The city of Beavercreek has a population of more than 46,000, according to census data. It’s Greene County’s largest city and the second-largest Dayton suburb.
As part of WYSO’s City Mayors Series, Jerry Kenney spoke with Beavercreek Mayor Don Adams about his service and issues the city is navigating.
This interview has been edited for clarity and length.
Mayor Don Adams: I served on council before as a councilman and vice mayor. And I've had a long history of work here in Beavercreek. I volunteered in several different things with the schools, Civil Air Patrol and Violence Free Futures. I counted up the hours — I got to 20,000 and stopped. So I've done a lot of volunteer work here.
Jerry Kenney: As you know, we put feelers out on social media about the challenges residents are facing and what's going right as well. And several of these applied to most of the Dayton suburbs, which the first one was the overabundance of large gas station projects and developments. And I think you guys have a current moratorium in place on that. So you're already looking at that situation. Tell us about it.
Adams: You know, we put a short-term moratorium on it so that we could take a look at our land use plan as we were kind of surprised by these coming in as well. But they came in in droves, and they were trying to set up next to residential areas. So we put a moratorium on it so we can take a good look at our land use plan and our zoning to make sure that they don't butt up against a residential area.
Kenney: You call that a short-term moratorium. When do you expect to have that process complete and be able to make an assessment for moving forward?
Adams: Well, right now, we're at the end of November is when the time is up. We may have to extend that. And then next year, we're going to (take) an in-depth, comprehensive look at our land use plans and/or zoning. I don't think we've done that in Beavercreek in a long time. And it's time to really take a good hard look at that because we're a young city — we're only about 44 years old. But everything we've done up to this point has been building, and now we're starting to see rebuilding. So we have to really take a look at making sure the land use planning and the zoning is correct for what we're going to do, especially our residents.
Kenney: And their take on it is the aesthetics of the city they live in and the ease with which to move around. And so what's your take on that?
Adams: Well, that's kind of what we're looking at. We don't want to put something where it's going to interfere too much with traffic, even though we can't really consider traffic when something comes before us because of the state laws and things like that. We can't do that. But we still try to take that into consideration. We try to take the feelings and the voices of residents into play, too. It's really tough to turn development down. If someone owns a piece of land and someone else wants to buy it, we really can't stop it. We can try to aesthetically make it better, put some conditions on it, and things like that. But we do listen to the residents. So a good example is the racetrack. We said no and they decided not to do that.
Kenney: You also had a parks levy on the November ballot and I believe that failed, correct?
Adams: It did fail, yes. So now we'll have to look at making possibly some cuts in our parks department. Everything that we do on our levies goes for five years ... and we plan for five years for that money because typically most of that money comes in the beginning. By the end of that five years, it's gone down with inflation, everything else, the costs keep going up. So we'll have to relook at everything that we do in the parks department as a result of that failure.
Kenney: And can you explain exactly what the levy would have covered staffing, operating costs overall?
Adams: Overall, it would have added three people. Another person to our senior center, which is desperately needed. Then two more people to work in the parks department taking care of maintenance and things like that. And then just an update of the playground equipment or things like that, because we have about a 20-year life on all of our playground equipment. Some of it is getting to the point where it's there and beyond now. And we're concerned that without this, we won't be able to replace that and we may end up having to shut some of that down.
Kenney: In your position as mayor, are there any other challenges that you care to highlight or address?
Adams: I think there's challenges every day, but I think most of it is just the normal everyday things that we deal with. And we've got a couple of housing developments that were just approved recently, and we took a good hard look at that to make sure that we put the conditions on it that would be best for our residents and still fit into what we can do and what we're allowed to do legally.
Kenney: And any new projects for the city of Beavercreek or initiatives underway or even being proposed that you care to highlight.
Adams: Well, we just finished up our Citizens Police Academy and our Citizens Academy, which gives our residents an opportunity to find out how the police department works and how the city works, because I think most people don't quite understand how government works. That was my first impression when I first got on council. There were things that I thought we could do that we can't legally. And because we have to follow the (Ohio Revised Code) and we have to follow our charter and then other things that restrict us from doing some of the things that we think we could do. One thing I'd like to highlight is the veterans banner program that we did this year. It was very successful. We put banners up on Dayton, Xenia and North Fairfield (roads) to recognize our veterans. They sold out in like two weeks and we're going to be redoing that again this year. It seems to be something that everybody seems to really enjoy. We've got a couple of things coming up with Winter Welcome on Dec. 13, which is always a fun time, decorating the cabins and Santa Claus is out there and reindeers, and it's just a good time for the community to get together.
Kenney: Anything else on the calendar ahead?
Adams: Looking forward to next year with a lot of good things coming up. We hope to do some more town halls and conversation with council as we did this year. It's just a way to keep up with what the citizens want. We're trying to address their needs and let them know what the city is doing, too.
Kenney: And you had a pretty good response for those.
Adams: We did. We had a good response. It was we had the report just recently, and I'm looking forward to seeing the full report when it's all written, because there was some really good things that came out of it.
Kenney: What's the best way for city residents to follow along with what's happening with the City.
Adams: BeavercreekOhio.gov, everything's there. Everything we do is up there. All of the city council meetings, the zoning meetings, everything that we're doing. There's a calendar on there. You can keep up to date with everything that's going on in the city.
Kenney: Mayor John Adams with the city of Beavercreek, thanks so much.
Adams: Thank you very much.
