Sherer: District must ‘grow the pie’ to ease property taxes
Don Harrold, Executive Editor
editor@enterprisepub.com
Property taxes and spending are the concerns that tie together the communities of Iowa House District 15, Republican candidate Jason Sherer said. “I don’t want to say property taxes will never go down, but I don’t think I’ve ever really seen them go backwards.”
“And nobody wants to give up services either. So you can’t really cut services,” he said. “So to me, you’ve got to grow the pie. You’ve got to grow the property tax base.”
“I’m a lifelong resident of Harrison County. I love the community. ... I don’t have grandkids, and I’ve always believed in serving my community. And that’s why I’m doing it,” Sherer said.
“I was the West Harrison School Board president for seven years. I’m on the CHI Memorial Foundation Health Board, and I’m part of Harrison County Development,” he said. “I was a volunteer firefighter and EMT for a lot of years.”
“We’re rural. We love being rural. And I think that’s some of the reason maybe we don’t have the growth that we want,” Sherer said. “If the local heating and air guy could hire one more service tech, you know, that’s one more family that’s got a job in the community.”
Retailers wanted to come into a couple of communities that said no, he said. “Two other communities would give their left arm to have that retailer come into their community. ... I think you have to build the rapport with each individual community and the people, the stakeholders in that community, to see what they want.”
He supports “incentives for small businesses to hire more people or to start an apprenticeship program so that you can get involvement with the high schools.” He also cited housing incentives, property tax help and free lots for communities that want to grow as bedroom communities.
“We need electricians like you can’t believe,” said Sherer, who sits on an Iowa Western board in Missouri Valley. “They don’t want to come teach. You know, so how do you get those kids the education they want?”
“I was a nursing home administrator at Rose Vista in Woodbine for 25 years,” said Sherer, 51. His family also operated Longview in Missouri Valley until selling it after COVID.
“Now I farm, so now I have birds,” he said. “My eggs get hatched to become the Costco rotisserie chickens. So I have 75,000 hens that I take care of.”
“I don’t have a problem talking with people. I enjoy it,” Sherer said. “I have CNAs that I had to let go that are supporting my campaign.”
His opponents are Independent Marilyn Mentzer, Democrat Ben Schauer of Dunlap and independent Blake Johnson. “I take nothing for granted,” Sherer said. “I owe my constituents everything I’ve got, and they’re going to see that.”
“I had employees that were doing 45, 50, 60 days in a row serving their, serving our patients, making sure their needs were met,” he said of COVID. “Having to tell a daughter, this is right at the beginning, that you couldn’t come see your mother as she’s passing away.”
“I felt like I was running a prison and not a care facility, you know?” Sherer said. “And that’s part of why we got out of that business ... You were chasing paper and checking boxes instead of providing actual care.”
Some employees expected government help, he said. “No, you’re on your own. I mean, they sent money later ... to help backfill the hole we had to dig.”
“Servant leadership is my thing, you know?” Sherer said. “But good people got to do hard things. ... It’s hard for me to get out of my box and do this, but I’ve got to serve.”
People who know him would say “that I listen, that I show up, that I’m faithful, I do what I say I’m going to do, you know?” he said. “It might take me a while to get there, but we’ll get there.”
“I probably get too many irons in the fire sometimes,” Sherer said. “I’d want to be involved with all the boards I’m on, but I’m definitely going to have to pull back out of some of those.”
“This is a Zig Ziglar quote, ‘If you help enough people get what they want in life, you’ll get everything you need in life,’” he said. “I want to be a resource and I want to be the person to help.”
“My selfish reason for doing this, I want my kids to come back,” Sherer said. “It’d be great if they lived down the road from me and I could go see my grandkids.”
In other schools, “the school can’t tell what’s going on with their kid, and that concerns me, you know?” he said. “We’ve got to make sure we keep our young kids protected while they’re growing up so they don’t have to deal with that stuff.”
“I also know what’s right, and I have my convictions. And I’m going to work across the aisle and try to do what’s best for everybody,” Sherer said. “But yet understanding that my vision of the world is not everyone’s, and we need to work together to go forward.”
“The less a person has to deal with government, I feel like the better off your day usually is,” he said. “Nursing homes were the second most regulated industry at the time behind nuclear reactors. ... They were more of the cop and not the social worker.”
In two years, he wants people to say “that I worked for them, that I went out there and I worked to grow,” Sherer said. “I’d like to see small businesses growing.”
“Inflation went up really fast, and those prices don’t come back down. They stay there, but you’ve got to grow everything else to catch it up,” he said. “We’re in that lag right now, and that’s why everything’s so hard.”
