Kyle Schmehl announces candidacy for city council
The race for St. Marys’ Second Ward is going to be a contested affair after Kyle Schmehl announced he is running for Ashley Randolph’s seat. Schmehl will be running on the Republican ticket against David Thomas, who is running as a non-partisan. Randolph’s seat is available after this term because she announced she is running for Mayor, which prevents her from keeping her seat.
Schmehl works at Telephone Service Company in in Wapakoneta in the Network Operations Center but is also in the U.S. Army Reserves.
“I joined the Army Reserves at seventeen, and I’m currently in my last year as I’m set to medically retire,” said Schmehl.
Schmehl is currently serving as a squad leader in the 486th Engineer Company as a Carpentry and Masonary Specialist and noted that he has deployed twice to Afghanistan over his career. He also trained the Honduran Military on operations before they went on a mission for the United Nations. In addition to this he has served to the St. Marys Township Fire Department as a volunteer firefighter since 2011.
When asked why he wants to run for the seat, he had this to say.
“I’ve always dedicated my life to public service. Always tried to be something bigger than my own life,” said Schmehl. What Schmehl wants to do as a councilman, is to see some change.
“I just want to keep the city running and try to bring some beautification to the area,” said
Schmehl. He said that he spends time in downtown Celina,
Wapakoneta, and St.
Marys, and that the two neighboring downtowns seem to be more active. “I want to see our downtown be as active as the others.”
Schmehl said that he believes the role of government is to listen to people, and do do what they want.
“We should abide to what the people want us to do, that’s the role of government,” said Schmehl. He said that when
he’s attended council meetings, that too many times, emergency legislation is passed without input from the public. “I know that some of it makes sense to be passed, but not everything the City of St. Marys does needs to be passed under emergency legislation.”
As an example, Schmehl cited emergency legislature relating to a Putt-Putt Golf Course in K.C. Geiger Park.
“I understand the occasional error that we need to change, but a putt putt thing out in K.C. Geiger, that isn’t an emergency to put funding to it,” said Schmehl. One of the issues that Schmehl said he sees is that people aren’t involved in local government.
“In the society we live in now, social media is probably the way to go with,” said Schmehl when asked how he planned to get people more involved.
“In the city in general, it would be a good idea to revamp the social media presence,” said Schmehl. He said that currently there is a lack of interest in local government, and he wants that to change as well.
Schmehl said that when he returned from his most recent deployment, he noticed that there was a lot of whining and complaining on Facebook, but that no one seemed to be doing anything about it.
“I decided to put my name in the hat as there is no better place to start than locally. I made the decision to run, and I ran,” said Schmehl. His first run was in 2021 against Ashley Randolph, a race he lost, but a seat now is within his sights again.
“Turned out that she is looking to go on to bigger and better things, so I gave it another run. We’re going to try again and see if we can’t make a difference,” said Schmehl.
“I want to go in there without having an agenda. I want to listen to the people, the way things were originally intended to be,” said Schmehl. He said that while he has personal opinions on matters, that his job is to listen to, and act on, topics that his constituents want him to, even if it goes against his point of view.
“If I have people in my ward who approach me and want me to vote a different way, if thats what they want, that is what I’m going to do regardless of how I feel because that is what an elected official is supposed to do,” said Schmehl.