Battle for Monessen mayor seat heats up

By KRISTIE LINDEN
klinden@yourmvi.com

The mayoral race in Monessen is hotly contested and has only grown more contentious as the primary draws closer.
Mayor Matt Shorraw, 30, a Democrat, is running for re-election against fellow Democrat Ron Mozer, 66.
Shorraw said he’s running for another term because, “despite the craziness of the first two years, we’ve gotten a lot of stuff done.”
Shorraw is referring to the majority of his first two years in office when he didn’t attend meetings.
“I see a lot of opportunity in Monessen, with housing, with businesses,” Shorraw said. “We’re in a good spot to grow. I think we’ve gotten a lot of good things done. We have the opportunity to keep things moving in the right direction.”
Mozer said he has a strong sense of civic duty, and serves on the city’s Redevelopment Authority as its treasurer.
“I’ve had a big interest in what’s going on in city government since I moved here,” Mozer said.
Mozer moved to Monessen in 2007 when ECI in the city bought his business and he moved here with his son in-law to set up the satellite infrastructure. Mozer had started a business automating gas wells in New Mexico, but soon had to expand once all of the wells were automated so he moved to Colorado. Then he spent two years developing a box that enables communication with all of the equipment at a gas well through a satellite from anywhere in the world.
That’s when ECI bought his company and he moved to Monessen. Mozer expected to retire four years ago, but the deal fell through and he reclaimed his intellectual property and rebuilt his business.
Shorraw is a lifelong Monessenite, a fourth-generation city resident who lives in his great-grandparents’ house.
“I could have left, gone to Nashville with my music degree,” Shorraw said. “But I live in my family house, my roots are here. I see people out and about and they say, ‘Hey, I worked with your pap-pap.’ That’s why I stuck with this, because I love this place.”
Shorraw said he feels fulfilled in Monessen and has memories of listening to his grandmother tell stories about the history of the city. He wants to bring new residents to the city and to know what kind of history Monessen has.
“Monessen was a big deal,” Shorraw said. “We were important industrially, politically. We were the big city. This place matters and it’s important to start rebuilding it.”
For Shorraw that means trying to attract developers to come to the city. He said there has been an increased interest in people who want to buy properties, both vacant lots and buildings. Some qualify for the city’s program of forgiving tax liens and some are owned by private residents.
“We don’t need to advertise them, there is a national housing shortage and people are able to work from home,” Shorraw said. “We have a ton of vacant buildings and getting downtown occupied again is crucial.”
Monessen enacted an ordinance within the last year that states anyone who purchases a building must bring it up to code within a year of purchase or have a plan to do so. Shorraw said that doesn’t always mean fixing it. It could mean demolishing a structure and working fresh on the land.
“I would like to continue working on this,” Shorraw said. “I haven’t seen people this excited about property before, we need to capture this moment and run with it.”
Mozer began trying to figure out how to improve Monessen when he started his business here. He said he put together a survey and went to every merchant asking what could be done to make Monessen better.
Mozer said there were two things that came up consistently — blight and drugs/crime. He felt that blight is something that everyone can do their part in helping to fix. Mozer had his employees start to pick up litter regularly. He approached some kids who had thrown candy wrappers from a vehicle to help him pick up trash for a Saturday, gave them T-shirts that said “Taking the Mess out of Monessen and took them out for ice cream afterward.”
Ultimately, though, Mozer found that the street was getting covered again with litter faster than he could clean it up again.
So he decided to see what could be done about the second issue — drugs and crime. Mozer visited with retired city police chief John Mandarino.
Mandarino told Mozer if he wanted to see the problem they were dealing with, to go to a specific intersection.
Mozer went and said he saw a man dealing drugs with an actual line of cars that seemed like the line at a McDonald’s drive-thru.
Mozer and Mandarino had meetings with residents and decided to put security cameras on a building, aiming at the intersection, and feed the data to the police station.
Mozer said the drug dealer didn’t return to the intersection and it radically changed that area of town. Mandarino directed Mozer to put more cameras up throughout town with drug enforcement funds.
Soon other neighboring towns wanted them as well and now it’s a big portion of Mozer’s business.
Shorraw said the biggest issue facing the city right now is a lack of population growth because it ties into all other issues Monessen has.
“We need to promote the city,” Shorraw said. “We need to get people to move here.”

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Ron Mozer

Monessen Mayor Matt Shorraw