Author: Nathan

picture of a small black desk clock with a round dial saying "turboGenomics"
Souvenir of a bygone era

My first job out of college was at a small tech startup called, variously, turbogenomics.com, TurboGenomics, and TurboWorx. The dot-com boom had pretty much busted, but there was still a lot of energy between using computers to make biological research more efficient. We tried to help. And, as we were developing our products, we had to do it with Other People’s Money, which in our case came in dribs and drabs. So we learned how to be efficient, stretching our budgets and finding opportunities to reduce overhead costs. As a pastor, I’m always aware of where the money to run the church and pay my salary comes from, and of the obligations to steward church resources and to be accountable to their use. While my experiences have taught me that there are times when you just need to spend money (like that time I got a little confused on the multi-hotel shuttle bus in Taipei and left my laptop behind), I’m always watching to make sure that choice isn’t too easy to make. As a city councilor, I would bring this same creativity and attention to the city budget. I know what it’s like to be entrusted with money to be used for the common good, and the obligation that brings to spend it carefully and wisely.

Cream 1940s-style kitchen cabinets with formica oak-appearance counters, covered in drying papers.

(Picture: our kitchen, that January, after all our belongings got soaked by a burst pipe in the storage facility)
Another thing you’ll hear me talking about as I campaign is the need for housing the people who work in Ankeny. Now, the main reason for that is that the church is one place people turn when they can’t pay their rent, so I hear the stories of people needing to stretch paychecks and figure out lean months. But another reason is that I moved to Ankeny on December 1, 2013. I had never owned a home, and never really aspired to owning a home (I don’t like debt, or, as my neighbors can attest, yard work). I spent a month looking for good rental options, and found that the only apartments I could rent were ~$1300/month for 2 bedrooms. Beth was leaving her job, and we didn’t know what her prospects were going to be here. We’d been stretching things a bit in North Carolina for 3 years already, and wanted to live within our means. And we couldn’t do that at $1300/month.
So, in the first week of December, staying with generous parishioners, I went out house-hunting, with Beth and the kids still in North Carolina. As a realtor friend said to me, “Nate. There IS no market in December.” We wound up managing to take advantage of that fact, and paid $143,500 for a 3BR house originally listed at $160,000 (for everyone in the neighborhood, yes, I kept our assessments down for the next two years!), at something like $930/month, all told. We were lucky that we still had money for a down-payment, six years after I’d left my last full-time job to go to Divinity School.
We’ve had developers do great work in building out a wider variety of housing since then, but we continue in our years-long worker shortage. On the City Council, I’ll work with developers to look for ways to get people the housing they need to work here in Ankeny, whether that work is at a church, in a school, in a senior living community, at Casey’s, or at McDonald’s.

A beige car in front of a garage

 

If you’ve seen me in person, you’ve heard me talk about needing to have alternatives to transportation by car, and this is why.
When we moved to Ankeny in 2013, we had two cars, both with more than 100,000 miles on them. In the weeks before I drove this one (a 1994 Geo Prizm on a salvage title) 1000 miles (in a day!) across the mountains back to Iowa, I noticed the transmission having problems. I took it to the mechanic expecting to pay $1000 I needed for a house down payment to replace it, and wondering how we were going to manage the cost. Luckily for me, the mechanic discovered he could fix my problem with $40 and a hacksaw, and did. But throughout my time in the mountains, I lived in fear that the next one would be the repair I couldn’t make, and what would I do then?
Which is to say, I know what it’s like to stretch the lives of your paid-off cars as long as possible. And I know that you never know when that clock is finally going to be up, and whether you can replace the car when it is; It costs a lot of money every year to use and maintain even a cheap car.
If we can build a city where it’s just a little easier to not drive to every errand, to school, to work, we can not only ease up some traffic congestion, but we can also help people stretch the lives of their vehicles just a little longer, and allow them to spend that money on food, clothes, or saving up for a more reliable ride. It’s one of the reasons we bought the house we did, in a walkable and bikeable neighborhood. And it’s the reason why I think it’s important to plan for all the people, including people who can’t drive, don’t want to drive, or, today, when they need to get to work, can’t afford to drive.
We’re going to keep building roads and widening roads as we grow, but we need to make sure that’s not all we do. Life is good when you can walk to your favorite restaurant, brewery, bookstore, or school!