ASHLAND — The Ashland Area Chamber of Commerce on Thursday hosted a luncheon featuring a question-and-answer session with two Republican candidates for sheriff.
Chad Enderby and Kurt Schneider are vying for votes in the Ohio Republican primary, to be held on March 19. Early voting begins Feb. 21.
Thursday’s session, moderated by Ashland University Executive Director for the Career Center for Life Calling Zach McGrain, consisted of five prepared questions followed by questions from the audience.
Below is a transcript, edited lightly, of the questions and how the candidates answered them. In some instances, the author added parenthetical phrases to add factual clarity.
Question 1: What do you see as Ashland County’s greatest strengths and opportunities?
Enderby
What’s the greatest strength of Ashland County? It’s our people. Our people are our greatest strength, the people of Ashland County. They respect law and order. They have a great deal of honor and respect for our police officers, our first responders. We honor and we take care of our vets. We have a very strong faith-based community in Ashland County, 114 churches. You don’t have to go far to find a place of worship or to find people worshipping.
Some of the most generous people live in Ashland County. Look at all of our social services, all of our non-profits, how well they are supported. And you’ll see that we have a very generous community — United Way, for example. They continue to set the bar higher every year for us, and we achieve those goals. Very generous people live here in Ashland County. We have a very low crime rate in Ashland County. The crime rate is well below the national average. We have affordable housing overall. We have a thriving community where people care for one another and they take care of one another. Opportunities come from all of those things. The opportunity to grow, the opportunity for people to want to live here, start a business here. And with those opportunities come challenges for our law enforcement, our first responders. And it’s critical that we have the leadership in place with a vision to be able to see the future, allocate for that type of growth, and keep our crime rate well below the national average. So our strength in Ashland is definitely our people. Thank you.
Schneider
It’s kind of hard to go second sometimes because some people steal your thunder. But, you know, at the end of the day, I think that Chad and I have something in common here, and that all of us have in common. That is all of you. You folks have been our backbone in this county for many years. You all support one another. You support the sheriff’s office. And I think it goes without saying that without you, the people in this county, no county or no community can ever be successful. The time that you have taken here today shows a great interest in what you would want to see out of your next sheriff who’s going to continue to protect you as our previous sheriffs have done for decades.
Your safety has always been the importance of the sheriff’s office. And as folks like you come out and suck up as much information as you possibly can to determine who that person’s going to be, to continue protecting your families and upholding the rights that many of our folks have protected all of these years. So, you know, Chad is also correct, and we have a very faith driven community here. We work very well together. We pray together many times and we break bread together. And during those times we have conversations about the things that are happening in our communities and how we can make them better for not only ourselves, but our children and our grandchildren for generations to come. And so dialogue is an extremely part, important part of every partnership, of any relationship. And I thank you for being here today ’cause it’s an extremely important position within the county, and we’ve got a lot of things to accomplish in a very short period of time. So I thank you all again for coming. And certainly I’m going to be grateful to answer all of these questions forthcoming.
Question 2: What are your plans to make Ashland County a safer place to live, work, play, and raise a family?
Schneider
Throughout my career, you know, I think I’m going to do the same things I have done for 26 years. I have always been a proponent of life. And when you have done the things that I have done, excavating some of these folks out of these burning buildings, entire families across the state of Ohio, you learn real fast and how precious life is, and you do everything you can to protect it. We are communicators. We rely on each other to watch out for one another. That’s a big part of law enforcement. 427 square miles with two, three guys covering this county. It’s impossible to get everywhere at the same time. And that’s a partnership that we need from new folks. So we’re going to build those community relationships that we have in the past, and we’re going to keep building on what’s already been laid on the foundations from the current administrations and our previous sheriffs who you have trusted with your lives and your safety for decades.
It’s a very important part of law enforcement in the county, is when you actually have a partnership where you can walk into somebody’s living room behind a closed door and have a lot of conversations with folks that normally they wouldn’t be picking up the phone and talking to you. I’ve done that. We’re going to continue to do that. We’re going to build upon that. It’s very important. So, you know, that’s a very reader’s digest version of what that entails But there are lots of things that go along with it that two minutes will not accommodate. So, you know, that’s a piece of it, our business community. And I think we also need to focus on our business community. We spend a lot of time with our resource officers in the schools doing that. That can easily be translated into the business world, assessing our threats out there and making sure that our business continues to be safe with all their working environments and the folks that are coming to work either in the county or from out of the county. So, thank you.
Enderby
As I told you previously, our crime rate in Ashland County is well below the national average. But if you look over the last couple of years, our property crimes have started to tick in that upward fashion. More calls for property crimes, not so much violent crimes, but property crimes in particular. So we need to be able to change and adapt how we police in Ashland County. That’s why my number one priority will be to reduce and eliminate the overlapping of services between our state, county, and local agencies. Right now we spend a great deal of time and energy doing things that other agencies have responsibilities, and quite honestly, the training to do much better than what maybe the sheriff’s department can do. And I’m referring to traffic enforcement and traffic crashes.
We need to have service with a purpose. We need to be intentional in our efforts and constantly adjust our resources and our allocations based upon the trends that we see the time of the year, the summer, when the southern part of our county swells because of all of the activities around the campgrounds. So we also need to collaborate with our schools and our school administrators and our school boards to make sure that our school resource officers are highly trained, they’re highly responsive, they know exactly what it is their position is in that school so that we can maintain a safe and secure environment, not only for our students, but for the staff. And then staying proactive in the community and identifying as those trends come and adjusting. I’ve got experience, a great deal of experience as a commander and as the, the chief of our patrol posts and allocating resources based upon those trends, analyzing the data, sending resources where they need to be based upon what’s currently going on. A great deal of experience when it comes to that, leading multiple patrol posts, leading a large district that will help us maintain that, that safe environment. Thank you.
Question 3: What are your thoughts on the effectiveness of our current 911 system? What steps do you think are necessary to improve the service to our community?
Enderby
That’s a great question. I will start off by saying, first of all, that it’s a shame that that service left eight, nine years ago. That leaders could not get along, could not come to solutions so that our police and our fire didn’t feel the need to take their services to Wayne County. That’s a shame. That will not happen under my administration. I have great relationships with our police department, our police chief, our fire chief, our highway patrol commander. We will have a very cohesive group of law enforcement and first responders in this county. So again, it’s critical that we all work together. But I will tell you that 911 regional dispatching is not unique to Ashland. It happens across our state, it happens across our nation. It is not a unique thing. There are technologies in place that will prevent that transfer from happening. We just have to explore those and put those things into place. But it can happen.
To bring that service back to Ashland County is what we would all want to have happen, right? We want to take care of our own. We want to be a community in which we can all work together effectively and efficiently. But that can’t happen on day one of a new administration. There are lots of things that have to happen before we bring that back. Staffing, the staffing out there is currently at or below what it was when the sheriff or the police and the fire department left. We have to bring the staffing levels back up before you can even think about bringing those services back. It’s not just about a 911 call. It’s about all of the radio traffic from both the police and the fire daily operations that need to come back here as well. That’s a great deal of radio traffic, extra work that requires staffing our dispatchers out.
They are some of the lowest paid in the area. We are not competitive with our surrounding counties. We hire them, we train them, and they get plucked from the tree by other places because it’s a three, four-dollar increase in pay. We’ve got to work on the staffing, we’ve got to work on their pay. And then I’ve traveled this county on this campaign trail and I’ve talked to a lot of volunteer fire departments, all of our townships and our township trustees, and there’s a little bit of concern about the service that they are currently receiving. They don’t feel that it’s the best that they could receive. So we definitely need to improve their training, their expectations, the professionalism, the service that we currently provide to the people that we’re providing it to before we can even think about bringing on new customers. That would be an additional 18 to 20,000 calls for service.
You can see on our fire board out on Mifflin Avenue, they’re up to almost 5,000 calls a year (across the city of Ashland). You bring that back and on top of the 14,000 calls from our police department, it’s a disaster to think that we can do that on day one. (Ashland police had 17,363 calls in 2023.) It can be done and I will work on doing it, but it’s gotta be incremental. And what I vision is that our police department and our fire department will hear the radio traffic and the services provided by our 911 dispatch center and think that’s better than what I’m getting in Wooster. Maybe it’s time to come home.
Schneider
This is a very passionate subject. And as an individual who has provided people’s security and safety and saving lives all over this state, I can assure you that when your initial call for help has an inherent delay built into it, seconds count, and lives are in danger, I would refer to that entity as a ticking time bomb. Maybe nobody’s gotten hurt yet, but nobody’s dying yet. But what are we willing to jeopardize to ensure that we are getting the help that we need fast and immediate. And there are ways to fix that right away. And I know what that plan is. The question is, you know, what’s the effectiveness of the 911 system? It’s not good. There is absolutely no reason why we have inherent delays built through the system.
And I agree with Chad. Should have never left. We have a regional dispatch center in our county. It was here in 2000 when we built the jail. Prior to that, we had three buildings and four dispatchers, and all of those numbers then were consolidated into one room so that everybody in the same room could hear the call coming in and people could start working fast to get the resources out. That doesn’t happen now, okay? And certain areas of the county. And even though that most of those calls are here within the city limits and some in Loudonville, the idea is, is that who never comes into the city of Ashland from the county who never goes to the village of Loudonville to visit, eat, get fuel, camp, shop, visit friends or family, and those things can be fixed on the first day. We’re gonna get the services that we need to you right now.
And all the other stuff that goes along with dispatching services can certainly be able at the same time that those resources are heading towards you. How do I know this? I worked in this county patrol on these roads and protecting your families for 13 years in that black and gold car. And I was tactically sound and trained and educated to know how to handle a situation in the absence of zero information. Because many times that’s what it is. We are relying on the folks who are calling for help and providing us the answers that we need. And it’s not just a short 30-second or a two minute phone call. It entails an ongoing dialogue throughout the call to ensure that the folks who are coming to help you get as much information as you possibly can. But that’s a three way street, not just two. The responders, the caller and the dispatcher.
They’re the lifeline between you and us. And we are to ensure that that communication and dialogue is always open and happening throughout the call, and that we get the folks the services they need, the most expedient manner possible. So, you know, it can happen on day one. And then lots of work to continue bringing the entire thing back over here to Ashland. That’s a lot of work and for a lot of weeds that were out there and why, what’s left? And it is a shame, it’s a shame that we don’t have those services that are inherently being funded here in the county and investing in the emergency services that we all deserve. So what does that entail and look like? It entails getting rid of the delay immediately and then continuing to have dialogue with the folks that have made the decision to move it over there daily, weekly, monthly, and continuing that makes them feel part of the decision making process, because they should be. They’re the ones that have the responsibilities in their venues to help you folks with their various resources. And as the sheriff, I can assure you, I would do everything I could and why wouldn’t I to help you folks out? So that’s in a nutshell. There are a lot of weeds, but at the end of the day, that can happen with this delay day one and it will.
Question 4: How will you use your past law enforcement experience to optimize your service to Ashland County?
Schneider
The bottom line is, is that I have all of this experience and all levels of public safety at all levels of government. What you will learn is, is thats where you get stuff done the best here in the county level. You have an elected official. You can walk in, you can see him daily in the office there. And having traveled at all 88 counties in this state, I had the opportunity to serve folks, help them through some of the toughest times in their lives. You have encompassed this great deal of knowledge on how things are done in other places. And you learn not to do this or you learn to improve the way you’re doing it this way. And so, you know, having those opportunities to be around all of these counties and all these different jurisdictions and all these different entities, you learn all of those things that they are doing and you mold that into what you feel is most important for your community.
So I had that great opportunity at the state, local, federal level — as a task force officer for alcohol, tobacco, and firearms out of the Cleveland division — the state fire marshal’s office, the city of Mansfield, the township of Madison, and of course the village of Cardington. In many counties. And so you get this whole list of perspective to do that. In addition to that, I think, not only my law enforcement experience, my business perspective. Understanding how business really works, creating budgets, managing budgets, and understanding the relationships that you have with your employees so that you can take care of them and who ultimately will be taking care of you. So, you know, that’s again, another Reader’s Digest version of two minutes of how my law enforcement experience will bring to the table in addition to all my other experiences that I’ve had.
The opportunity to serve in this great state, uh, and this great county. We have a very special place here. And I was part of that and I have been honored to do that for all of you folks for those 13 years and continue.
Enderby
Thirty years of dedicated law enforcement experience. That’s all I know. It’s all I’ve ever done. Aside from my two years in HR with (the City of Ashland), the law enforcement is what I’ve done since I was 19. I rose through the ranks from supervision to command level positions where I served in the same role as what your county sheriff, where your city police chief serves in resource allocation, staying within our budgets, use of force cases, all of the things that are required from the sheriff. And I know what works through that experience, and I know what doesn’t work. I’ve had the opportunity to get promoted and move to different buildings, take on new roles, new leadership roles, learn new people, learn new processes, which is what we will do come January. I’ve had those experiences. I know how to lead and I know how to lead from the very beginning.
Our patches may be different, but the mission is the same, right? We’re here to serve the people and we’re here to run the business that is of the sheriff’s department. And that’s the role of your sheriff. It’s not necessarily just a political figure that’s out at parades and doing all of the fun stuff that comes with the job. It’s doing the business. And I’ve been doing that business in that role over 20 years of my 30 years. Whether it was frontline supervisor, a post commander who was in charge of the entire facility or at the district level where I had seven of our patrol posts, 240 employees with evaluations, discipline, union contracts. I’ve got experience as an HR director when it comes to negotiating union contracts, administering healthcare, working with BWC, knowing the labor laws on what you can and can’t do as a manager when it comes to either disciplining, hiring, best hiring practices, a great deal of experience in law enforcement, because that’s all I’ve done. So I will continue to do that as the next sheriff, lead that department into the future where it’s highly trained, highly disciplined, and highly accountable.
Question 5: If you were elected in March, what is your plan to best prepare yourself to take office?
Enderby
Three things: listening, observing, and being involved. That’s what we’ll do for the next 10 months between March and when we take office learning who the people are, learning their roles, what they do, what drives them, what they’re passionate about, listening to their struggles, studying the budgets, studying their policies and procedures, working very closely with the sheriff and his staff so that this, the transition in January is seamless and no one will ever know that it happened. A great deal of time to meet with stakeholders in the community, continue to visit, visit our township trustees. Our townships are sorely underserved in this community. Our villages are sorely underserved because they don’t get the proactive patrols. And those are the things that I’ve heard while I’m meeting with all of those. So we’ll continue to work and listen to our firefighters, our volunteer fire departments to understand what it is they’re struggling with, and learn about all of those things before we take office in January. And we’ll be so far ahead of the game. That’s my plan.
Schneider
March 19th is six weeks away, roughly. To me, the preparation for me really was started March 19th. My preparation started 13, 16 years ago when I started with the sheriff’s office. I learned every aspect of that building. I learned every job within the structure. Worked in a jail, patroled roads, handled a dog, was on the bomb team to dismember bombs all over the state. But it’s more than that. It’s like sucking the knowledge out of the sheriffs, talking with them, learning all of that, what they have done to help you folks, what policies have been in place and studying those and actually being part of those policies. My career, you know, this was supposed to happen four years ago, but the sheriff decided to run another term. Okay? So, you know, I gotta wait for four more years. So you don’t stop learning that. I’m constantly in the building.
I have been in the building a couple times a week yet still, even after I retired. And I’m talking to folks, I’m watching the policy changes. I’m learning about the changes that are happening in the jail. You know, we have 138 beds compared to the 118 that we used to have. And we have different medical pods in there so we can help our folks. So my learning started when I started at the sheriff’s office in 2003, how important it is to be a sheriff and what the mission of the sheriff is and exactly what his duties are. And so you absorb all of that knowledge, you learn it because you are actually the face of the sheriff when you’re in the car. So my stuff didn’t start, or won’t start on March 19th. It’s going to continue to build on the budget that I’ve looked at for the last six years.
And our steady increase, about 10% in the budget, now it’s about $6.7 million. Probably the best budget the sheriff’s ever had since he’s been in office for 24 years. And so our county commissioners have done a great job in continuing to fund the services that the county needs at the sheriff’s office. And so I’ve been studying all of those things here for at least six years prior to the sheriff retiring. So to me it’s an ongoing process. It has been an ongoing process after patrolling the roads all these years. And so the transition will obviously be very smooth for me on January 6th of 2025.