An Ames City Council At-Large seat is up for grabs in today’s general city election, and a former ISU professor is challenging the incumbent to represent all Ames residents.

Incumbent Russ Cross, president of Wells Fargo Financial Preferred Capital in Des Moines, is vying with Bernie Gerstein, a retired physical chemistry professor, for the open at-large seat.

Cross said the first thing he wants to do if he is elected is to establish a vision for the community based on the wants, needs and expertise of Ames citizens.

“We need to decide where would we want to take Ames; what does Ames want to be?” he said. “We’re going to be facing financial challenges, because the state has less money to share with us and the demands locally are great . We got to set a vision that gives us a guiding direction for the community so we can easily set priorities.”

ISU students could be a powerful force in city government, Cross said, if they take the time to get involved.

“You all make up half the community of Ames,” he said. “We’d like more of you to stay around after you graduate, and to do that, we’d like to provide meaningful jobs. And we’ve done that in I think a very significant way with the city’s support of the Iowa State research park complex. That’s one thing we can do to keep Iowa State students here and to provide you all jobs while you’re in school.”

Cross said listening is one of his major strengths as a council representative.

“I have tried to focus while I was on the council the last four years on listening to both sides of issues that can bubble out of neighborhoods, the business community and anywhere in the city of Ames,” he said.

Cross also said one of his high priorities is to join forces with community school officials to hammer out space concerns.

“[We need to] spend time with Ames School Board members and school officials to better identify their facility needs and see if we can work together with them to help meet some of the recreational needs.”

Gerstein taught at Iowa State from 1962 to 1992, which he said gives him the edge in representing the unique needs of the university.

“I’ve worked with students for 30 years,” said Gerstein, who has lived in Ames since 1953. “I’ve spoken to some students, and from among the most politically active students, I’ve heard, `Wouldn’t it be neat to have a student representative on the City Council?'”

If he is elected, one thing Gerstein said he wants to accomplish is to install a non-voting student representative on the City Council.

“We’d love to have some input from students,” he said. “The other side of that is, when I was a student, I didn’t even have time to go to the bathroom. I think the council would be very receptive to the idea, if [a student] was interested in it. You only have a finite amount of time.”

Gerstein said he is different from his opponent in that Cross supports urban sprawl and the developers that borrow from Wells Fargo.

“Every time you build a sprawl, you have to put in new infrastructure to support it . and those are costs that stay,” he said. “It raises taxes.”

However, Cross said his branch of Wells Fargo does not finance any of Ames’ development.

“Most of our customers are in the East, South and in California,” he said. “What galls me a little bit is that he said that big business is bad or any business is bad . just because it’s a big company. And that’s just not true. Throughout the campaign, I have not said anything despairing about him, nor do I want to or need to. It just really kind of bothers me that he would say these things that are completely unfounded.”

Gerstein said he hopes to improve the council’s communication with the citizens of Ames and focus on the city’s energy plan. He also said he has a special interest in supporting the arts in the university and the community.

After the ballots are cast and the results are in, Gerstein said he will be happy, because he has plan B in place.

“I’m actually in kind of a win-win situation,” he said. “If I am not elected to the council, I have an offer to teach at the University of Utah. Either way, it will work out.”