Ep. 74 - Guest: Lorain County Commissioner David Moore

Guest: Lorain County Commissioner David Moore

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
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Speaker 2 (01:08):
The following is a presentation of FCB Faith. This is
the Jeff Glory Nick Show.

Speaker 3 (01:28):
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

(01:49):
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?

Speaker 4 (02:06):
Hey afternoon, gentlemen, Thanks for having me on.

Speaker 3 (02:09):
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.

Speaker 1 (02:25):
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.

Speaker 4 (02:42):
My mother was a huge John F.

Speaker 1 (02:43):
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,

(03:06):
went back to the private sector, and then I came
back in twenty twenty and be came and ran again
and we won.

Speaker 4 (03:12):
And so basically, a county commissioner.

Speaker 1 (03:15):
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

(03:37):
say it?

Speaker 4 (03:37):
A version two?

Speaker 1 (03:41):
Oh?

Speaker 4 (03:41):
What do you say? Just more checks and balances that
are out there.

Speaker 3 (03:44):
Tell us a little bit about the area that you serve.
Lorraine County Lora County.

Speaker 1 (03:49):
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

(04:10):
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

(04:31):
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

(04:52):
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.

(05:13):
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

(05:35):
public service, as your elected officials to maybe make the
lives of those that need the most help.

Speaker 4 (05:42):
And it always we can't.

Speaker 1 (05:42):
I hear it all the time from business owners transportation,
you know, how do you get people right now?

Speaker 4 (05:48):
They need workers?

Speaker 1 (05:50):
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?

Speaker 4 (05:58):
How do you know? And a lot of seniors how
do they get their groceries?

Speaker 1 (06:01):
Now?

Speaker 4 (06:01):
We can't.

Speaker 1 (06:01):
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.

Speaker 4 (06:17):
That was our fixed rate. So what we did is
we looked at a company that was the best.

Speaker 1 (06:22):
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

(06:44):
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

(07:04):
sixty million dollars and I said, so why don't we
advance the seven million dollars today?

Speaker 4 (07:09):
Why wait?

Speaker 1 (07:11):
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,

(07:32):
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.

(07:53):
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

(08:17):
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

(08:39):
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.

Speaker 4 (08:52):
So we're excited.

Speaker 1 (08:54):
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.

Speaker 3 (09:07):
Absolutely, And we went.

Speaker 1 (09:09):
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.

Speaker 4 (09:21):
That's what's go ahead.

Speaker 3 (09:22):
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.

Speaker 1 (09:43):
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.

(10:04):
You know, that was something brand new in the seventies,
and I couldn't drive, and so we decided to, you know,
get involved.

Speaker 4 (10:12):
I used it.

Speaker 1 (10:13):
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.

Speaker 4 (10:21):
So here it is.

Speaker 1 (10:21):
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.

Speaker 4 (10:37):
Say something here? You know, twenty years ago, everything you
guys are all.

Speaker 1 (10:41):
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.

Speaker 4 (10:48):
It says, that's fine. We're Lorraine County.

Speaker 1 (10:51):
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

(11:11):
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

(11:33):
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.

Speaker 4 (11:45):
I mean, this is awesome. You might have they're like
smaller vans.

Speaker 1 (11:48):
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.

Speaker 3 (11:55):
Be improving transportation. And this has been a real success.

Speaker 2 (12:00):
Yes.

Speaker 1 (12:00):
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.

Speaker 3 (12:13):
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

(12:34):
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?

Speaker 1 (12:53):
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.

Speaker 4 (13:12):
It didn't.

Speaker 1 (13:13):
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.

Speaker 4 (13:24):
So as a.

Speaker 1 (13:24):
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

(13:45):
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.

Speaker 4 (13:53):
Part of it.

Speaker 1 (13:54):
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

(14:15):
could get the mall under one ownership. Once we got
it under one ownership, oh everybody wanted.

Speaker 4 (14:21):
A piece of the pie.

Speaker 1 (14:22):
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

(14:43):
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,

(15:04):
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

(15:25):
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.

Speaker 4 (15:44):
That's ICP. They're doing this.

Speaker 1 (15:46):
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.

Speaker 4 (15:58):
So this is great news for the county.

Speaker 3 (16:00):
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.

Speaker 4 (16:15):
There, Oh yeah, a lot of miscommunication.

Speaker 1 (16:17):
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.

(16:40):
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

(17:01):
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.

Speaker 4 (17:20):
But the one bid that aligned with the State of Ohio.
The State of Ohio stepped up and said.

Speaker 1 (17:25):
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

(17:46):
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.

(18:09):
It will be fully operational in June of next year.

Speaker 3 (18:11):
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.

Speaker 1 (18:32):
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

(18:52):
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

(19:14):
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.

Speaker 3 (19:26):
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.

Speaker 4 (19:42):
Well, the main thing is this, I do love the job.

Speaker 1 (19:46):
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

(20:08):
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.

Speaker 4 (20:23):
So that's something else.

Speaker 1 (20:24):
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

(20:45):
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.

Speaker 3 (21:00):
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.

Speaker 1 (21:14):
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.

(21:35):
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

(21:56):
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.

Speaker 4 (22:10):
If you remember the nineties, you.

Speaker 1 (22:11):
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.

Speaker 4 (22:28):
The sewers in, you can get more homes built with
the desks.

Speaker 1 (22:31):
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.

Speaker 3 (22:40):
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.

Speaker 2 (23:14):
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