Two candidates are vying for the open First Ward seat on Bowling Green City Council.
Republican David Drain and Democrat Damon Sherry are both seeking election to the council seat, currently held by Councilman Nick Rubando.
Rubando is not seeking another term on council.
Drain said he grew up on a farm in Liberty Township and graduated from Bowling Green High School and BGSU before a varied career over 40 years in locations such as Texas, Pennsylvania, Missouri and Arizona, where he worked for Intel. He moved back to Bowling Green in 2019.
“As you might guess, I’m here to stay,” he said. “I’m not going anywhere.”
As to why he is running for council, Drain noted that he was prompted by the city’s then-proposed zoning ordinance.
“I saw what was happening with the zoning, what went on with the pedestrian residential district,” Drain said, “and it was awful. It would have really further degraded so much property on the east side of town and begun to ruin the west side as well. … So, after watching council for months battle us on every little point of that,” Drain decided “someone needs to run for council and bring a little more open-minded, sane, listening attitude to council.”
Saying he couldn’t find anyone else to run, Drain decided to do it himself.
Drain said that as he’s been on the campaign trail, he asks people what they’d like to see changed, and what they want to remain the same. He said that what respondents have wanted to see changed has varied, but big themes have been the need to improve housing in the city, speaking about the difficulty of finding affordably-priced homes to buy. He said respondents have repeatedly said they want to maintain the city as a safe small town which is friendly and family oriented.
He said there has been a lot of conflict over college student behavior.
“I recognize that we have, what, maybe 15,000 students on campus and probably at least 14,900 of them are really great people,” Drain said, “but it just takes one really bad interaction with someone to tip the scale” and make a BG citizen not want to live near students. He said that there was formerly a city-university commission in town which needs to be resurrected, but also improved. “It was a foolishly designed commission in the first place,” Drain said, but that “with a little improvement, that could make” improvements in the city.
Drain noted that he is one of the founders of the BG Strong organization, and that they have been distributing a handout, developed with the city, to students to help communicate expectations when they move into neighborhoods.
“We’ve got a lot of big plans for that,” he said of BG Strong, which is focused on neighborhood and property issues. “I don’t expect to see large improvement quickly,” saying it took Athens, Ohio, 10 years to turn things around there.
“It’s going to take time,” Drain said. “We’ve let this community degrade for 50 years now at least and it’s going to take some time to turn that back around.”
Of what skills he feels he’d bring to council, Drain said he has been an industrial engineer and a mathematician, and has worked in industrial factories. He said he understands large complex organizations and how to make them work.
“A city is a complex organization,” said Drain. “You have a lot of constituencies with interests that compete and I’m used to working in that kind of environment and solving” related problems.
Of what he’d like to accomplish on council, Drain said he’d love to bring more businesses to Bowling Green so there would be more opportunities for good jobs. He said that his favorite are manufacturing firms.
“The work is well-paying, generally, it is persistent, it doesn’t go away if a restaurant closes or fashions change,” Drain said. “We have a few of those already. I’d like to see many more so people can have the opportunity to have a good job of their choice here.”
Democratic candidate Damon Sherry is a first-generation college student at BGSU, in their fourth year of pursuing a degree in political science. While they are a first-time candidate, Sherry said they have served on a variety of executive boards in the last two years, currently serving as the president of the College Democrats, vice president of the Queer-Trans Student Union, college chapter chair of the Wood County Young Democrats, and secretary for the College Democrats of Ohio. They were formerly the director of student engagement for BGSU’s Undergraduate Student Government and political director for College Democrats of Ohio.
Sherry is non-binary and uses they/them pronouns.
They said they want to run for council because they care and “I see issues within the city that I want to fix,” and issues where Bowling Green could improve and be competitive with other cities in the county. They said they originally came from a small town and knows what it feels like to be forgotten by a local government or by those who are supposed to represent them. Sherry said they want to make sure that in Ward 1 there is a direct and open connection between the government and the surrounding area.
Sherry said among their top issues are sustainability, saying they want to keep the city’s green energy usage high. Sherry said they want to transition from fluorescent lights to LEDs in the city’s lights, saying other communities like Perrysburg are doing this and are projected to save $9-$10 million annually. LEDs, they said, use less energy, break down easier in landfills and improve lighting and visibility.
Another issue is infrastructure and roads, saying some of the sidewalks in the First Ward pose hazards when walking at night and are difficult to get over if someone is in a wheelchair. They also said some of the roads in the ward are cracked or broken-looking, and “it kind of tears down the look of our beautiful city.”
A further issue is accountability with rental codes. Sherry said there has been trouble enforcing rental codes and as a tenant themselves, and seeing other rental properties around the city, they see things that should be enforced and problems with rental companies not doing what they need to do to keep people safe.
“I think I bring a new perspective,” Sherry said of what skills they think they would bring to council. “I’d be the first member of Gen Z on council,” as well as the first openly queer and non-binary person, they said. They also mentioned they were born post 9/11, into a generation experiencing school shootings and the climate crisis.
As for what they would like to accomplish on council, Sherry said “I think that the conversation about dog parks in our city is a really good one” which can bring the community together. Having such a dog park, they said, “emboldens the community connection.”
Further, Sherry said they are in favor of bike lanes, saying there is a parking issue in the city. Adding bike lanes would make both roads and sidewalks safer, they said. Bike lanes could make it so that not everyone needs to drive a car, Sherry said, which could decrease traffic and lower carbon emissions.
Sherry also said they would like to seek out the means for the creation of a community garden. “I think it’s very important to help out and kind of remind ourselves that” no matter the size of a city’s population, there are people that fall behind. The garden would be “a community effort to keep each other healthy and keep each other fed,” assisting when food pantries aren’t able to keep up with demand. Such a garden, Sherry said, would also help create a sense that citizens “have each other’s backs.”
“I think it’s important that everybody is being taken care of,” Sherry said.
“I think it’s really strong,” Sherry said of the community. “It kind of has this sense of no matter where you’re from, you’re accepted into this city. It’s really beautiful in that way. When I first came here, I felt home. I felt like right when I moved in, I had a community next to me. There was a lot of openness to having new people come to our beautiful city and our great downtown is so beautiful to look at.” They also pointed to the strong local economy, and the fact that citizens aren’t afraid to organize together and unite behind causes.
