JEROMESVILLE — The mayoral race in Jeromesville has two candidates vying for the leadership position.
Randy Spade brings nine years of experience serving Jeromesville as a member of the city council and as the current mayor.
He’s running against Kevin Clark, who has lived in Jeromesville for seven years and worked at General Motors for over 31 years.
For both candidates, the race comes down to a love of Jeromesville.
Spade said he grew up there and wants to see through beautification and infrastructure projects already underway.
Clark agrees — he wants to see follow-through, and thinks he’s the person to do the job.
Both want to prioritize youth involvement in politics.
“It’s a unique race,” Spade said.
He said it’s pitting somebody who has been involved in government against somebody who’s getting involved in government.
“Whether I win or lose, I want that town taken care of and I want it to thrive,” Spade said.
Clark wants to make Jeromesville a destination
Kevin Clark moved to Jeromesville seven years ago, and one of the 64-year-old’s favorite parts of living there is picking up his grandchildren from school every afternoon.
Even though he’s only been in town for seven years, Clark feels like it’s home.
He is from the area — he went through Madison Senior High School, and worked at General Motors as a machine repairman for over 31 years. Clark also has been the president and vice president of Ontario Youth Sports and owns his own business.
With grandchildren growing up in Jeromesville, he said he plans to stick around.
When Clark thought current mayor Randy Spade — now his opponent — wouldn’t be running again, he filed for the position.
Spade said he was in the midst of studying for a Ph.D., working full-time at Ashland University and working as Jeromesville’s mayor. He also welcomed a second child in November.
With all of that on his plate, earlier in the year, he considered giving up his position as mayor to spend more time with his family. He chose to run again in February, opting to drop his Ph.D. studies instead.
Still, in January, it looked like the mayor’s office would be vacant, and that’s when Clark stepped up. He opted to stay in the race because he thinks more investments need to be made in the village.
“We need to cut the reckless spending and put money back into the community,” Clark said.
When asked about reckless spending, he didn’t pinpoint specifics. He said he didn’t want to throw stones, but doesn’t feel that Jeromesville has made the progress he’d like to see.
Clark added he’d commit to donating half his salary as mayor back to the village if elected.
According to the current mayor, Spade, that salary is $650 per month. It hasn’t been a tradition in recent memory for mayors to donate that salary back, Spade said. He added the salary hasn’t increased in 25 years.
Spade and Clark both said the village has received grants and is working on projects. Clark, though, said it feels like those investments haven’t been visible in the community.
“I haven’t seen anything coming into the community that’s making it a destination, and that’s where we should be,” Clark said.
According to Clark, it’s an issue of progress. He said he understands that as mayor, you can’t make everybody happy. Still, he thinks there needs to be more follow-through when it comes to completing work from grants.
Spade, the current mayor, said those grants have been slow-moving for a variety of reasons, whether thanks to grant requirements or market struggles.
Clark added that, if elected, recognizing veterans and seniors in Jeromesville would be important to him, too.
Clark also said he’d value youth participation in the local government. He views it as critical for young people to understand what’s going on.
His campaign comes down to his appreciation for Jeromesville. Clark said it doesn’t matter that he’s not originally from there, because he said he cares about the place.
“We have a nice village here, and I’m going to be here for a while,” Clark said.
Spade hones in on financial wins, connecting community
Randy Spade, 35, still lives in his childhood home in Jeromesville.
He left home to earn his undergraduate degree in political science at Berea College in Kentucky.
When Spade returned home, he quickly realized Jeromesville was where he knew he wanted to be.
To put his degree to use, he started sitting in on city council meetings, eventually running for a seat himself.
He started serving as a city council member on Jan. 1, 2014.
When former Mayor Dale Harrison resigned in December of 2014, Spade was tapped to step up into the position. He’s served as Jeromesville’s mayor since 2015.
While serving in Jeromesville, Spade has also worked full-time at Ashland University as its executive director of admissions. He earned a master’s degree in American history and politics from Ashland University.
Spade started working toward a Ph.D., but dropped that course load in favor of continuing to serve Jeromesville. He made the decision to run for another term as mayor this February.
“It’s one of those moments, when I thought about my life without serving Jeromesville, I was like, ‘I don’t want to know what that feels like,’” Spade said.
During his service in Jeromesville, Spade feels he’s had a number of “wins.” The town once had an income tax, but as a council member, Spade said he led the charge to repeal it.
Spade also said the city standardized water bills when he was the mayor. Those bills are now at a flat rate, so people know exactly how much they’ll need to pay each month.
He added he’s also proud of improvements to the city’s public spaces. Spade cited a new playground, upgrades to town hall and adding heat to the event shelter at the park using COVID-19 funding from the CARES Act as examples.
If elected again, Spade lists five priorities:
- Maintaining standardized water bills and no income tax
- Encouraging connectedness in Jeromesville, in order to maintain the small-town way of life
- Improving his own communications to keep the community informed about the status of long-term projects
- Maximizing the resources Jeromesville has available and taking regular stock of what it needs
- Finishing up big projects, like the water line replacement under way and the beautification grants the city has received
Spade describes himself as “results driven.” He also has ideas about revamping a “junior council” program that existed in Jeromesville pre-COVID, and about engaging people who have just moved into town.
“We had COVID, we had the pub fire, we had to straighten out an entire system of bookkeeping and updating Jeromesville to have a website,” Spade said.
“It’s been the small stuff all the way up to the big stuff. It’s been the adventure of a lifetime, and I look back on it and think that we still have so much left we can do, so I want to keep trying.”
For him, it all comes down to love of a place he’s called home for a lifetime.
“I was a kid who knew I wanted to come home, and I wanted there to be somewhere to come home to,” Spade said. “… I know that the world is an amazing place, but I always want you to know that you can come home, and you can thrive if you stay here.”
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