2023 Ravenna Voter Guide: Only one city candidate race contested
Welcome to the 2023 Voter Guide produced by the League of Women Voters and published by the Record-Courier.
There's only one contested race in Ravenna Nov. 7 with write-in candidate John Sferra challenging incumbent Tim Calfee for City Council Ward 4, which covers southeast Ravenna.
Issues, including a Ravenna school levy, are covered elsewhere.
The following races are uncontested.
Mayor: Frank Seaman
Law Director: Frank Cimino
President of Council: Andrew Kluge
City Council At Large: Christina West
City Council Ward 3: Matt Harper
Board of Education (2 seats): Pamela Calhoun and Michael Wisniewski
This year's primary election on Nov. 7 will see Ohioans voting for local offices and issues. Early voting is taking place at the Portage County Board of Elections, 449 S. Meridian St. Ravenna.
Responses are not edited, vetted or corrected by the League of Women Voters or Record-Courier to allow candidates to speak in their own words.
Ravenna City Council Ward 4
Tim Calfee
Education: B.S. in Education, University of Akron; M.S. in School Counseling, University of Akron; M.S. in Administration, University of Akron; Ph.D. in Curriculum, University of Akron.
Training & Experience: I have worked in education in 48 years. I have been a elementary school teacher, school counselor, principal, and university professor. I was the Superintendent of the Ravenna School District for 10 years and also the Superintendent of Streetsboro for one year. I taught at the University of Akron and at Malone University. I have served as the 4th Ward City Councilman in Ravenna for the last 4 years.
What is your vision for your community and how would you implement it? To make Ravenna a great place to live, work, shop, and play.
What do you see as the most important issue facing your City and how do you propose addressing it? Ravenna, like many cities, faces a number of challenging issues including: economic development, maintaining and improving city services, improving our city park system, continuing to upgrade our roads and sidewalks and knowing how to best spend our limited resources. I couldn't say which is our most important issue, but are all things we want work on to improve the quality of life in Ravenna. To address these issues, the Mayor and City Council will work together to use our resources to best accomplish our goal of making Ravenna a great place to live, work, shop, and play.
Identify the challenges facing your city and your recommendations for solving them. A: Challenges : Bringing new businesses to Ravenna and supporting existing businesses to help them grow and thrive. Renewing, Restoring, and Beautifying our downtown. Working to keep all properties in Ravenna well maintained, safe and attractive. Keeping the city safe and well protected. Fixing all of the sidewalks that are broken, uneven, or in disrepair in the city.
Solving the problems: To address these issues, the Mayor and City Council will work together to use our resources to best accomplish our goal of making Ravenna a great place to live, work, shop, and play.
John Sferra
Write-in candidate
Education: DeVry Institute of Technology Dallas Texas
Training & Experience: Product Manager Diebold 22vyrs, Journeyman Carpenter, Heavy equipment operator
What is your vision for your community and how would you implement it? I have visited many of small towns surrounding the Ravenna area and they all have one thing in common. A DRAW. I left Ravenna for a day to visit another town for the day spend my money and support their local economy. These other communities have the Cuyahoga river that runs through them, this creates a nature draw, the falls, the river walks. In Ravenna some out of the box thinking has to occur. Ravenna has a couple 5 acre plots of land downtown, and I know there’s talks about building a new fire department on one of them, is this the right thing to do. I don’t know. Maybe for our next Balloon A Fair we use this open area to launch balloons and keep the attraction downtown, instead of swiftly moving them out of the city to the township where they currently launch.
What do you see as the most important issue facing your City and how do you propose addressing it? I counted 22 vacancies downtown, 12 more and it’s a ghost town. I would like to encourage businesses with a funding program that offsets some of the financial burden facing small business startups.
Identify the challenges facing your city and your recommendations for solving them. The role of local authorities is to lead and represent their communities. They must engage with their communities and encourage community participation in decision-making, while considering the needs of people currently living in communities and those who will live there in the future. I’m a Write in candidate for City council so it’s very important to me that I knock on all doors to introduce myself. Two questions I ask “who is your current city council representative, and have you ever attended city council meetings” the answer has predominantly been don’t know, and no to both. The challenge is community involvement by way of communication, and encouragement to participate and attend council meetings.
This article originally appeared on Akron Beacon Journal: 2023 Ravenna Voter Guide: Only one city candidate race contested
