Mayor, The Village of Oak Harbor

My name is Quinton Babcock and I'm mayor of the village of Oak Harbor. So as mayor, you spend most of your time working on community relations and building strategic partnerships. For example, one thing is we are currently working right now to receive state funding to put in a river walk. We're right on the Portage River, so this would put a walkway along the Portage River for people to use. It would make it more accessible for older folks and for people with disabilities. And what sort of happens with this is there's a lot with it. There's an organization who's pushing it and that sort of private, non-profit organization. And sort of, when we have the opportunity to do this, how does this fall in sort of with what we're looking to accomplish? We're looking to do economic development, we're looking to provide more opportunities for people who live in Oak Harbor to enjoy themselves and have recreational opportunities. And so sort of when opportunities like this come along, where someone's sort of saying, "Hey, maybe this "is something we pursue", then you say, "Okay, well I think this is great. "It furthers our economic development and sort of "things for people to do in Oak Harbor". And so then is sorta becomes your job, as sort of the public liaison for the village of Oak Harbor to say okay, how do we get in contact with our state representatives and our state senators and any other people we know politically, to try to get this in the state budget and this sorta thing. It's definitely one of the more unconventional jobs, for mayors in particular. And most mayors in the state of Ohio are part-time and they typically receive some sort of stipend between 3 and $20,000, and they're a mayor. And obviously if you're a big city, that looks a little bit different. And so you're doing whatever you have to do in the nine to five, right? You're making sure that you meet with your department heads and you meet with your important leaders and you say go to the Chamber of Commerce 'cause you need to talk to them within the nine to five. But then after that, even if you did work nine to five, you still have to go to say, a community meeting for the county or for, we have the Toledo Metropolitan Area Council of Governments and they hold great meetings. And making sure that you're represented in those or just anything like that. Or even, of course everybody likes to go to your high school football game, but as a mayor it's almost important that you go to the high school football game and make sure you're there and you're supporting them and making sure the community knows that you're a part of the community.