City mayoral candidates address issues

DAVE MOSIER/independent editor

The current mayor, his predecessor and a Van Wert City Councilman all have their reasons for wanting to sit in the southwest corner office on the second floor of the Municipal Building.

Incumbent Louis Ehmer, who came to Van Wert 28 years ago to work for what was then the Chrysler Amplex plant, said he has a number of projects started during his first term as mayor that he’d like to see to fruition.

Ehmer, a Korean War veteran who earned a degree from the Chrysler Institute and a two-year degree in industrial management from Central Michigan University, has been involved in the local community for a number of years, with memberships in American Legion Post 178, the Legion’s 40 et 8 group, Veterans of Foreign Wars Post 5803, Elks Lodge 1197, and the Van Wert Area Chamber of Commerce, to name a few.

He has also earned a number of special honors over the year, including the 2006 “Volunteer of the Year” and the Lions Club’s Dick Bryan Fellow Award. He was also nominated for the Chamber’s prestigious Ray Miller Award.

The current mayor has also been involved in city and county politics for a number of years, serving nine years on Van Wert City Council, two years as Council president and is completing his first term as mayor. He also is a member of the Van Wert County Republican Central Committee.

Ehmer said unfinished business he’d like to see completed in his next term as mayor, if elected, is the certification of the 1,600-acre Jobs Ready Site north of the city. Concerns include declining, or stagnant, city revenues, maintaining city streets with a budget that is already fiscally challenged and the need to work with economic development to create new jobs and bring in new industry to the community.

He and his wife, Sigrid, have two children, a son and a daughter, and two grandchildren.

Former mayor Don Farmer is a transplanted Californian, a native of Fresno who attended Los Angeles City College and earned a business degree at Los Angeles State College before coming to Van Wert to work for Central Insurance Company as a personal lines underwriter. He later returned to California to work for the Bell Telephone system as a Yellow Pages salesman and was a communications consultant for IBM and Federated Department Stores in southern California.

He and his wife, the former Nancy Raabe, and their family returned to Van Wert in the 1960s, and Farmer owned several businesses in the community, including Mac’s Delicatessen and The Paint Bucket.

The 35-year resident of Van Wert has also been very much involved in the community, serving on the boards of The Salvation Army and the Van Wert County Council on Aging, as well as the Van Wert Area Chamber of Commerce, where he was the winner of the Ray Miller Award. He is a member of First United Methodist Church in Van Wert.

Farmer is a former member of the Northwestern Ohio Mayors Association, Community Improvement Corporation, Main Street Van Wert, the Van Wert Area Convention & Visitors Bureau and the Boy Scouts of America.

In addition to being mayor, Farmer has also served several terms on Van Wert City Council.

The mayoral candidate said bringing jobs and new industry into the community is his top priority.

“Van Wert is feeling the same pressures as many of the communities our size, larger and smaller, and this is loss of jobs,” Farmer noted. “We are competing with each of these communities to attract new industry for our workforce that allows a competitive, but livable wage.”

To attract new jobs and development, the former mayor said, is a multi-layered problem that includes making sure the community continues to improve its infrastructure, competitiveness, creativity, appearance, attitude and “the ability to put aside our own individual desires for the sake of the community as a whole.”

Farmer said that, if elected, he would like to improve cooperation between the various segments of Van Wert society. “I would like to bring to the mayor’s office an attitude of positive thinking that will bring all ages of our community together,” he noted. “We need to realize that when we work together on our interests and differences as one, we can move this community forward.”

He noted that growth and progress will not come without risks and, if elected, would work to maintain essential city services, such as police, fire, water, sewer, street maintenance and the parks system, at a level city residents expect.
Farmer said budget and fiscal responsibility would play a major part in the future of Van Wert – something he feels he did well in his term as mayor. “My past record shows a great concern in this area, with a $1 million carryover for each of the four years as mayor,” he noted. “I will promise to work each day for a better Van Wert with honesty, integrity, dedication and hard work.”

The Farmers have four children – Robert “Skip” (Cherrie) Farmer, Everett Farmer, Donna (Joe) Gregory and Scott “Clint” (Mandy) Farmer – and 11 grandchildren.

Kirby Kelly, who is still in his first term as the Second Ward representative to Van Wert City Council, is the relative political newcomer in the mayoral race. He has not held any other elected office.

That doesn’t mean the longtime Van Wert resident doesn’t have a number of ideas, though, about what needs to be done to move the community forward.

Kelly, a 1976 graduate of Van Wert High School who also attended Bowling Green State University, has a business background in business management and sales, working as a manager for Pizza Hut in Fort Wayne, Ind., and was also a route manager and sales man for Mechanics Laundry/Cintas. He also served as a union steward for Teamsters Local 414 while at Mechanics Laundry. He was also a manager for Dolly Madison Bakery.

For Kelly, there are two major issues facing the city: making government more efficient and economic development.

The mayoral candidate has several ideas of streamlining city government, including placing the income tax and water-sewer collection offices under the city auditor’s office. “By doing so, we would change the flow of information fro tax office to mayor/safety-service director to auditor, to tax office to auditor to mayor/safety-service director,” Kelly noted. “I believe this change would give a better overview of city finances.”

Kelly also backs a centralized purchasing system for the city. “Back in the 1970s, Council took action to consolidate purchasing,” he said, but added that the system was never formally put into place. “Using office supplies as an example, each department purchases without supervision,” Kelly explained, noting that there is no standardization and that the individual departments can’t purchase items as cost-effectively as they would if they combined their purchasing power.

“By going to a centralized purchasing system, we can establish standards and shop for the best prices,” Kelly said.

The mayoral candidate also seeks cross-training among city workers to cut down on overtime and make government more efficient, and says the city website is in serious need of updating to provide better information to local citizens. He would also like to explore the idea of seeking paid advertising for the site to help fund improvements there.

Kelly would also a more organized effort to support the city parks system, and advocates getting the reformulated Parks Advisory Board up and running as soon as possible.

Economic development is also a priority for Kelly, noting that city government needs to take more ownership in the economic development process. “By ownership, I mean a more aggressive participation,” he noted.

One issue that needs to be addressed on the development front is the city’s decades-old master zoning plan. “We need to take a very hard look at how we want the city to grow and what needs to be done to zoning to accomplish this,” Kelly said.

Code enforcement is another issue that impacts economic development, Kelly said, and said that the city’s code enforcement legislation should be a part of its economic development efforts.

The 40-year city resident is not married and has no children.