Xenia Mayor Ethan Reynolds has been on the job since January and says he loves the city he’s helping to lead.
“We've got a lot of great things going on in the last four months,” he said when I spoke with him in April. “I've enjoyed my time here. I love the people, I love the community. This is my home. My whole family lives here. So this is going to be my home for the rest of my life. I jokingly call it like Cheers, right? Where everyone knows your name.”
"It's about working towards something bigger than yourself.”
We met at his home office just a few blocks away from downtown.
The front room and office of Reynold’s home is filled with political memorabilia: books, posters of the political leaders he admires, like Reagan and Thatcher, and countless vintage campaign buttons and other items.
I first wanted to know what led him into public service.
“It has been instilled in my life from a very young age,” he told me. “My mom and dad always taught me you help those who cannot help themselves, or you go out and you serve. So growing up my mom would make me shovel snow for our elderly neighbors for free with nothing in return because you know that's what we're supposed to do. So I wanted to serve my community. This is my home. A lot of great things are going on. Some things that need to be fixed, but this is where I call home. It's about working towards something bigger than yourself.”
Plan for road repairs
The top issue that needs to be fixed in Xenia, said Reynolds, was the city’s roadways, which he said have been under invested in for 40 years. According to the mayor, the average amount of funding spent on Xenia’s roads from 2008 through 2023 was about $1.4 million.
“We have a $43 million road issue. I just didn't think that was cutting it. And so in the last few years, we've spent around $5.2 million a year on roads and other infrastructure related things. This year we're spending another $2.5 million on roads. So that's important.”
"We've cut nearly a million dollars out of our budget last year to earn that trust back from voters, and by new housing developments and new businesses and new opportunities, bringing new tax bases in."
Reynolds said there are two ways the city can fix its road problem and higher taxes wasn’t one of them.
“Voters are going to tell us no on the income taxes. They've told us it multiple times and they say you can do more with less. So the way we are going to do it is by cutting spending,” he said. "We've cut nearly a million dollars out of our budget last year to earn that trust back from voters, and by new housing developments and new businesses and new opportunities, bringing new tax bases in."
The mayor noted that Xenia had seen a 4-7% increase in income tax revenue year over year because they’re building more homes. The city council recently approved another 400 new homes just outside the downtown area.
“And it's going to be great,” he said. “We need those people, we need new folks to move in. It's not flashy work but it's important work.”
Reynolds showed me some of that work as he took me on a driving tour of the downtown area, expressing his love for its towering courthouse and “beautiful old buildings.
A tour of work underway
On the tour, we traveled over some of the roads Reynolds talked about earlier. The ride down the city’s historic King Street was a bumpy one.
“As you can see, it's very rocky and bumpy but this year we're going to literally take this whole road, fix all the utility work underground, and pave and build a brand new road for these folks,” he said. “These folks have asked for it for years and years and years. And finally, council, we got together and we said we have to make the strategic investment to get this road done.”
Reynolds said, as a thoroughfare, King Street was a very active road.
“People use it to cut across town all the time. This is important. We’ve got to make sure that this is taken care of because you hear it all the time from every resident of this street, or residents from across Xenia talk about how poor this road is. So it'll be fixed.”
With the resident’s desire to have the road fixed, Reynolds said they’re prepared for the inconvenience the renovation will cause for the year it would take just to get all the utility work done. He said the road will get rougher this year, and next as those repairs are made.
Just a short distance from King Street, Reynolds pointed to a new development going up.
“So this is the Xenia Market District here,” he said. “This is a miniature version of The Green is what some people have called it. We're gonna have townhouses, there's going to be some entertainment, there's going to be a lot of new restaurants, green space, a new hotel in the heart of our downtown. New trees are being planted. This is going to be a beautiful thing. In the next two to three years, it'll be done. But it's going to be huge; all the modern amenities that people are looking to see, and yet here in the heart of our downtown. So this is going to be great for everyone downtown, which is huge for us. It is going to take some time.”
Our driving tour came to an end but Xenia Mayor Ethan Reynolds is getting out of the office in other ways. He’s holding monthly coffee events with residents, business owners and local nonprofits. And he’s slowly working his way through residential meetings in all of Xenia’s 21 neighborhoods, getting input on the life in Xenia they want.
