He’s watched the sausage be made. He’s even tossed in a few ingredients of his own over the past eight years as the council representative for Ward 1 and while serving as the city’s vice mayor.
And, as his campaign slogan exclaims, Chad Thalman wants to continue the comeback as the next mayor of Wheeling. He’s one of six candidates who wish to follow Glenn Elliott, a two-termer who’s now campaigning for the Democrat nomination for the U.S. Senate race in November, and he’s a firm believer he is the best candidate on the ballot.
Since Thalman was elected in 2016 to represent Ward 1, he’s supported a number of paving and demolition contracts, the construction of the new fire headquarters and creation of the new police HQ, a number of projects related to parks and recreation, and he voted in favor of the purchase of the Ohio Valley Medical Center campus, the implementation of the User Fee, and has been a part of the development of the current streetscape project.
“I don’t think I realized when I was preparing to run for city council back in 2015 how much time it takes to get projects moving and to make improvements we wanted to make,” said Thalman, who was appointed vice mayor eight years ago. “But we’ve accomplished a lot, and I’m proud of that fact.
“I’ve been involved with the past eight years and I’m the guy best equipped to the city move forward. I think the current mayor and most of the members of council would agree that I’m the best person for the job,” he said. “I don’t want to be the mayor of any other city than Wheeling because it’s my hometown and it’s where I plan to live the rest of my life. If I don’t try to help Wheeling right now, I think I would regret it for the rest of my life.”
The winner of the Friendly City’s 2024 mayoral election will inherit an under-construction downtown that has a number of vacant storefronts and buildings, an economy centered on the professional, service, and healthcare industries, and a shrinking population, but Wheeling also is a city poised for residential and commercial re-development from border to border following a $223 million rehabilitation of Interstate 70, more than 60 citywide demolitions, and the $32 million state-fund streetscape along Main and Markets streets.
Plus, the trend of downtown living has grown with the completion of The Doris apartment complex by The Woda Group, and the schedules for entertainment at both the Capitol Theatre and Wesbanco Arena have been steadier than ever.
“We have a lot of momentum right now because so much has moved forward, and that’s because the people in Wheeling have refused to quit making the city a better place,” Thalman said. “During my time on council, we have engaged and interacted with the public as much as possible so they could share with us their ideas and that’s been a great process.”
Happy Homecoming
He was one of them.
He grew up in Wheeling, went to college in 2000, and then found a job in a city pretty far away just like so many other high school grads have done since the 1970s. It took place so often, in fact, it became expected among members of a few generations and that’s why a city that topped out at 61,000 citizens in the 1940s is now the home of only 27,000.
Thalman, however, became another kind of “them” when he decided to move home and pursue his social services career here instead of there.
“I decided to come back to Wheeling in December of 2006 after a couple of years because I think living in Morgantown for four years for college and then in Maryland for another two years made me appreciate Wheeling even more than I did when I lived here,” he admitted. “I was working full-time with (the W.Va. Department of Health and Human Resources) and taking classes during the evenings at Wheeling Jesuit for my MBA. After that I started teaching business classes as an adjunct and kept working full-time.
“But then I started working at Warwood Armature, and that’s a company that was started by my great grandfather back in 1927 out of his garage in Warwood,” Thalman explained. “We fix and sell electric motors, and I handle the sales, customer service, and a lot of the day-to-day operations of the business.”
His professional transfer from the public to the private sector, Thalman firmly believes, allowed him to be a more effective city councilor.
“It wasn’t until I started working with my father that I started looking at things with that business mindset, and I think it’s helped me with my role with the city. I can look at issues from the business perspective and that makes me want to know if there’s a good return on the investment,” Thalman said. “It’s all been a learning experience, and now I feel I’m ready to take our city into a very positive future.
“The Doris Apartments is a great example of seeing a return on an investment made by the City of Wheeling because the City owned the parking lot where it was constructed,” he said. “Sure, we gave WODA the property but consider what the economic return will going to be when those apartments are full. It’s going to be much more significant than what an ugly surface parking lot gives us.”
Moving with Momentum
Gloria Delbrugge retired from serving on Wheeling’s council following her third term in 2016, and the late representative was known to be feisty and fiery when fighting for the Warwood, North Park, and Upper Glenwood neighborhoods.
Thalman, thanks to Delbrugge’s tutorials, knew the residents – pronounced “voters” – would expect the same from him.
“After I knew I was going to run for council, I started attending the meetings for about 15 months, and I also talked to Gloria, so I got a good sense of how things worked,” he recalled. “But when I started serving, there was still a pretty good learning curve, and it takes a little bit of time to get the experience the job needs.
“There’s a lot more to how the City functions as far as what the council does, and what the city staff does. When it comes to city business, I think the typical resident assumes the elected officials are calling all the shots, and that’s not the case when it comes to day-to-day operations,” he explained. “That was a big part of the learning curve for me, even with all of the meetings I attended and all the talks I had with Gloria, I still had to realize about how the City really operates.”
Even after learning the City of Wheeling’s “sausage” recipe and working with local, state, and federal officials over the last eight years, Thalman did not envision a campaign to become Wheeling’s next mayor.
“In 2015, I made the decision to run for City Council, and I started preparing,” he said with a smile. “And here I am today doing something I never thought I would do during my lifetime.
“And I believe I’m the best person for the job. I really love Wheeling, and I want to do everything I can do to help us all move forward,” Thalman insisted. “It has been an honor and a privilege to have the opportunity to serve the residents of the city of Wheeling, and I believe we have a lot of momentum right now and I’m the person who knows how to keep us moving forward.”
(This article is a part of the advertising package purchased by the candidate.)
