Reed reflects on 16-year supervisor career

In a matter of days, Dick Reed will end his 16-year run as a Jefferson County Supervisor.

Reed, a Republican, won four consecutive terms before falling to Democratic challenger Daryn Hamilton in November. Hamilton will be switching from the Fairfield City Council to county government, just as Reed did years ago when he gave up his council seat representing the First Ward to run for his current position.

When asked to think back on his career in the courthouse and his top accomplishments, a certain theme emerges. Reed made a living in construction for many years, and brought that experience to bear in his role as a supervisor. He is most proud of using his occupational knowledge to help oversee building projects that saved taxpayers money.

Life before supervisors

Reed was born and raised in Jefferson County, graduating from Fairfield High School in 1964. He volunteered for the United States Navy in 1966, where he became an aviation machinist's mate working aboard aircraft carriers.

He and wife Mary, his high school sweetheart, moved back to Fairfield where Reed took up his father's roofing business that he later expanded into home building. By the mid-1980s, Reed had earned a reputation as a competent builder, and people in town began asking him to take on leadership roles. He joined service organizations such as Little League, Elks, Lions, Masons and Rotary.

The county assessor at the time, Frank Weston, asked Reed to be on the board of review, which Reed did for 18 years. After serving on the board for some time, Reed told city administrator Bob Moore, a good friend of his father-in-law George Holmes, that he wanted to be on the board of adjustment. Moore suggested that he would be a better fit on the planning and zoning commission, so that's what Reed did.

Reed's commitments grew when he accepted a seat on the Southeast Iowa Multi-County Solid Waste Agency, a committee overseeing the landfill near Richland that serves Jefferson, Keokuk and Washington counties.

'I always thought that was the neatest board I was on,” Dick said. 'I saw on it for 19 years, and they gave me a nice ceremony and a plaque when I left the other day.”

Coming to the county

In 1999, Reed won election to the Fairfield City Council, running unopposed. In the back of his mind, he wondered about taking another step to become a Jefferson County Supervisor.

Dick was in the National Guard, hoping to get 20 years of service under his belt to be eligible for a pension. While in the Guard, he met Dick Simmons, then a member of the board of supervisors. Simmons gave him a sense of what being a supervisor is all about, and Reed liked what he heard.

Reed was elected to the board on his first try in 2002. He wasted no time in laying out a vision for how the county could save money by changing its approach to various construction projects.

Priorities

One of the first things Reed did was advise the other two board members at the time, Steve Burgmeier and Mike Pech, to sell the county home about 5 miles south of Fairfield. The other supervisors were contemplating an energy audit on the building, spending $750,000 to rehabilitate it.

'I knew it was a bad building. It had a bad design, and there was just nothing good about it. It was a bucket of worms,” Reed said. 'And I saw that we only had five residents from Jefferson County at the home.”

Instead of refurbishing the building, the county ultimately sold it to ResCare, which later sold it to a farmer.

A year or so later in 2005, Iowa City consultant Bob Burns used property tax credits to building the 18-unit apartment complex, Jackson Point Apartments, for low-income mentally and physically disabled people. Some of the people who lived in the county home were able to move there. Reed has been chairman of the Jackson Point Apartments board since its inception.

'It just got paid off through property taxes this month,” Reed said. 'I thought that was pretty neat.”

Selling business

Two years into his role as a supervisor, Reed realized he could not fulfill his duties to the county and run a construction business.

'I never liked doing a job when I couldn't do it 100 percent,” he said. 'I needed to be on the job site in order to supervise my employees, and a good supervisor shouldn't have to do that.”

Reed sold all his construction equipment in 2005, though he continued working in the consulting business he started on the side in 1985.

Courthouse roof

Another project that Reed tackled early in his first term was the courthouse roof. The architect estimated that redoing the roof would cost $850,000, and Reed's reaction was, 'over my dead body.” He said it shouldn't cost more than $450,000.

Instead of letting the project out for bids right away, Reed convinced the other board members to hire a local contractor to demolish and put back together a small portion of the roof. Reed said he would check the progress every day, and then an engineering firm could write the specifications and put it out for bids.

'If you know how to write specs, there won't be change orders,” Reed said.

Instead of hiring a firm to supervise construction, Reed took on that role himself.

'Heights don't bother me. This had been my business my whole life,” he said.

In the end, the project cost $450,000, just as Reed had predicted, and there were no change orders.

'That was the first big project that I was really proud of,” he said.

Steeple restoration

In October 1949, a violent wind storm damaged the courthouse's steeple and caused county supervisors to deem it unsafe. The steeple, along with four ornamental cornices, was torn down.

The decision grated on Bruce Gobble and on his son, Lee. Lee Gobble spent years campaigning to raise enough money to put the steeple back, and in 2004, his efforts finally paid off. The steeple was returned to its rightful place.

Reed spoke at the ribbon-cutting ceremony in November of that year. He even got to go in the man-lift, which hoisted him 135 feet in the air to put the final shaft into the steeple.

A couple of years later, the county put another cupula on the building, this one near the southeast corner.

Public health move

During the budgeting process in his early years on the board, Reed raised his eyebrows upon learning that the public health department was paying $15,500 in rent on its building on West Jefferson Street. Reed knew that the jail and law center near the fire station had just been vacated because those offices were moving to a new building on West Grimes Avenue.

Dick suggested moving the public health department into the former law center.

'They said, ‘We don't want to go to jail,'” Reed recalls. 'They said it was ugly, and nothing but bricks and mortar.”

Reed tried to convince the staff that the building could be remodeled with little money into a fine office space. He created a 3D image on a drawing program of his vision, which the public health staff liked. The renovations cost under $50,000. The move has saved the county over $150,000 thus far.

'That was a good project,” Reed said. 'That's a significant savings in taxpayer money.”

Whole building renovation

The courthouse has undergone significant remodeling in the past 15 years. Nearly every room has been touched up in some way or another.

'The building had a lot of deferred maintenance, and it was antiquated,” Reed said.

One of the first things the supervisors did was to build storage rooms in the attic for each office. A break room was added to the basement, as well as a new storage room. The plan was to move one office at a time so it could be remodeled while its business was conducted elsewhere.

During the process, people noticed that birds were flying around above the drop ceilings of the courtroom. An investigation revealed that glass had been knocked out of a window high above, which no one had noticed before.

Bovard Studios redid all the leaded glass windows, but Reed wondered what the point was of spending so much money on windows nobody from the inside could see. That led to a more extensive remodeling of the courtroom.

'Every single room in the building has been rewired and re-plumbed,” Reed said. 'You don't see a single wire out of place.”

Work unfinished

Reed is sad that he won't be on the board any longer to shepherd other remodeling projects he has planned. For instance, he wants to add an airlock, a double-door of some kind, to the south entrance like there is on the north entrance.

He knows the elevator will have to be renovated soon because a new set of elevator codes will take effect in 2020. He also wanted to finish tuck-pointing the courthouse and renovate its parking lot.

Though he's not looking forward to leaving, Reed feels he accomplished much in his 16 years as supervisor.

'I enjoyed it, and I did the best I could,” he said. 'Will the county still run? Sure. The world goes on.”