Iowa Falls Mayor Mike Emerson will run for reelection in November.
Emerson was first elected in 2021 when he defeated then mayor, Gene Newgaard, by a vote count of 562-372.
Emerson tells RadioOnTheGo News after a few months of contemplating another term, he was encouraged by his peers to run again in November.
“(I) talked about it with my family and we thought maybe it was time to pull an iron out of the fire. But yeah, I’ve just chatted with some council members and some other folks and we’ve been doing some really good things here in Iowa Falls and with the council that we have, we thought, well, let’s try to keep that group together and go another couple of years and kind of keep the momentum going if we can.”
Emerson was reelected in 2023 when he defeated two challengers; Dominick Rocky Damiano and Newgaard. One of the bigger issues during Emerson’s time as mayor was in the summer of 2023, when the Iowa Falls City Council voted to disband the Iowa Falls Dispatch Center, with all dispatching services for Iowa Falls moved to the county. Emerson says that decision was met with some pushback, but one that needed to be made.
“(Police) Chief (Josh) Nelson came in and he and I talked about it and we realized that in our law enforcement experience, our public safety experience in Hardin County over the last 20 plus years, that was something that had been talked about a lot, but nobody really wanted to do it because it’s kind of a touchy subject among the public safety crowd. But we realized it was a fiscally responsible thing to do and that it would work fine. And ultimately it did. Did it ruffle a few feathers? Yes, but it saved the taxpayers of Iowa Falls over $300,000 a year with zero interruption in service, which is what we predicted it would do, and it did, so it’s been going well.”
Along with the mayor’s seat, there are two council seats up for reelection in Iowa Falls this year, which are the seats currently held by Micah Cutler and Steve Klein.
Photo from the city of Iowa Falls website
