Ric Moore running for Lewes mayor

Lewes resident Ric Moore has filed to run in May’s mayoral election. 

Moore retired from the federal government after 37 years of service. He spent 31 years working for the U.S. Department of Energy, where he managed budgets up to $250 million and a staff of 100. He was a team leader for the International Renewable Energy Program in the Office of the Assistant Secretary for Energy Efficiency & Renewable Energy. He also worked as a Department of Energy associate professor for behavioral science and strategy at the Industrial College of the Armed Forces at the National Defense University.

Moore and his wife Kathy moved to Lewes in 2011 and have been involved in many efforts in the town. In 2014, Moore founded the Lewes Community Partnership as a way to bring the entire community together.

“We have a lot of voices in this community, and we need to be able to bring all of them into the conversation,” he said. “While I have my own ideas about what can be done and what’s important, most important of all is being able to achieve some transparency and inclusion in the process, be able to have those voices not only speaking, but heard and responded to.”

With all voices of the community included, he said, they can develop a real community vision and act on that vision in building the community.

Over the last year, Moore has been working on a documentary film about Lewes with filmmaker Brad Mays. He is telling the story of Lewes past, present and future. In doing research for the film, Moore has learned a lot about Lewes’ history and what has made the city what it is today. Some of it is good, some of it is not. But, he said, the city’s history is important in informing many decisions today.

Moore currently serves on the Oversight Board of Delaware’s Sustainable Energy Utility, a nonprofit organization created to foster a sustainable energy future for the state. That group is in the process of forming a strategy, and Moore says he’s encouraging his colleagues to adopt a community-based strategy for sustainability.

“I’d like to see Lewes be a model of that in demonstrating what is possible,” he said.

Prior to his work with the oversight board, Moore served as president of Delaware Interfaith Power and Light, working in activities around sustainable and renewable energy. The mission of Interfaith Power and Light is to inspire and mobilize people of faith and conscience to take bold and just action on climate change.

Moore has great interest in environmental issues, and he wants Lewes and Sussex County to take a stronger approach when it comes to development.

“How we do development is really only two options – it’s either sustainable or it’s destructive,” he said. “I’m not anti-development; I’m anti-destruction.”

He said Lewes needs to be prepared for the effects of climate change and the real possibility that sea-level rise will greatly impact the town sooner rather than later.

He’s interested in working with the Lewes Board of Public Works to establish low-cost, high-speed internet service for residents. He’d also like to encourage the BPW to adopt a Community Choice Energy model, which would more equitably charge residents.

“While we tend to be an affluent community, there actually are lower-income households, and those who live in properties they don’t own,” he said. “[They] have no way to participate in many sustainable energy solutions without a CCE model.”

As for the relationship between the BPW and city, he says each needs to remain independent.

“We need to have mayor and city council and Lewes BPW working separately on their missions,” he said.

In addition to his other work, Moore serves as a mediator with the Center for Community Justice in Milford. Most of his work is pro bono. He also works as a facilitator for the Alternatives to Violence Project, working with prisoners at Sussex Correctional Institution.

Although he did not grow up in Delaware, he has discovered three branches of his family have ties to Lewes. He said some relatives are buried in the St. George AME cemetery on Pilottown Road.

Lewes’ small-town feel is part of what attracted Moore to the First Town. Throughout his life, he has enjoyed living and working in small towns and rural communities, including Bucks County, Pa., before it exploded with development, and Yellow Springs, Ohio, a town similar in size to Lewes, where he attended Antioch College for undergraduate studies.

He later received a master’s degree in education from Harvard Graduate School of Education, a master’s in business from the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, and pursued doctoral work in management studies at the University of Maryland Global Campus. He also completed a three-year management development program with the U.S. Department of Health, Education & Welfare.

Later, he was part of a group that founded Sojourner-Douglass College in 1980, when he lived and worked in Baltimore. The college was community-based, community-focused, he said.

The mayor’s seat is the only seat up for election this year. It carries a three-year term.

The deadline to file to run in the mayoral race is Thursday, April 7. Information for candidate and voter registration can be found at ci.lewes.de.us/273/Election-Information.

The election is scheduled for 8 a.m. to 6 p.m., Saturday, May 14, at Lewes City Hall, 114 E. Third St.