Rife seeks second term on Harrison County Board of Supervisors
Don Harrold, Executive Editor
editor@enterprisepub.com
Harrison County Supervisor Brian Rife is running for a second term on the Harrison County Board of Supervisors in the Nov. 3 general election. Rife, 44, is a Republican. He said he served six years on the Mondamin City Council and as the city's mayor before joining the board.
Rife spoke with the Times-Reporter in an in-person interview. His answers have been edited for length, grammar and punctuation.
Harrold: Are data centers a topic of conversation in Harrison County?
Rife: It's come up. No data centers are wanting to come here.
I don't oppose them. I think there's probably a place in Harrison County for them, and I don't think we should tell people what they're gonna do with their own land. If a data center company gets a deal struck with a landowner, I don't think it's our place to step in and tell them no.
I think that we need to have regulations on it as far as water. You know, you can do closed-loop, nonevaporative systems. Power generation is a huge thing that comes along with it, and the consumption. There are things that we need to look at, and I think we need to get our ordinances updated to address that, which our ordinances should be updated every so often just to stay ahead of technology and the things that come at us that you can't plan 20 years in advance for. You know, 20 years ago, they didn't know about data centers.
Harrold: Why does political party matter on this board?
Rife: I'm fiscally conservative. I'm registered Republican because in my mind, the Republican Party's platform aligns more with my Christian values. I'm Christian first, I'm Republican second.
Harrold: If an issue aligned with your faith but not with Republicans or conservatives, would you go with your faith?
Rife: Absolutely. All the time.
Harrold: What is the county's biggest issue?
Rife: Roads and bridges are always our biggest issue. That's the majority of our budget. Almost 50% of our budget goes to roads and bridges.
Harrold: Everyone wants roads and bridges that function. What is there to talk about?
Rife: The dollars aren't available.
Harrold: Why not?
Rife: Property tax. We're regulated by the state on property tax, and we wanna take a conservative approach. We don't wanna charge any more property tax than we have to. Now with the new legislation, we can't go more than a 2% growth. So how is that going to affect roads? We don't know.
Harrold: How do you take care of roads and bridges with inflation and a cap on what you can tax?
Rife: We have to be more efficient with our dollars.
So one thing I pushed for when I first came on the board is we were hiring two outside trucking companies to haul rock from the quarry to our sheds, to our stockpiles, and we were paying between $600,000 and $700,000 a year just for trucking. That wasn't for the rock. That was just the trucking.
Harrold: So you saw the county was spending too much?
Rife: Yes. So we took that trucking, we cut it out. We bought two pups for — I wanna say we spent around $40,000 to $50,000 on each pup and then put them on our dump trucks that we already had, already had drivers in them, and now we're trucking our own rock and saving that.
Harrold: Outsourcing was the problem?
Rife: Absolutely. And we've looked at different ways. We hired John Rasmussen as our engineer after we had a retirement and replacement engineer who didn't feel comfortable in the position, so he left us after 11 weeks. And John Rasmussen came up. He applied for the job, and we hired John.
And he's been great at finding ways that we can do things ourselves. We're patching roads now. He just bought a patcher. We were spending $200,000 a year hiring a contractor to do patching for us, and now we spent $50,000 on a machine that we're gonna do that ourselves. So more efficient with our money, with your money.
Harrold: That's a lot of money.
Rife: Yes, and then you had the $200,000 per year on roads. So now you're at, we'll just say $800,000. We cut cleaning. We had a cleaning company coming in and doing courthouse cleaning. We got rid of that contractor and we hired two part-time in-house people. There was, I believe, $40,000 savings there.
That's what we've done in four years. And that is from working with other people. You know, working with the engineer, working with the auditor, we were able to do this.
Harrold: Has the auditor signed off on these savings?
Rife: Yes, absolutely. These ideas come by working with her. You know, what are we spending here and why are we spending this money? And sitting down and figuring out a solution.
If you go into a job like this and think, "I'm gonna go tell this person what they're gonna do and that person what they're gonna do," that's the wrong attitude. If you go in there with the mindset that, "I'm gonna work with them and we're all gonna work together to save," then you're gonna get something done.
Harrold: When you looked at the books after joining the board, were you surprised?
Rife: With the trucking, I was. Yeah. And I know what trucking should cost. It was about triple what I thought it should be.
Harrold: Besides roads, what issues do residents raise?
Rife: Property tax. Everybody wants to pay less in property tax. And I hear a lot of the, "Once I pay property tax, that should be the only time. I should pay property tax when I buy my house and I should never pay it again."
And the assessment value, they don't … Not everybody agrees with the assessments going up.
Harrold: And the county is capped at a 2% increase?
Rife: That's all we can grow, yes. Plus you're allowed new construction, which we don't have a lot of new construction, and I think that's something we need to work with. I think the towns make more sense to have that growth for new housing. They have the infrastructure with water and sewer there.
Harrold: How would you solve the property tax problem?
Rife: You grow. You're never gonna lower taxes. The only way to lower taxes is to cut services. So we would have to decide what service don't we want in Harrison County? That is how you cut property taxes. That's the only way to cut. The way to help alleviate the pain of paying is to increase that base and have growth.
And we have to quit saying no to stuff. You know, we said no to a concrete crushing plant. We said no to data centers. If we keep saying no, then we're just gonna have to keep paying more property tax. We have to have growth.
Harrold: What should voters know about why they should vote for you?
Rife: It's a tough one. I mean, the Christian thing I think is huge. To me, that's top priority. It should be top priority for everyone.
I do try to do my best for the taxpayers and people in Harrison County. I love Harrison County. I've never lived anywhere else. This county means more to me than anything. And I don't have a plan in retirement to move away from here. This is where I wanna live the rest of my life, and I wanna make this a place that my kids wanna stay. My oldest son that's 23 stayed.
I want all of my kids to stay here, and we have to find ways that we can bring our kids back. I also belong to the Western Iowa Revitalization Group, which was put together. It's supervisors from each county, from Audubon County to Harrison, clear up to Plymouth County and over to Ida County. We are working on ways that we can bring kids back to farms, keep people in our counties.
