LIMA — The candidates for 4th Ward Lima council met with The Lima News Editorial board recently to talk about the issues facing the 4th Ward and the Lima community.
Rebecca Kreher, a student at Ohio State University, is the incumbent, while Peggy Ehora, External Affairs Manager for Dominion Energy Ohio, is the challenger.
On the topic of the biggest issue facing the 4th Ward, Kreher pointed to safety.
“Safety falls under multiple tiers has to do with homeowners who are letting lawlessness happen out of their house,” said Kreher. “I can think of several places right now in the Fourth Ward that are being watched by the police department. The neighbors are aware of what’s going on.”
She was also concerned about nuisances that can become a bigger problem.
“Just people speeding through the streets. I don’t know about you, but when I wake up because someone has decided to press the pedal to the metal, and they’re violating the law. It’s not okay, those things are not okay. So safety, I think, is the number one issue, whether it’s a homeowner, renter or vacant property.
Ehora believes housing integrity is the biggest problem facing the 4th Ward.
“I’ve had four conversations in the last 24 hours with homeowners who have either a rental house next to them that has not been attended to for years,” said Ehora. “A lot of times that means that maybe the shed out back has a hole in the roof and there’s various creatures living there which only adds to that same concern for everybody else. People will walk away from a rental and leave the kid’s toys or everything else that was there out in the yard and never to be seen again for a year.”
So why does Ehora want to be on Lima council?
“You know, I really honestly didn’t think that an elected official position was something that I wanted to do again. I did school board 20 years ago. I really thought that I don’t have the skin for it when I was 20 years younger then and, you know, things have changed in my life,” said Ehora. “In the last couple of years or so, maybe three or four years, I haven’t liked the tenor of local politics. It kind of started for me a few years ago. There was all this discussion about the city and the building department and they weren’t doing their job and that’s what was keeping business out of Lima. That started a fight, and and that played out in the paper and played out in the press in a way that I thought was so detrimental to our community.”
Kreher’s decision to serve on Lima council started a few years ago.
“In 2011 I ran for office,” said Kreher. “I went to every meeting. I lost. I didn’t quit, though. I took some time off to work with a statewide candidate and the times that I wasn’t on the road for her, I was at council every single meeting, and I learned a lot. I remember a former councilor telling me, there’s a lot of things that you learn in the first four years. He said ‘I’m not even sure that I know all the things that are going on at the city’ and he was in his second term when he said that to me. So the one thing that I do bring is I’ve had experience in the last four years, taking phone calls in the middle of the night, talking to someone about how their neighbor has torn up their yard, talking to someone else about what to do when the neighbor hasn’t kept up with their yard. What to do when their neighbors are selling drugs, what to do if they think the house is vacant? It is a process of learning that there is a difference between city government, city business and private business.”
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