Springfield was thrust into the national spotlight during the presidential campaign last fall when President Trump and Vice President JD Vance repeated false claims about the city's Haitian residents.
Weeks of violent threats against public institutions, officials and schools followed.
In the latest of WYSO’s City Mayor Series, Jerry Kenney spoke with Springfield Mayor Rob Rue. He reflected on how the city dealt with that unwanted attention and its recent population influx.
Rue also explained the city’s efforts to capitalize on their existing strengths for development.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Rob Rue: The city of Springfield is run by a five-member commission, and it's our job to solve problems. The uniqueness of the season that we just went through is to be thrust into the national spotlight. I brought attention to this a little bit by going on to a news outlet and talking about how we are experiencing an influx of immigrants into our community — influx being the amount of folks that have come into our community. We were having very real strain. I mean, we're here in Yellow Springs, Ohio, and if you had, 3,000 people in a very short time come into this community, it would be an infrastructure strain on your health care system, on your overall systems here. And so, if you multiply those times three and a half, that's what we experienced in Springfield. And so, this is why we brought attention to it.
I am a part of different mayoral groups in the state of Ohio and even in the nation. And immigration reform is an across the aisle, both sides of the aisle need to address immigration reform. Instead of discussing integration — because of the policies that have not been touched for decades — we're talking about influx.
We need to be focusing on how we can integrate folks into our community and have accountability with immigration reform. How to go about that? I have no idea. Nevertheless, Springfield's thrust in the national spotlight because of immigration and because of the amount of folks that came into our community in such a short amount of time. Fast forward to September, due to a social media lie, things were repeated and said about our community that were not true. And so again, we found ourselves in the national spotlight when the national candidates were going on and saying things that just weren't true. We had no verifiable claim. We weren't able to verify the claim. A municipality, a city our size is rarely in a national spotlight, and it was just such a unique experience and very difficult for our community, put a lot of strain in our community, between the threats that came in across the nation and things like that. So we're still recovering. We're still moving forward in Springfield. But it was quite a season.
Jerry Kenney: Well, like any other city, you've got a lot of things going on. One is development. Can you talk about any initiatives that you have going on there?
Rue: Like many other communities, Springfield has been behind the housing curve. We have needed housing for years, and we've not had any significant housing development come to our community for 50 years until now. And so the commission over the last six years has done things like created community reinvestment acts. And we've tried to incentivize people to invest in their current properties because the average age of the houses in our city is I, I don't remember what it is, but it's old.
So we have incentivized people that they wouldn't have to pay additional taxes on reinvesting in their properties. And also, we're looking for developers that wanted to do infill development projects. But we had the Borrer Group out of Columbus come into our community and had an interest in one of the properties on the east side, and they were able to secure about 400 acres of property. They are in the midst of developing a 2,200 multi-use area, which is developing a huge part of our community. And that's exciting. And so that's the biggest housing boom that we've had for decades. And we need it because housing prices in Springfield have been higher than they should be because of the shortage that we have.
And so, this will definitely help houses become more affordable in our community. And so this is really, really exciting. And one of the reasons why a group like the Borrer Group, which is one of the larger of Central Ohio developers, is interested in Springfield is because we've seen jobs come to our community over the last decade. We've had about 8,000 new jobs at least come into our community. And so, this is one of the things that has been exciting. And we've seen this growth. We're flat for a long time in Springfield and then over the last decade, we've see an increase of jobs and increase in interest to living in our community. We're perfectly situated between Dayton and Columbus. You know, we're 30 minutes from Columbus, one hour from the north to Cincinnati, 20 minutes from (Wright-Patterson Air Force Base). When you drive to the base to go to work, you never have the sun in your eyes both ways. So it's a good place to live in Springfield.
Kenney: A number of respondents from social media outreach for other cities have talked about as far as development, the aesthetics of their city and the overall quality of life. Is there anything Springfield is doing to address anything like that?
Rue: One of the things Springfield has done is invest in their downtown core. And so that has been something we've done. We've had a lot of projects down there. We've had some new restaurants come to our community. We have a great, vibrant arts culture between the Westcott House, we have a beautiful art museum. If you took a tour through the (Clark County) Heritage Center, you would be shocked how really professional and how excellent it is, and how much history is in Springfield. So Springfield is a community that has had to fight for everything they have. And so that's a certain characteristic of a Springfielder, is we have a fight, we have a bit of a grit to us. Nothing has come easy for the community. And so when a problem comes into our community, community leaders will come together very quickly, like we experienced this over the fall, and solve this problem. And we will do everything we can to speak with one voice.
Kenney: While we've got you. Any other, initiatives, programs from the city that you care to talk about?
Rue: I think it's important to know that there's a lot of collaboration with community partners. I want to keep saying that, like with the Greater Springfield Partnership. We'll continue to focus on diversity in our local economy. We're focused on our park system. We have a vibrant parks in our community. And in 2024, we invested $1 million in different parks within the community. We're going to put pickleball courts down in our core block. So another reason to come downtown. And then recently, the Clark County Parks District and NTRPD consolidated to have a more, vibrant opportunity to enhance our parks. And so our parks, there's about 97,000 different participants in the programs within our parks every year. And so this is something that Springfield has. We're always focused on trying to improve in our community and do the best we can.
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