Thank you our audience for staying with us. And let's remember to keep fighting the good fight and we all do our part to make this nation or state, our communities much better. Thank you again, God bless you all. This has been a presentation of the FCB podcast Network, where Real Talk lives. 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