FORT MADISON – Fort Madison City Council candidate Jerry Hamelton said incumbent Kevin Rink has served long enough without the city seeing any change.
Hamelton is a three-time candidate and has been beaten by Rink twice and has missed being appointed on two different occasions.
Rink is looking for one more term in what he called his farewell tour.
The two squared off in the Fort Madison Partners Candidate Forum Wednesday night. They are vying for an at-large council seat in the Nov. 7 City/School general election.
Rink said he was “hell-bent” on not running again.
“No, I’m not doing this again. And then a few people talked to me, and I wavered back in August and then I said I would do the Rink farewell tour,” he said. “Over the past 16 years, I’ve served the community and lots of decisions have gone through these hands.”
Hamelton said he’s running for the same reason that he’s been trying to get on the council. To be a voice of dissent and make change.
“I’m running for the same reason as last time. I believe some of these people mean well, but they are doing it the wrong way,” he said.
“When you raise taxes, you run people out of town. It can be proved in the data. Population declined, businesses are not moving here, industry is not moving here.”
Hamelton has been an opponent of the city’s franchise tax since its inception in 2020. The former law enforcement officer said the city approved the tax after mishandling city funds for years prior.
“You hear one thing, and they do another. Nothing changes and that’s why I’m running,” he said.
Rink said nobody wanted to impose the franchise tax, but he said in the wake of the tax, area industries are still trying to grow and bring on additional employees.
“Its tough to go through the budget book and say we can’t get a new police car, we don’t have any money. Some of this will loosen up so the budget can loosen up,” he said.
Hamelton countered that the people of the city can see what the city is doing, but they are so aggravated they are giving up.
“We put in the newspaper we are going bankrupt, but let’s go build this massive project. This is what this town does. People aren’t stupid, the reason you don’t get participation is that people don’t want to deal with this,” he said.
“But you get so aggravated reading stuff that you have to do something about it. The money we collect needs to go to police, fire, streets, and not toward putting my name on something. Stop spending my money on that. Buy a new police car, a new fire truck, a new fire station.”
Hamelton said industries made their voice heard on the franchise tax and the city hasn’t seen growth since then.
“We had local industry right here. Reps from Siemens, Climax, begging this council not to do it and telling them what it would do to their industry. That’s pretty much all we have left,” he said.
Hamelton said fiscal conservatism and spending city money on city functions is the way to reduce the budget, while bringing jobs in with sensible taxation. He said things like creating more things to do in the city isn’t a role of the government.
“It’s a market economy and I believe that’s the role of the economy,” he said.
Rink said he’d like to see more local groups step up and help with beautification efforts throughout the city.
“I thought at one time there were fraternal groups that adopted certain areas and families that planted flowers and went down and checked on it. They kept it nice looking for our little part here in southeast Iowa,” he said. “But what do we do about it? Put our thinking caps on and if it comes back to the city, there’s a lot of work that needs to be done.”
Hamelton said he believes the city does need to be more engaged in that effort.
He said a dissenting voice on the council would give a fresh approach and lend advocacy to contrary approaches.
“I obviously believe we’re doing it wrong. The way is to bring jobs. (Former Mayor) Steve Ireland used to say all the time jobs, jobs, jobs. He was right. It’s the key. Bring jobs here and everything else will follow. Put things in this town and people will come.”
Rink said there needs to be even more open communication and people need to not be aggravated or frustrated and come give their two-cents worth.
“You can stop me when you see me out and about. Heck, give me a quarter’s worth. But let’s keep talking,” Rink said.
Hamelton said there’s just too big of a divide between the council and the people they represent. He cited Rinks’ Coffee with a Councilman that he claims never materialized with Rink and events like that aren’t happening with constituency. He also said more people need to step up and run for office.
“That’s our biggest problem.”
The two also disagreed on the need for a city manager. The city is currently working with a search firm to find a replacement for David Varley, who’s been gone since May. Hamelton said city staff is strong enough to run their own departments and don’t need to run decisions by someone else to make the decision.
“I don’t think we need a manager. We’re continuously shrinking more and more every year. Everything the city manager does, there’s department heads that take those responsibilities. Department heads can make the decision,” Hamelton said.
But Rink said the city manager serves as the city’s CEO.
“We can’t have the public works director, police chief, fire chief, all making decisions that he should be making,” Rink said.
Despite his fiscal conservative approach, Hamelton said the city does need to take on debt to fund the new fire station and public works building.
“I don’t like that, public debt. I don’t like the franchise fee, but we misused our funds and we spent it on pet projects. Things that make you smile and get us re-elected and get our picture in the paper. But our mortgages are linked to the fire department. We’re going to have to take on public debt at this point, I think. We’re going to be forced to,” he said.
Rink agreed saying briefly, the city will have to increase taxes, but there’s no way around it.
“We’re going to have bond for it, plain and simple.”
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