On the ballot

MONTEZUMA — Poweshiek County Supervisor Diana Dawley is a lifelong resident of Poweshiek County and a graduate of Montezuma High School.

She married a farmer and moved to a farm southwest of town.

Her position as County Auditor prepared her for county business years before she ran for Board of Supervisors.

"I raised my kids, and then the farm crisis hit in the late ‘80s, so I decided to go to town to get a job, and I was hired in the courthouse in the auditors office,“ said Dawley.

In 2006, the county auditor retired, and Dawley was appointed auditor by the county supervisors before being elected to the office more than once and serving 10 years.

As auditor, Dawley was secretary for the Board. “The auditor’s office works very closely with the supervisors,” said Dawley.

In 2016, Dawley ran for County Supervisor. She’s finishing her second term.

The Board of Supervisors is currently getting ready for budget season, said Dawley. That will start in December.

“We’re thinking about legislative things that might come up that would have an affect on our budget,” Dawley said, but sometimes the budget is due before Supervisors know what the State Legislature is going to do.

“They did lower some valuations for this tax year,” said Dawley, “and I think there will be a continuation in that, which could mean making some cuts.

“We’ve been a responsible county, so for this current budget that we’re in, we didn’t have to make the number of cuts that other counties did,” said Dawley.

“We’re one of only five counties that don’t levy into the supplemental.”

The county’s levy is only a portion of the total property tax bill residents see, said Dawley. “It’s confusing to people because sometimes they just think of paying taxes as a whole.”

Schools, community colleges and townships also levy taxes, Dawley said. “There are a lot of pieces that go into the puzzles.

“Actually some of our rural county taxes went down,” Dawley said.

“The biggest budget we have is the secondary road budget. And then the second budget that we have is law enforcement,” said Dawley.

“At this point we are in good shape.”

Each department presents its budget to the Board of Supervisors every year, said Dawley. “Until we get each department into the boardroom to look at it, we don’t know where we’d have to make the cut.”

The county addressed wind turbines several years ago, said Dawley, “and at that time it seemed like there were farmers who had entered into agreements, so some of them were in favor of contracts for the wind turbines.

“Now we’re just starting to hear about a solar project, but we’ve just heard from an individual or two,” Dawley said.

“We have talked to our zoning administrator, and he looked at several county ordinances, so in the future we’re going to look at that.”

The board recently hired Dan Nieland as director of Poweshiek County Economic Development to bring businesses and people into the county.

“We need to increase population,” said Dawley. “We did have a factory that laid off people, a window factory, and we need to get some businesses in.”

Pow I-80 wasn’t very active during COVID, said Dawley. “We had trouble getting people together for meetings.”

Dawley thinks the new director will have some ideas about how to develop the economy of Poweshiek County.

“I feel like I have the experience to deal with the difficult issues that could come our way, because we don’t want to cut services if we don’t have to,“ said Dawley.

(“On the Ballot” is a Hometown Current series profiling candidates in Benton, Iowa and Poweshiek Counties. Articles will run as candidates are interviewed. Candidates who do not respond to requests for interviews will not be included in the series.)