The election results yesterday brought a lot of change across Ohio. But a lot stayed the same locally — Paul Wiehl was elected to his second term as Athens mayor.
With four more years to lead the city, we hope Wiehl does things a little differently this time around. That starts with changing the mentality that good is good enough. Wiehl needs to be better than good enough and needs to constantly work toward better solutions.
Since he’s going to serve another term, he has to be more transparent with the student body. If he wants to improve relations with the students, and the community as a whole, he needs to be more outgoing. Instead of expecting students to come to him, he must instead show that he is willing to reach out to them.
Along the same lines, Wiehl needs to continue to improve communication with the university. During his last term, he helped create a committee of university and city officials to help resolve issues that may cause disagreements. Showing that he is open to work with the university could ease the tensions between the two.
Being open shouldn’t stop at communication with students. Wiehl needs to foster more relationships with people who have different viewpoints and different leadership styles.
Wiehl’s GOP challenger Randy Morris has said he doesn’t intend to run for elected office in Athens again. Morris proved himself a candidate who cares deeply about this community and we hope Wiehl approaches him and other Athens residents with different viewpoints and brings them into the fold. We need a diverse set of thinkers involved in the decision-making process, and as mayor, it’s up to Wiehl to foster a dialogue across political lines.
Wiehl made a lot of progress in his last term. He successfully balanced the city’s budget and made progress where he wanted to. A good example is the improvements he has made to the bike lanes. He has shown that he wants to promote more pedestrian mobility around town. Wiehl needs to continue executing his plan to nurture more sustainable ways of getting around the city.
With that in mind, Wiehl mentioned he wanted to create a unified transit system by creating one bus system for the entire city instead of a number of different buses to separate apartment complexes. It’s obvious he supports a healthy transit system so we would hope to see him follow through with this plan.
There’s no doubt that, after 20-plus years of serving Athens, Wiehl is an asset to this city. But the bottom line is, as its leader, he needs to strive to drastically improve communication with every citizen — students included.
Editorials represent the majority opinion of The Post’s executive editors.
