A political career lasting more than 28 years started with someone simply asking current mayor Tom Wieseler to consider running for school board in 1985. That was one of the takeaways from Wieseler speaking at Lester Buresh Family Community Wellness Center as part of the adult speaker series.
He and his wife had moved for a number of years to different jobs in other communities before landing in Mount Vernon in 1982 and deciding to make this home for them and their children.
“I remember Sharon Hill had approached me about considering signing up as a school board member,” Wieseler said.
Wieseler said there were very specific reasons why he was approached – he was a younger guy at the time, with one kid in the school district, but not originally from Mount Vernon, strong selling points for that board.
Wieseler ran in that election, one of six candidates, and was one of three to receive enough votes to be seated on the school board.
Wieseler said after his first term in office, that he would run on his own record, not as a part of a slate of electors.
“If I run for an election on my record, I shouldn’t need yard signs, and those aren’t going to change someone’s opinion of me in the past three years,” Wieseler said.
It’s proving the key to success for Wieseler, who was on school board for 27 years and city council for roughly the past eight or nine years (mayor as two of those years).
Another of the lessons he has learned – recognizing when there are times not to talk or not to engage with an issue.
“I’ve always made it my mission not to engage in public warfare on the pages of the local newspaper,” Wieseler said. “If someone has a disagreement, I speak with that individual personally, but not in public forums.”
He noted that many superintendents and school board members helped mentor and guide him in his career. When he served as board president, he worked to have the Mount Vernon School board recognized as one of the school board of the year recipients.
Wieseler said during his time on the school board, there were several issues that came before the community for vote – instructional support levies, equipment support levies, playground levies, and two different bond issues – that all passed.
One of those bond issues was for the new high school building near Palisades Road.
That was also one of the mistakes both he and Jeff Schwiebert noted was probably the biggest mistake when purchasing that building – not bidding or asking for enough land for future developments for the district.
There was also the placement of the roundabout at Business 30 and 10th Avenue, one of the agenda items that hadn’t received a lot of comments at a school board meeting that Wieseler the board president at the time supported with a letter from the board.
“Six months later, as the bypass development gets underway, there was that letter in support of a roundabout at 10th Avenue as one of the supporting documents for that change,” Wieseler said.
He also knows a second access point for Mount Vernon Schools complex was another potential mistake. When Cornell, the city and the school board were discussing the issue, he was a no vote on the access point going forward, and it’s one issue he looks at from the past 15 to 20 years where he was definitely wrong.
“That will likely be addressed in the next year to year and a half,” Wieseler said. “But I had plenty of people who asked me why I was a no vote on that issue years ago.”
And then, there were the times he was just in the right place at the right moment.
That was what generated the funding for the Lester Buresh Family Community Wellness Center. Wieseler had made a stop at the Greater Cedar Rapids Community Foundation and the Cedar Rapids Kernels foundation to request funding for the project. The Kernels rejected the design quickly, as it had limited connection to baseball. Wieseler decided to make a cold call to the Hall-Perinne Foundation in Cedar Rapids since he was in town and gave his pitch.
It was a longshot, as Hall-Perinne usually doesn’t support projects outside Cedar Rapids and especially not facilities.
A few weeks later, however, he got a call that the committee had decided to support the project for $600,000 and a tip to connect with Ernie Buresh.
“It turned out that Ernie doesn’t attend every meeting of the Hall-Perinne Foundation, but chose to do so that day and wanted to put a lot of money into a building that would have his brother’s name on it,” Wieseler said, “all because of a cold call, I lined up a major donor and received a $600,000 donation for our community center.”
Wieseler said he is planning on running for mayor again in the coming election.
“If I thought I learned a lot on city council, I learned a lot more as mayor,” Wieseler said. “Especially about the importance of emergency management in our communities.”