Samuel DeShazior was sworn in Monday night as Ward 1’s new representative to Akron City Council. The 12 other council members unanimously voted to appoint the longtime City Hall employee from a pool of 15 applicants, weeks after Nancy Holland unexpectedly resigned from the position.
DeShazior served in the mayoral administrations of both Don Plusquellic and Dan Horrigan. His most recent position listed on the nine-page resume he submitted for the job was director of business retention and expansion for the City of Akron, a role that ended when Mayor Shammas Malik was sworn in on Jan. 1.
Signal Akron spoke with the city’s newest council member about why he applied for the job, his background, the role of City Council in addressing Akron’s challenges and his early morning walks.
The conversation has been edited lightly for clarity.
How soon after Holland’s resignation did you get the idea to apply for the job?
Well, under council law, they had 30 days to appoint someone, and I put my name in there maybe about a week or so after I thought it was appropriate. I had to, of course, take a long pause to see whether or not that’s something, you know, my family and associates would help me with, and also, if there’s something that I could offer.
I’ve been living in this ward for about 13 years now. In 2011, we targeted to come over here, and this is my 13th year being here.
What considerations did you have to make on a personal level? What did you have to weigh to put your hat in the ring?
One of the things was I had worked in Akron for a number of years in the municipality and prior to that the Chamber of Commerce [now the Greater Akron Chamber]. I’ve seen some of the changes that are going on in our local community projects and programs.
I’m involved in the chairmanship of the Progressive Alliance, and I also chair the [East Akron] Neighborhood Development Corp., which does business as Alpha Homes, and I’ve seen those organizations be able to bolster the economic development efforts of our communities.
So I thought maybe I have something to offer here. That kind of made up my mind right there.
The actual cooperation that we’ve got with those organizations, parlayed with the experiences I have working for the municipality as both the deputy mayor for economic development and also deputy planning director, and lastly the director of business retention and expansion, I thought that was fairly unique. Maybe that would be something that could help here in this ward.
You worked in City Hall for quite some time, and it’s my understanding your role, as director of business retention and expansion, ended at the end of Mayor Horrigan’s term in December. Is that correct?
It was the change in the administration that caused that for me. I wasn’t one of the people who came in with the new administration.
So your job with the city ended with Horrigan’s term expiring on Dec. 31 and Nancy Holland resigned on Jan. 5. It seems like perfect timing if you wanted to get back in city government. Did you already have plans lined up?
There was a five-day period in between those two things happening – me leaving and the position coming available. But I was actually out talking to folks because I was looking for my new opportunity. It just so happened that it happened that way. It was quite fortuitous for me to look at it in that regard.
You never know, though. There were 15 very qualified people who were also applying for the opportunity; they saw opportunity in it too. The enthusiasm to be able to be in this ward and perform at a high level was high.
I’m assuming, based on your time at City Hall, you already have professional relationships with at least some City Council members.
Oh yeah, certainly. You know, I was working at City Hall for 17 years. I worked at City Hall from 2006 to 2010, and I worked in the planning department. I was the deputy planning director for economic development. Then I came down in 2010 into economic development, and I transitioned to the deputy mayor for economic development in 2014.
When the old mayor [Don Plusquellic] was leaving and Mayor Horrigan came, we switched up economic development and made it integrated development to get a broader impact. That was in ‘19 when we started that push and I took on a big role as director of business retention and expansion.
So, interaction with people on the council was certainly something we had the chance to work with and be able to do. We knew a lot of the folks on there.
With your extensive economic development history, how does that apply to your new work on City Council? What is City Council getting with your experience?
One thing is about being a part of a team [that] has no real on-the-ground economic experience from a practitioner – there are certain techniques, there are some program overviews that people need to have explained. Maybe it cuts down the time for understanding.
What I’m hoping that I can bring is some of the ideas that I had on ways to get projects done. Understanding budgets is the first place where everyone must start, and that’s what we’re doing now.
We have several different council people who are newbies as well, as you know. For all of us, it’s like being in the first grade again, you get a chance to start off with some of the fundamentals, and hopefully I have some of those fundamentals that I can share.
What are the biggest challenges that City Council can help Akron address?
One thing is – and it’s not just Akron, it’s other cities as well – we need to be able to control the narrative on actually influencing investor decisions.
What does that mean?
Investors, in this case, means people who are investing in the local infrastructure, people who are buying and making decisions on where they want to live in communities, influencing investor decisions for corporations who want to do business in our neighborhoods. They bring along with them opportunities for growth and also opportunities for jobs.
One of the things that is happening is that we started losing population some time in the 1960s. New housing options, that’s important to people in our neighborhoods. It’s also important for people in our neighborhoods to have new housing options and be able to take [advantage of] the realm of what happened during the Horrigan administration for improvements to properties – there’s a 15% tax abatement out there. We need to be able to keep that going so that folks will want to come and invest in our neighborhoods.
Ward 1 is a microcosm because it’s got new housing, middle-range housing built in the ‘50s on, and it’s got housing built in the last 10 years. We’re across the spectrum of communities that’ve been responsible for parts of the impact of what it means to influence investor decisions to come here.
In addition to that, we’ve had folks coming from the refugee community that are coming to our neighborhoods. as well. When folks come and settle, we want them to stay, grow and prosper. To grow as professionals, grow in the workforce, and grow in the housing arena.
You mentioned at last night’s City Council meeting that you get up at 5 a.m. and walk five miles with a group. How often do you actually do that?
Two, three times a week. We have a walking club, it’s some men, and we send out a text message to them and we get out and go walking.
It all started – I used to do it because, healthwise, you need to get out there and get some exercise. So I would get out and start walking the streets.
It got a little bit dicey to walk the streets, but the reason you had to do it at 5:30 in the morning is because there’s not much traffic. After you get to about 6:00 and people start heading to work, you really have got to be careful.
Well, we would get out, we would walk, we would look at things that are out there, we could see significant change one way or another just walking around in the communities. We meet up at different places and say, ‘Let’s start on this side of town’ or ‘Let’s start at this particular point of interest.’ It’s easy now to get on the towpath as well, all of the new trails that are in town.
You learn a lot by just walking.
Where do you enjoy walking the most?
I guess it depends on the time of year. When it’s cold, we still try to walk. We try not to walk when it’s bitterly, bitterly cold, and not when it’s raining because I hate getting wet.
But we like walking the towpath and coming out downtown. We like walking the areas around Summit Lake. We’ve enjoyed walking through the industrial complexes near Firestone and Bridgestone’s investments down on the south side of town. We walk over off of the east side where Goodyear built its new headquarters. We have walked out towards where Signet, the jewelers, [near Summit Mall]. You name it, we’ve probably been there.
We’ve been doing it since 1998 off and on. It’s not every day, but during the week we try to get out a few times.
I know it’s literally as early as possible into your term, but is it your intention to run for the seat in 2025 for the chance to serve another term?
I think that if everything pans out right, there’s no reason not to. I’ll leave it at that now. Of course I haven’t talked to anybody about anything at this point so there’s no preparation for it or any of that. I mean, it hasn’t even been 12 hours, but that’s something we’ll get to. We’ll have to sit down and talk about that.
For the Ward 1 residents who don’t know you yet, do you have a message? What can Ward 1 folks expect from you?
I want to be able to meet the folks in the ward that I don’t know, several of the people that I do know, and there will be efforts to reach out to the different groups in the ward to make sure that we have some dialogue. The one thing about being a ward person is, you have to be able to understand and digest what citizens want. The only way to do that is to meet them – no one should be a stranger.
By not being a stranger, that means that you’ve had some dialogues with people and everybody’s got a basic concept of what you’re trying to do and see if they can plug in.
Folks need to bring some new ideas, too, because nobody’s ever done this by themselves. It’s a group effort.
