The Ames City Council incumbent representing Ward 1 is running for his second term in hopes to continue uniting the community of Ames with the university.

Dan Rice, city councilman, College of Liberal Arts and Sciences academic adviser and ISU alumnus, is vying for his seat as Ward 1 representative.

Rice’s family history in Ames dates back to 1901 when his grandmother moved here to attend Iowa State to study chemistry. Although Rice grew up in Des Moines, his father taught architecture classes at Iowa State, so Rice spent a lot of time in Ames.

“When it came time to go to college, [Iowa State] was basically the one choice,” Rice said.

Rice attended Iowa State in the ‘80s. He graduated in 1988 with a distributed studies degree. It took nine years for Rice to graduate because of the numerous activities he was involved with.

He served on the Government of the Student Body, the Publication Board for the Iowa State Daily, the Memorial Union Board of Directors and the Student Union Board.

After graduation, Rice attended Indiana University for his Master’s of Science in Education.

After three years working at Overland Park College, he returned to Iowa State to work in the Department of Residence at Helser Hall. In 1997, he took his current job as an academic adviser in the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences.

“I absolutely love what I do,” Rice said. “It allows me to work with students on the front line in terms of retention efforts and in terms of success toward graduation.”

Rice has served on the City Council since Jan. 3, 2006, as the representative for Ward 1. He said the motivation behind his service is about giving back to the community he is so fond of, ensuring growth in Ames and intimately understanding the populations of Ames.

“I am in a unique position to really understand Ames, and I do,” he said.

Maggie Luttrell, former GSB vice president and former ex-officio member of the City Council, agreed that Rice is able to understand the intricacies of the student population because of his intimacy with the university. Luttrell said Rice was always willing to support student’s interests, even though many students are not a part of his ward.

“Rice has gone above and beyond his role on Council to truly listen to those in the Ames population who get neglected,” Luttrell wrote in an e-mail.

As a three-year member of the City Council, Rice said he is most proud of the sustainable efforts this current Council has implemented. The Council has implemented new management in the demand side of electrical generation, which includes providing fluorescent bulbs and rain barrels to the community and implementing rebates for high-efficiency air conditioners.

“We’ve been doing a tremendous effort on the demand side of electricity,” Rice said. “The longer we can conserve energy, the longer we don’t have to build more power plants, we may even prevent building a new one at all.”

Daily: What is your vision for a thriving Campustown, and how would you achieve this?

Rice: The vision is to have a vibrant place for both university and the community of Ames. Campustown is a key link between the city and the university functions. So I guess that’s the vision, now how that takes place, I think we’re on a very good path, a very excellent relationship with the university; and the city is actually starting to work with some of the major property owners in the Campustown area, so I guess how to get that vision going is to do what we’re actually doing now. I’ve been very proud of linking the university’s expertise and resources with the city’s expertise and resources and hopefully the first step was getting the intermodal transportation hub grant together and I think that was very helpful, whether we get the grant or not, in showing what we can do together, to pull that grant together very quickly with the help of CyRide board, CyRide staff and university and city and that was a great example of how we work together. So I think, whether or not that actually comes around there is a good momentum right now and I think something will happen. Whatever it is, I don’t know — partnerships.

Daily: Do you think the parking issue in the greek neighborhoods needs to be resolved, and how would you resolve it?

Rice: Yeah I think there’s a … The problem is never the parking itself, it’s the number of cars. The number of cars has increased over the years with students bringing their cars to campus and that has caused, in recent years, in the last 20 years or so, a parking issue for the residents in the greek community area, cause it’s not just the greek community, there’s a lot of citizens there, a lot of apartments that sort of thing, so that increase in the number of cars. Now, the question is on-street parking going to be enough and if not is there going to be parking lots built? I don’t think it’s the city’s responsibility to build parking lots in residence, in apartments or greek houses. So the limited number of street parking spots is going to be limited as long as there’s too many cars. So, the signage is something we’ve worked on in the passed. I would love to see signage be at least readable and understandable. We’ve tried to tackle that numerous times. This particular Council, when I brought it up the last time, chose not work with it because of its complexities in terms of times of days and signage and those kinds of things. The police department has many thoughts about the issue. My feeling, and if I had my way, but I need to have three other council members to agree with me, is to make it as simple as possible and have alternate side parking like much of other parts of town have — first come first serve type of thing. Alternate sides keeps people from storing cars. There’s opposition to that, obviously there’s no perfect answer. But to me, the simpler the better and how we come up with that I don’t know.

Daily: What kind of sustainability program does Ames need, and what would you do as a City Council member to implement this program?

Rice: I don’t think the resource recovery plant is outdated. We’ve had cities across the world to see our resource recovery plant to show how it works. It eliminates the bulk of all landfill tonnage. It’s an amazing process. So it’s not outdated, it’s actually still on the forefront of what I believe much of the country would love to be able to do. We are able to do it because we have a municipal power plant. The power plant, 10 percent of the actual power is being generated by the garbage of the city. We try to pull out every recyclable product, and we do pull out all ferrous metals, which are iron based metals, so we can fully pull out aluminum. Glass is what we mostly want to recycle aside from the resource recovery plant because it does do some harm to the burners, boilers and the power plant if glass gets inside the resource stream. So glass is the one we’re working on tremendously. And we have bins in every grocery store that people can drop their glass off there. That doesn’t include glass bottles other than nickle deposit, those do get deposited and go back to the source of purchase, it’s a nickle deposit law, which I think is a fantastic law in Iowa. That is on the forefront of things too, but that’s not a city thing, that’s a statewide thing. As far as wind energy, we looked into actually purchasing and having infrastructure that would supply wind to the city as part of a city consortium and the state but we were in a little bigger hurry than that was going to happen, that looked like that was five or 10 years down the road versus what we are able to purchase from Garden Wind, LLC, which is a wind farm north of Nevada, north of the one they just built, but the one that’s actually under construction right now, we’ll be getting power within the year. We purchased 25 percent of whatever they produce and we’ll be using that in the city of Ames, which reduces our total energy generation from coal by five percent and the resource recovery plant by 10 percent, so we’re up to approximately 15 percent from renewable resources at this point. Would love to go faster, but right now the technologies aren’t there, reliable power, wind is reliable when the wind is blowing, but not when it’s not, and you can’t store it at this point, so as far as sustainability in the city, as far as resources in terms of efficiency um, that’s one of the things that’s not as sexy as recycling, but it’s something I’m very concerned about — building an efficient city, travel is easy, distances are not great, the idea of slowing down the sprawl to the outskirts of town so we can have a denser city that’s more efficient, using our existing resources is certainly a sustainable effort that is not like putting colored paper in a bin and white paper in another bin, it’s not as noticeable, but it is from a grand sense the wave of the future, changing the whole way we live.

Daily: How will you attract businesses to Ames that will create jobs for current and graduating students?

Rice: The city doesn’t actually build retail, it doesn’t actually start businesses. What we can do is assist in help through tax abatements, through tax financing for infrastructure type things, assist districts that we have for industrial parks. I’ve always been a supporter of the more sustainable high paying jobs in manufacturing and the technology industries, bio industries, things that we have expertise here in Ames from the university standpoint, from students graduating in those fields. All startup businesses, we have a nonrefundable grant program, incentive program where small businesses can get grants from the city combined with the Ames Economic Development has joint grants with the city. My opponent actually, his company received one of those grants, as far as to start that company up and they are benefitting from what we do in the city. As far as the overall, when a larger corporation or company, like a Barilla or a Ball company or Sauer Danfoss, is looking at our industrial park east of the interstate east of 13th street, we have had that in the works for many years, got kind of derailed with the whole mall debate on 13th street, but I think we’re back on track and it’s gonna be moving forward for a 400-450 acre industrial park out there. The kinds of the things those companies will be looking for are the quality of life issues that we celebrate here in Ames. We’ve been awarded many, many accolades in terms of our sustainable city. One magazine had us down as one of the sustainable cities in the country, places to retire, educated workforce, all of those things, that’s our resume of the city. We are well positioned for some of those larger corporations if we can get an industrial park laid out and ready to go. And that’s going to mean the mall folks on 13th and Grand do owe us infrastructures out there and it’s going to be an interesting question when we call them and say you need to put that in now because we’re ready to go. The mall has been a go for four years and nothing has happened, so that’s basically delayed I believe our whole efforts for industrial growth here by about 7 or 8 years, because of that whole fiasco. It delayed our development.

Daily: Is the OneCommunity initiative still active, and how would you implement such a program?

Rice: I was on the committee that coined that phrase, after the Veishea incidences not too many years ago. There was a big task force put together in trying to tie together the city and realizing how intimately we are tied together. There was some recognition that there was some kind of we-they attitude in terms of we the city and they the students and the staff of the university. To kind of dispel that impression, we’ve coined the OneAmes. At the time the city council, I wasn’t on the city council at that time, the city council, the university, the student body kind of joined in on that label, which I think is what we are we are just one community, it’s not a huge city here that we can be independent and try to run things independently. There’s tremendous collaboration between the parties in Ames and the idea was just to identify that. So yes, the OneCommunity was something that I was on a committee that kind of coined that phrase. I don’t think it’s something that goes away, we are one community. It wasn’t really an initiative per se or a campaign, or anything, it’s more just recognizing what we do as a tag line for anything that we do.

Daily: Is there a growing crime problem in Ames, and how would you deal with it?

Rice: Yeah there has been a rise in some violent crime. And that does concern me, it concerns the police department. The City Council, when we address those issues, recognize that it really is a norming of the new citizens of Ames with the community’s norms. Something that we’re not accepting so the police force is out in force to try to take care of the higher crime rates. It is something that isn’t what we want obviously. It’s a growing problem. I think the schools is a great place to work with that. I think a lot is down with young people, whether they’re in high school or junior high. The economic times, obviously, the sense of hopelessness after eight years of Bush tends to drive that hopelessness of a community and of the nation essentially. I think part of that is the cause. Now the answer I believe is to provide the hope and the idea that communities are strong, neighborhoods are strong. As a City Council we have upped our efforts in terms of strengthening our neighborhoods so that neighbors get to know each other tends to reduce crime tremendously and the police department sees that as a community policing idea. Our officers are out on their Segways in the neighborhoods now. Which we’re trying to improve that on the ground presence with not just police officers but concerned citizens and neighborhoods is how we’re looking at not necessarily combating but preventing the even the start of the crime that we see.

Daily: Why should students vote in the City Council election?

Rice: Because it’s where they live. I think it’s part of being a citizen of the United States. We have the freedom to elect our leaders and we should elect the leaders that have the most impact where we live and students are spending a significant amount of their lives in the college town that they’re in whether its if they don’t spend it in the summer they’re spending more than nine months in the city, that’s more than half their life. They should be concerned with how it’s run. I’m always a big proponent of registering to vote where you slept last night.