Four Candidates Answer Questions At Final Forum

The four candidates seeking the office of Mahaska County Supervisor are left to right; Paul DeGeest, Scott Van Veldhuizen, Steve Parker, and Steve Wanders.

Oskaloosa, Iowa – Residents from around Mahaska County, which includes the rural and city voters, will be going to the poll on November 6th to select two candidates that will represent them for the next four years on the county board of supervisors.

Those candidates seeking office include Steve Wanders, Steve Parker, Paul DeGeest, and Scott Van Veldhuizen.

Willie Van Weelden, current Mahaska County Supervisor, decided against running for reelection.

On Tuesday night, the four candidates gathered at Penn Central Mall for a forum sponsored by the New Sharon Sun and Oskaloosa News.

Each candidate provided an opening statement, telling voters about themselves and why they were seeking office.

A submitted question was to ask the candidates who they represent as a county supervisor.

Wanders was the first to answer the question saying, “I represent every citizen of Mahaska County. Every small town. Every big town. I represent everybody.”

Parker answered the question by saying, “I would represent everybody in the county. Every man, woman, and child, but I said last time that the people in the town have a city council, they have mayors. A person on the farm out there just has the supervisors to go to. But I would still treat everybody equally, town person or county resident.”

“Of course I’d represent everybody,” said Van Veldhuizen. “I farm. It’s important to me. The roads are important. I also want to listen to the businesses, manufacturing people. I’ve talked with those people. I meet with them.”

“There’s a little bit of fallacy that if I’m listening to them [business/manufacturing], then I’m not listening to farmers. That’s not true. I’m going to listen to the farmers as well.”

“I think representing absolutely everyone within the county, city and county residents,” said Degeest. “I think the supervisors need to work closely with the cities, the representation from the smaller cities and Oskaloosa itself.”

“I believe that absolutely every citizen and taxpayer in Mahaska County should be represented by the supervisors,” added DeGeest.

A question from the audience asked the candidates to turn some of the negative in our county into a positive for the community and everybody in the county.

DeGeest started the answers for the question, saying that if the airport comes in, that maybe additional businesses would come to the community, and says that the biggest hurdle for that would be finding people to fill those jobs. “We need to figure out some way that we can keep our young people in this area, and in doing so, it’s going to take jobs.”

Van Veldhuizen said he appreciated the question because “I’m an optimistic person by nature and I do want to look forward. If we’re sitting still, we’re not moving forward, we’re going backwards. We use that in coaching a lot. If we’re not getting better we’re getting worse.”

“There’s division right now. We can’t move forward if there’s division. We’ve got to get people back together. It’s really simple to listen to each other. Having good conversation with each other. Not suing someone, because as soon as I sue someone all of a sudden I put a line between us and we can’t get back together,” added Van Veldhuizen. “We have so many good things going on here. We have to look forward and we have to continue to grow it. We have to build it. We have to listen to agriculture. We have to listen to roads. We have to fix roads. We have to listen to manufacturing.”

Parker then took his opportunity to address the question. Parker spoke about the issues of finding individuals to fill jobs currently available. ” I don’t know why you’d want to bring in more manufacturing or other businesses right now until you take care of the ones we got now. To turn to a positive, it’s going to be a… This airport, I still think it’s gonna be the biggest drag on this.

The audience member once again asked Parker for a positive.

“I’m trying to,” replied Parker. “It’s [airport] such a drag, it’s going to take a long time to turn that around. I don’t know really how you’re going to do that until it’s solved.”

“The first thing you’ve got to do positive is keep the businesses you have,” said Wanders in response to the question. Wanders then spoke about businesses that have left the Mahaska County area in recent years.

“I look at Knoxville. They got a nice big factory just south of the highway”, said Wanders. “I look at Co-Line. You got a great big new expansion in Co-Line. Both of them are 20 miles away from here. I’m not on the city council, and I’m not going to say well this is a city/rural deal. But you got to keep them factories coming to town. You got to keep your tax rates low, and you got to let your kids know that you start something in Oskaloosa as an entrepreneur, it will grow,” added Wanders.

“My positive is, work with your young people to build your businesses. Keep your tax rates low, and grow your town,” added Wanders in closing.

Land ownership rights, in particular to the South Central Regional Airport, and the potential use of eminent domain and property rights was questioned heavily by those in attendance.

Also debated was the ongoing legal battle of Mahaska County Emergency Management and Mahaska County E911 being sued by the Mahaska County Board of Supervisors over which radio system to be used by first responders.

You can watch the forum in its entirety on YouTube by following the provided link HERE – https://youtu.be/j9TrtibbHzs