About 50 Perry-area voters attended Thursday night’s candidates forum at the Perry Public Library, where 10 contenders for state and county offices expressed their opinions about the current condition of Dallas County and shared their visions for the county’s future.
The floor was taken first by the six candidates vying for two seats on the Dallas County Board of Supervisors. The incumbent district one supervisor, Republican Brad Golightly of rural Perry, was joined by his Democrat opponent, Dawson Mayor Breanna Morman, and incumbent Supervisor Kim Chapman, an Adel Republican, faced his three fellow candidates for the district three seat, Democrat Pat Stalter of Adel, independent Robert Greenway of Van Meter and independent Michael Walrod of De Soto.
After opening remarks by each office seeker, the candidates fielded questions on issues ranging from the state of the county’s roads to the state of the county’s finances to the wages and working conditions of county employees. Walrod directed some sharp criticisms both at the board of supervisors and the department heads within the county bureaucracy.
“Employees, much like the citizens, I feel, don’t have a supervisor or an HR director they can go to with their complaints and problems,” said Walrod, who said he has been “talking to people, and they are tired of the good ol’ boys club serving us now.” He said county taxpayers are “paying some high salaries for nothing and if I get elected, I will call those officials out on it.”
Chapman took issue with Walrod’s claims, characterizing them as “innuendo” and “hearsay,” and he said “calling out public officials” is not an appropriate management style. He also challenged Walrod’s criticism of the Dallas County Secondary Roads Department and disputed his claim that some of the county’s farm-to-market roads are “a lawsuit waiting to happen.”
“I don’t find our roads to be in the shape Mr. Walrod is insinuating they’re in,” Chapman said. “I have complete trust and faith in our engineers. We’ve got two of the best in the state of Iowa working for Dallas County.”
Golightly briefly explained the funding streams that support county road and bridge construction and maintenance, including the portion supplied locally by the rural and general-fund tax levies and the portion of federal dollars funneled through the Iowa Department of Transportation to an eight-county region and then to Dallas County.
“We have not built a new paved road in Dallas County since I don’t know when,” Golightly said. “We spend all of our money repairing what we already have.”
Morman said her experience as the Dawson mayor has involved repair issues on farm-to-market roads passing though her town and waiting on the maintenance rotation built into the county’s five-year roads plan.
Stalter said one of her priorities as a county supervisor would be to advocate development of a long-term infrastructure plan, which would include secondary roads, water quality, public health and other issues of health and safety important to county residents.
A split in opinions was revealed on the question of increasing the number of seats on the Dallas County Board of Supervisors from three to five. The challengers all favored a larger board, and the incumbents opposed the increase or at most believed the question should be brought before voters by means of a petition and not as a ballot initiative of the supervisors themselves.
Morman said she joined a majority of Dallas County mayors in calling on the board of supervisors in 2016 to place the question of an enlarged board on the ballot in the general election. The supervisors declined the mayors’ request, leaving it to their constituents to gather signatures and bring forth a petition from the grassroots.
Greenway said he would “approve a five-person board if we get the salaries down.” He noted the Dallas County Supervisors are now paid about $57,000 annually, while the five members of the Guthrie County Board of Supervisors are paid about $25,000 each, and the Warren County Supervisors make about $35,000.
Walrod said that “for the size of the county, the population, five is ideal.” He recommended an arrangement with three district and two at-large seats.
Chapman said a five-person board “takes away the transparency of government. You’re going to have two supervisors meeting, discussing, deliberating, planning, plotting, whatever you want to call it, before action is taken in a public setting.” He pointed to the opaque actions of many city councils as evidence of his claim.
Stalter said she favored a five-person board “but if I am elected and I’m on a board of three or five, I will not be conspiring behind the scenes, but I will be clarifying,” she said.
After several other issues were aired, the 70-minute discussion concluded with final statements from the candidates, who were roundly applauded afterward for their candor in the forum.
A brief intermission followed, and then the candidates for Dallas County Treasurer took the floor. The current treasurer, Republican Mitch Hambleton of Dallas Center, and the Democrat challenger, Julie Stewart of Waukee, were also joined by the Dallas County Attorney, Wayne Reisetter of Adel, whose Republican opposite, Charles Sinnard of Urbandale, was unfortunately unable to attend the forum.
Stewart numbered her experience in education, both as a school board member and as a civics teacher, and her work managing non-profit organizations as qualifications suiting her to the treasurer’s office.
The non-partisan nature of the county treasurer’s and county attorney’s offices was emphasized in the forum discussion. Reisetter leads an eight-person team of assistant county attorneys and administrative staff, and Hambleton’s 15-person staff makes his the third largest department in the county, behind the Dallas County Sheriff’s office and the Secondary Roads Department.
Audience members posed several technical questions about levy rates and property valuations to the treaurer candidates, and the county attorney described the reasoning within his office that goes into plea bargains.
The highly informative discussion lasted about 30 minutes, and the candidates received the audience’s applause.
Warren Varley of Stuart, Democrat candidate for the Iowa House District 20 seat, closed the two-hour show. Varley held the forum’s floor by himself due to the absence of his Republican opponent, Ray Bubba Sorensen of Greenfield, whose job painting Freedom Rocks unfortunately prevented his appearing at the Perry venue.
“I’m a farmer, a lifelong farmer,” sais Varley, “and a 25-year attorney and a small-business person. I have a passion for economic development.” He detailed some of his development accomplishments in Stuart, from housing starts to wind energy projects to an annual Employers and Educators Summit, which seeks “innovative ways to fill the middle-wage, middle-skills gap that we have in our workforce.”
Recalling the bipartisanship that prevailed when his father, Andrew Varley, was the Speaker of the Iowa House of Representatives in the 1970s, Warren Varley said he will try to reach across the aisle at the statehouse because “we Iowans are sick and tired of the two extremes butting heads, putting us into persistent gridlock, while the lobbysists are writing the legislation.”
Varley took questions on several topics, beginning with the public support of private schools and the need for state oversight of home schooling.
“I have great concerns about the direction the legislature has been moving in terms of shifting public funds to support private education,” Varley said. “I honestly think that’s a mistake.” Without adequate state oversight of home schooling, he said, the quality of private education is cast into doubt, and the health and welfare of students is put at risk, as horribly demonstrated in Perry by the fate of Sabrina Ray, whose starvation death in 2017 occurred while she was under the radar as a home-schooled student.
Varley also spoke about the income tax cuts passed by the Iowa Legislature and signed into law by Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds during the last legislative session. Budget projections forecast a $100 million loss in state general fund revenues next year and a $220 million loss in the second year.
“State services have been cut to the bone,” he said, pointing to Iowa’s underfunded education and Medicaid systems. “It’s going to be a terrible crisis. It’s going to be a very difficult task that the legislature’s facing this January.”
Varley also addressed in some detail the challenges posed by the state’s Medicaid privatization and noted Iowa is 50th in the U.S. in the number of mental health hospitalization beds available per capita.
Perry Mayor John Andorf thanked Varley for the high visibility of his campaign in Perry, and the audience warmly applauded the statehouse candidate, bringing to a close the two-hour forum.
The candidates forum was sponsored by ThePerryNews.com, with invaluable volunteer assistance from Perry Public Library Director Mary Murphy, veteran radio newsman John Perdue and former Dallas County Women’s Political Caucus activist Robin McCauley.
The forum will soon air in its entirety on Pegasus TV 12 thanks to the efforts of Pegasus volunteer Doug Wood.
Maybe Mr. Chapman needs to come drive down the gravel road in front of my house and see the shape it is in. Our gravel roads are terrible and when you don’t drive them and stay in your in world all the time, you really don’t see what is going on outside it.
I will not vote for a Democrat that approves abortion. I will not vote for liberals. God has got to be put back into everyone’s lives and his commandments. I’m ashamed of our divided nation we’ve become. I will vote for Christian people only.
Very informative. Thanks for sponsoring this, ThePerryNews!