Sarah Moser resigns as county ED director

VW independent/submitted information

The Van Wert County Board of Commissioners announces the resignation of Sarah Moser from her contracted position of county economic development director. Moser, who had served in that post for most of the last two years, leaves the county to take employment as a production manager with Apex Energy.

“Although we’re sad to lose Sarah, we understand that there are opportunities in the private sector for a person with her energy and ability to innovate,” Commissioner Todd Wolfrum noted. “She accomplished a lot in the short amount of time she was here and we will be building on many of her programs as the county and Van Wert city combine their economic development efforts.”

Moser was charged with two primary objectives upon taking the job, Wolfrum noted, and made great progress on each front. The first was to figure out how to end the county’s steady decline in population and the second was to bring the county’s villages, townships, and other entities that had been excluded for years from the economic development discussion back to the table.

With Moser’s help, over $2 million of grant money went out to the county’s villages to rebuild infrastructure. In addition, all of the villages and townships were brought into a collaborative effort by Moser to win a grant to work toward combining the county’s economic development efforts into one office. The villages were also brought into a collaborative effort to coordinate their grant applications.

But, according to Wolfrum, perhaps Moser’s biggest accomplishment in her time as director was identifying the fundamental demographic problem confronting the county.

“We were trying to figure out what we need to do to keep our kids and our population and eventually we learned that we have a crippling demographic problem not just here but in the entire region,” Wolfrum said. “Knowing that, we can create more effective programs going forward rather than just waiting for the next company to take an interest in our community. Sarah was the one that figured out that fundamental problem.”

Moser created several programs to begin addressing the county’s declining population and loss of its young people. Middle school physics was implemented to foster innovative young people and make the community more attractive to families. Van Wert Works is a website she created to allow local employers to post job openings to show people from out of town what is available here and hopefully draw some former residents back. Rural By Choice brought local business people to area students to show them that they don’t need to leave home to achieve success.

With Moser leaving, Sue Gerker will assume the position of interim director. Gerker had been working in the County Economic Development office with Moser on these projects and on grant applications and administration.