Royal Mayo

STEUBENVILLE — Fourth Ward voters will have to decide who they want to be their voice at City Council for the next four years.

The general election ballot pits incumbent Royal Mayo, a Democrat, against Republican Marc Barnes.

Mayo, 58, said Fourth Ward residents want what residents in other parts of the city want — their streets paved, neighborhoods where homes are maintained and grass is cut, even on empty lots, and dilapidated properties are fixed up.

“A councilperson’s job is to represent the needs of the people, as a public servant to residents in the ward, when they call (with their problems and concerns),” said Mayo, a lifelong resident of the Fourth Ward. “We need a boost, a shot of economic development, in the Fourth Ward.”

Mayo still hasn’t given up on securing one of HUD’s Choice Neighborhoods implementation grants for the North End community, though he admits it’s “on pause” due to uncertainty about future funding. Mayo says there’s no doubting what it could do for the community, and in the event funds are released and Steubenville is the recipient, he’s said it would be transformational.

Marc Barnes

“It would create a minimum of 207 housing units, which would be 207 more families coming into the Fourth Ward,” he said. “It could be 500 people … and everywhere that grant has ever been used it’s brought $30 million-$60 million in additional revenue. That would be big.”

“My job is to represent the needs of my constituents, to advocate for the citizens of the Fourth Ward, but I can’t do it alone,” he said, citing as one example a property behind Seventh Street that caught fire more than a year ago and was at risk of collapsing — the type of property the city prioritizes for demolition. Due to funding limitations, it hadn’t yet made it to the top of the city’s demo list. Mayo said he asked why and was initially told the Jefferson County Land Bank was acquiring the property and planned to tear it down in April, though after viewing the rickety remains city officials realized it had been confused with another property and they made arrangements to get it torn down.

“It was a burned-out structure that citizens have to live by and they want it torn down,” he said. “My constituents don’t want to be told, ‘we’re waiting for the land bank to tear it down.’ They need the city to be more responsive to their needs (and) they need an advocate whose primary concern is the residents of the Fourth Ward and not some agenda that doesn’t benefit them.”

Mayo said that, among other things, he’s consistently advocated for improvements that would benefit Fourth Ward residents, particularly at North End Park and to the Martin Luther King Jr. Recreation Center: He was able to get $80,000 in grant money for the weight room at the MLK Center and outdoor exercise equipment at North End Park. Additionally, he pushed for renovations to all of the city’s baseball fields.

“Every decision I make, I take into consideration how it will affect the citizens of the Fourth Ward,” he adds, pointing out his ward is home to three public schools — Wells, Steubenville High School and East Elementary — as well as Franciscan University of Steubenville and Belleview Park. “There needs to be more emphasis on the city funding projects that directly benefit the Fourth Ward. The city still hasn’t set aside any money for the implementation phase of that (Choice Neighborhoods) grant, the government wants to know what your buy in is if you get it — to me it’s a no brainer … How much would the city be willing to spend to get a $50 million grant …t o build additional housing units, market rate homes? They haven’t set aside one penny (for it.)”

Barnes, 32, owns the Grocery Box and, as president of the Harmonium Project, organizes First Fridays on Fourth Street.

He says the Fourth Ward’s needs are many.

“It needs affordable housing for families, the historic lighting extended all the way from the high school to the historic district. It needs trees planted in tree planters instead of weeds … quality of life stuff,” he said. “It needs slum lords to take care of their properties or be run out of town. We need to aggressively invite businesses to open up in the heart of Steubenville and the downtown. And another thing, we need to end the food desert –people need access to food, meat, eggs, that kind of thing. I think the downtown Fourth Ward has been unfairly deprived of this kind of basic food supply.”

He blames City Council for that.

“There’s an attitude on council if a corporation says ‘no’ they throw up their hands and say we tried,” Barnes said. “But I think that’s missing the opportunity to empower small businesses owned by locals to serve the needs of the community rather than hoping that large corporations owned by people who aren’t from here will save the day.”

Barnes said it’s great to hope that millions of dollars will find its way into the North End through HUD’s Choice Neighborhood grant program, but said the program is “dead-in-the-water” for now, at least, so “we need to decide what we can do here, among ourselves, to improve our space, our neighborhood and our lives. That grant is on hold right now, its future is uncertain and its already a competition with other cities. It’s not something that should structure what decisions we make. We shouldn’t be waiting on that grant, which is a dice roll, to improve our surroundings.”

If he’s elected, Barnes said one of his first priorities would be to “push the city to hire a regular grant writer so that we stop missing opportunities to fund the improvement we need in Steubenville. I’m talking a dedicated grant writer for the whole community.”

He said he’d also like to start meeting with people who’ve expressed interest in opening businesses in Steubenville “and try to get them to invest millions of dollars into the downtown (collectively).”

“I think being on council would allow me to serve the Fourth Ward in a direct way to advocate for people who experience any sort of need or injustice,” he said. “It puts me in a position where I can be of service to them, it’s what I try to do at the grocery store and in my work with Harmonium Project. I see it as another way to be directly helpful and improve the Fourth Ward.”

Council, he suggests, “doesn’t really work as a team right now. I think part of the reason is there isn’t a tireless advocate for the city’s center, and that’s what the Fourth Ward is — it’s what everyone recognizes as being the center of the city, it’s special. If they could have someone who advocates for the Fourth Ward understanding it is our city center, I think it would be easier to get a consensus on projects that would improve the downtown.”