The Morning Journal (Lorain, OH)
Mayor puts focus on serving people
Mayor G. David Gillock maintains an open-door policy in city hall office and values a trusting relationship with the public.
A town with a population of no more than 500 people, Mount Auburn, Illinois, was where North Ridgeville Mayor G. David Gillock cultivated a civic-oriented mind.
“My dad (George W. Gillock) was always very civicoriented in Illinois,” he said. “He was on the school board and president of the union and a volunteer fireman, so I got it in my blood there. I was a volunteer fireman with my dad and was appointed village trustee there.”
It was in this small town that Gillock found a way into the insurance trade with Aetna health care, which transferred him to the company’s national accounts department in Cleveland in 1978.
He and his wife Beverley bought a two-story colonial in North Ridgeville and have resided in the town ever since.
“It’s amazing. It has that small town aspect to it. Even though we’re growing, that’s still there,” Gillock said of the town.
Beverley worked in the main office of now SafetyService Director Jeffry J. Armbruster, who owned and managed multiple gas stations at the time.
Gillock said Armbruster became an integral part in how Gillock got involved in North Ridgeville’s politics.
Armbruster, who served as mayor from 1989 to 1995, was the first to convince Gillock to run for ward councilman by putting his name in the hat.
“I’ve always had it in my
blood, but it was kinda having that relationship with Jeff already being in politics kinda got my wife and I involved,” he said.
Although Gillock lost the race by 17 votes, he was later elected in 1999 as councilman at large, then becoming council president from 2001 to 2003.
Having acquainted himself with the functions of the city, Gillock then ran and was elected as mayor in 2003.
“I was familiar with our charter, with our ordinances and how things work, so it was a pretty easy transition for me to move in,” he said. “From that standpoint, suddenly you’ve got big decisions to make, but I had a lot of people who had been there for a long time that give good advice.”
“Jeff always said, ‘You’re gonna be mayor someday,’ and I used to laugh at him,” Gillock added.
He is now approaching the end of his fourth consecutive term as mayor of North Ridgeville.
“It’s a very interesting job and it can be satisfying,” he said. “It can also be very frustrating, but most of the time you get to work with a lot of different people... Serving the people is really what it’s all about and that even goes when you’re widening a road or doing a big project.”
Gillock said meeting residents where they are and negotiating has been integral to making sure residents feel heard.
“The thing that we instilled in our residents, it took a while, is a trust,” he said. “We say ‘We have an open-door policy’ and residents come in and if I’m available, we meet with them. I get residents now that just stop by to say hello.”
Gillock said the larger projects sometimes prove to be controversial, even if in the community’s best interests.
The construction of a roundabout at Mills Road and State Route 83 was highly criticized.
“Especially on social media, it was just people saying ‘This is the worst thing we’ve ever done,’ ‘Terrible idea,’ ‘Death circle,’ and once it’s done, we still hear every week that that’s the greatest thing we’ve ever done,” Gillock said.
Since the installment of the roundabout last year, one accident and one complaint have been recorded at the intersection, he said.
Although funding for infrastructure can be cumbersome, Gillock said the most difficult issues to deal with as mayor are neighborhood disputes.
Gillock said his administration’s most accomplished projects is the widening of Center Ridge Road, which has taken his full 12 years in office to get off the ground.
The project has now been adopted by the Ohio Department of Transportation in order to ease congestion, with only 12 percent of the funds coming directly from the town.
“When I ran for mayor the first time, I said, ‘I wanna widen Center Ridge Road,’ and everybody said, ‘It can’t be done.’ They said they’ve been talking about it for 30 years.
“I was like, ‘Watch me.’”