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Lucas County Commissioner
Pete Gerken is perfectly at home in the black community. In
fact, he is the type of friend who, rather than knocking on
the front door, instead, walks directly in and announces,
“I’m home.” He then, without waiting for an offer, goes
straight to the kitchen to “fix a plate,” kicks back and
“keeps it 100.” Yet, he is embraced with open arms at black
cultural institutions such as festivals and churches because
you know that “he always has your back,” said one community
leader.
Commissioner Gerken is
running for re-election on the November 8 ballot. I spoke
with him about his accomplishments and the County’s agenda
for the African-American community. This is part one of our
two-part conversation.
Perryman:
Let’s begin with your history and how you profile as a
candidate. How did you arrive where you are today?
Pete Gerken:
Everything I learned as a politician I learned on the shop
floor at Jeep. I spent 20 years in an environment where I
had to listen to people and help them navigate their
problems. I may only have a bachelor’s degree from the
University of Toledo, but I got a PhD in life from the shop
floor of the Jeep plant. It was the most diverse
environment that anybody could spend his or her time in.
Young, old, black, white, Hispanic, Muslim, Baptist, I
learned a lot about all kind of cultures and how to listen
and react to people. My mentor, as you know, through this
whole process was a guy named George Davis, Jr. He not only
gave me the chance, this great man mentored me through my
political career. He got me a job at Jeep, helped me and
asked me to get in the political world. So I look to my
heroes in life, and there are guys like Baldemar Velasquez
and George Davis, Jr.
I was appointed to City
Council as kind of the working man’s candidate in ’96, got
elected twice after that, then saw a need for a different
viewpoint from the Lucas County Commissioners, and was
elected in 2004 against the suburban guy named Harry Barlos.
I’ve been in the office for the last 12 years.
Perryman:
So let’s first talk about the Gerken economic agenda as it
relates to the African-American community. How would you
describe Lucas County’s economic investment in the
African-American community since you were elected
commissioner?
Gerken:
Well, let’s start with the biggest project that we ever did
in the county’s history which was the $105 million dollar
Huntington Center. We set a high bar for minority
participation at 15 percent, which we hit. Now that 15
percent wasn’t like others. The County’s was real boots on
the ground, and actual people working were being counted. We
looked at payrolls and paystubs; hours worked and
collectively came up with the fact that there was enough of
the share that the community asked us to hit. And we did hit
it. The 15 percent is higher than any other project in
Toledo, either the City of Toledo’s or TPS.
So when we have projects
that put people to work we make sure that proportionally,
minorities get that share. We continue to do that today as
we work hard to create new living wage and life changing
jobs back at some of our old traditional worksites that
always had a large proportionate share of minority
communities. We’re recreating that. Now with almost 1,000
jobs coming to Jeep Industrial Park, our outreach is right
now to the community and we’re targeting the neighborhoods
around that plant in the central city to come in and train
and get ready for these jobs. We know the jobs aren’t like
when Pete was there and George Davis said he should get a
job. What we have to do as those jobs come in the next 18
months per my economic platform for our minority
participants is to make sure targeting those specific
training programs to get in the door. We make sure that we
employ people of diversity and even up to our senior
offices. So we have a pretty diverse…we start at the top, we
find opportunities for people for life changing jobs and
some projects that we have created. We’ve kept our promise
to the community for jobs.
Perryman:
Your opponent, when he was Mayor of Toledo, had a very
diverse cabinet and executive staff. Talk more about your
diversity. Who are those people and what do they do?
Gerken:
James Meadows is the Director of HR, Human Resources for the
entire county.
Perryman:
An African-American male, right?
Gerken:
Correct. And, obviously, Laura Jenkins is the county
administrator. We also have Jessica Ford as senior project
manager of Administration and Theo Foreman is senior project
manager over at Work Force Development. I think we’ve
looked at our ratio of diversity and minority hiring and
across the whole employment number and we’re about 18-20
percent. We have a good representation of African Americans
at the top, at the bottom and in the middle.
Perryman:
So let’s keep on specifics. In describing your MBE agenda
since 2004, you talked about the Huntington. Can you talk
dollars? Can you provide metrics for other investments?
Gerken:
The Huntington share alone would’ve been $15 million
dollars. We continue to do outreach for minority business
partners on all of our contracts. I can do as much as the
law allows us to contract with minority partners. Every
major contract that we’ve let out from Fifth Third Field to
Huntington Center to the new jail piece that we may build
always has a minority component on the team. We will
continue to do that.
Perryman:
So your economic agenda going forward is focused on minority
inclusion and at least 15 percent participation in MBE
economic projects?
Gerken:
It’s not only been the mark that we have, but we always hit
it, too. Some political organizations will talk about a
percentage and most of them don’t make it work, but we do on
our side. In addition, when you look at our community
investment, we put a million dollars into community funding.
I would say at least half, if not 3/4 of those dollars have
been to support projects in the central city for minority
communities.
We’ve invested in the
Toledo Urban Federal Credit Union to the tune of $100,000 to
close the financing gap necessary to get their new building
built and opened. They know that they need some sustainable
partnerships as they grow and we’ve committed to help them
keep growing over the next three years also.
We’ve invested two years
in a row in the African American Festival. We have also
invested as prime sponsors for Dorr Street Live. So we are
committed to providing community funding, and if there is a
legitimate project that the minority community brings to us,
we will use our tax dollars to invest back into those
projects.
In addition, we invested
to get the Warren AME/J. Frank Troy Senior Services Center
rebuilt and thereby brought a $3 million building to the
central city at 545 Indiana Avenue.
(Next week we talk with
Commissioner Gerken about his agenda for Strengthening Black
Families)
Contact Rev. Donald Perryman, D.Min, at
drdlperryman@centerofhopebaptist.org
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