Warner not seeking reelection in 2014

City Council member Ann Warner will not be seeking reelection in 2014.

Warner, who has served on the council for eight years, has decided to take time off to pursue other areas of interest in the future.

"There's just a lot of different things. We're getting to retirement age. I was on planning commission for eight years and then city council for eight years so I decided I'm going to take some time off," Warner said.

Among the list of things that Warner would like to do with her free time in the future is to visit her son in Africa.

"He's a country director in Sierra Leone, and he has his own place and stuff so he wants us to come over and visit him. So I'm going to miss at least one meeting, because we'll probably be gone for at least one month. I'm trying to leave the Wednesday right after one meeting and get back the morning of a meeting so I can have a month in there. Just things like that," Warner said.

Warner and her husband Jim first came to Kimball in 1971 after they were married and started off farming on land near the Kimball airport.

"We lived out where the airport is four miles west and farmed out there until the interest rates went to 18 percent. We didn't have dad's machinery and dad's farm and different things to keep us going like that so we could see bankruptcy in the horizon. We didn't want to do that so him and I came to town and got jobs," Warner said.

Warner spent the next 18 years working at the Kimball County Manor while Jim started working for the company that the Warners would come to eventually own as a winter mechanic.

"The boss' son-in-law and daughter divorced so he decided to quit so they moved Jim into that position as manager and then Mr. Hickman passed away and Mrs. Hickman said she was going to keep it open as long as she had Jim to run it," Warner said.

After the death of Mr. and Mrs. Hickman, the Warners bought the business Oil Field Pipe and Supply or, as it is known now, OFP Services, changing it to better fit the circumstances of the time.

"The day we bought it it was $7.85 a barrel. All the wells around town, any littler stripper well, was shut down, because it cost more to put belts on than they could make so, besides doing the oil field, they took on repairing boats and cars and we did the fire trucks and school buses and just overall general mechanics," Warner said.

With the oil fields picking up slightly, the Warners added a few more aspects to the business over the years.

"At one time, we had like nine employees, but it was harder to get mechanics and the oil field came back a bit so we gave that part of the business up so we added electrical rewinding. We'd rewind electric motors and put the copper wires in and stuff like that. The family really didn't want the business so we bought it in March of '99 so we've owned it since then. It's kind of a rags to riches thing from almost going bankrupt to now," Warner said.

The Warners also started the business Warner Ventures, an operating company for oil wells.

"We collect the money, pay the bills and distribute the money for others, and we have a couple of stripper wells. We've kind of just done a little bit of everything here and there," Warner said.

In the vain of doing a little bit of everything, Warner joined the Planning Commission for the city of Kimball. It was during this time, that Warner decided to run for city council after seeing issues throughout her time with the commission that she believed she could better help address serving on the council, especially issues concerning regulations on things that she believed were already being regulated at the state level.

"It's simple things like they didn't want anybody to be able to have a babysitting operation in their house with more than three kids that are not their own. I'm going, 'The state law goes into effect for that kind of thing for seven kids. Why are we even regulating this?' They said it would interrupt the neighborhood with traffic and stuff. Just little things like that. I can't see why we need all those regulations when it's already regulated. Little things like that are a big deal for me some times," Warner said.

Ultimately, Warner decided to run in the beginning, because she believed that there was something missing from the discussions that the council was having at the time.

"I guess I just thought I saw a need in town for some conservative ideas and less government, and I keep thinking it hasn't worked out as far as employees because it had grown to like 39 by the time I came in and now we're up to about 47. I just think at a lot of times we could better use the resources we have, and they're all payed by the same individual. They're all insured by the same individual. Maybe we could do some job sharing from winter jobs to summer jobs. Maybe the people that mow in the summer could scoop in the winter. That type of thing," Warner said.

Though Warner considers her time on the council to be fairly successful, there is one project that she wishes she would have been able to see through to its completion: the rail spur project.

"I swore I wasn't going to leave until I saw that in there. There's been a lot of maybe partly our fault and partly not our fault. I was in on these from the very, very beginning. When we first started out, the track was shorter and then when we got all the paperwork done and down the road a couple years then they insisted that we make it longer and the railroad was not doing so good and they would give us used rail and they'd help us out. Then the rail took off and we hadn't moved forward with it, and now those options are not as readily available. So that is my biggest disappointment of all, that that has not happened," Warner said.

Warner states that there were times that she believed that the project was on the right track and felt as though it might be pushed through to completion. One particular time being an occasion where Union Pacific had the city council for breakfast in one of their rail cars with their Vice President there from Omaha.

"It had sounded real hopeful that they would help us out in every way to get it. I was not on the inside track as far as knowing how that all played out, but it seemed to have fizzled in the end. We kept switching economic development people, and I just feel like we didn't have the right people in the right place at the right time. I think that could have been the biggest thing that Kimball could have ever done," Warner said.

Warner has also given some thought to the characteristics that she would like to see in the person that would take her place on the council in the future.

"I'd like to see them be conservative on the spending of the money, to be approachable, that people will bring their ideas, concerns and needs to them if they think that something isn't correct and ask somebody about it and get an answer or help with what they need," Warner said.

Concerning being fiscally conservative, Warner particularly focuses on the long awaited underpass project and the varying amounts of grant money that the city would accept whether they go with the $800,000 plan or the $1.5million plan for the project.

"There's a difference between the $800,000 and the $1.5million. There are considerable people in town that want to $1.5million, because it's free money. I have a little problem with that. If you truly want the underpass at the $1.5million version, then put your money where your mouth is. Put the $1.5million out there and go build it," Warner said.

Warner clarifies that she is not against the use of grant money across the board, but rather would like to see it used towards projects that bring a positive economic impact to the city instead of going simply to beautification in the future.

"I am not against doing the grant for like the railroad because of the economical impact it would have for our town. So trust me, I am not against that. I'm not saying that it's the first thing that would, but I do think that that would truly have an impact for Kimball that would be economical versus beautification. That's why I can okay it with myself to do the money for there versus the underpass, "Warner said. "If you don't have a job, it doesn't matter if these streets are paved with gold. You can not live here if you don't have a job. [The rail spur] can provide a job."