Rexburg Mayor Jerry Merrill is running for a third term as mayor. He has served as the mayor of Rexburg since 2016. In an interview with BYU-Idaho Radio, Merrill discussed why he is running for another term, what he is most proud of as mayor and what he will focus on if he is reelected. For more, go to www.rexburg.org/mayor. Election Day is November 7. Below is a transcript of the interview. It has been lightly edited for clarity.
Chandler: The first question I had for you is why are you running for election in the first place?
Jerry Merrill: You know, public service is an interesting animal. It kind of gets in your blood. I've really enjoyed serving as mayor. Every day is interesting and challenging and there's a lot of things going on here in the city of Rexburg. And so, there's just a lot of things that we've been working on this last several years that I'd like to see, be able, to get finished up. A lot of projects that we've got going on that I'm excited about, and I would like to help get them pushed over the finish line and keep the momentum going on some of the projects that we've got.
Chandler: And what would you say to people as to why you should be reelected?
Jerry Merrill: Well, I think the experience that I've had over the last, I was on the city council for four years and now I've served as mayor for eight years and it's a pretty complex job. I don't think people realize the breadth of the things that I deal with, from water law to development, to police and fire and managing 15 departments in the city and trying to make sure everything is going smoothly and dealing with just like any other business have employee issues that come up and things. And so, it's a pretty complex job, actually. And the years of experience that I've had doing it, I think really helps to keep things running smoother and so I'm looking forward to trying to keep that going for the next few years before I retire from this job and be able to train someone and turn it over to someone new.
Chandler: And in part, you may have answered my question already, but what do you have, would you say, that other candidates don't?
Jerry Merrill: Well, I think, yeah, I mean, that experience for one thing. But also, I am still the part-owner of a business here in town. Of course, my son-in-law and my daughter run that and manage it because I don't really have time to be there much anymore. But I think just the understanding of what it takes to run a business and how government rules and regulations can affect that. And that's one of the things that I've tried to do is try to lighten up the hand of government on not only businesses, but just on the everyday citizen. You know, I've emphasized with my staff that we are here, as the city of Rexburg and as a governing body, we are here to be a resource to people and to help them be able to live their lives in a better way and for businesses to help them do things right the first time and not be a heavy-handed government regulator that's looking to catch them doing things wrong. We're here to help them do things right the first time, whether you're building a new home or whether you're establishing a business or whatever. We've evaluated all of our rules and regulations and said, “Do these really make sense, or are they just a rule to be a rule?” And some of those we've eliminated. And we've simplified a lot of things, like in our building codes and different regulations and things we've tried to simplify and make it easier for people to build new buildings here and do things like that. So, there's a lot of things like that that we've worked on, and there's more to do. And I'm excited to continue with the work we've done and keep the momentum going.
Chandler: So, you've served as mayor since 2016. This would be your third term as mayor. If you could pinpoint one thing you want to focus on in this next term, if you're reelected what would that be?
Jerry Merrill: Well, there's a lot of things, but one that we've been working on for a long time is we call it The Downtown. A lot of people call it The Parking Garage, which it's actually way more than that. In our downtown area, we've been doing some downtown development and trying to make it an attractive downtown. But we've got a block in our downtown that we're looking to redevelop. And we want to have a multiuse building that has room maybe for retail businesses, room for office, for businesses that need some class-A office space, a multilevel parking garage so that we've got more parking in the downtown. And then maybe even some living space up on the top floors, maybe some downtown condominiums or something like that, that people can buy and just live downtown. Because there are some people that, believe it or not, I'm a landscaper by trade, so it's hard for me to believe nobody would not want to have a beautiful, nice yard to take care of. But some people don't want to have that responsibility anymore, and they just as soon live downtown. So, we want to be able to have those options for people. And that's been a long time coming because you have to work with the current property owners, and you have to negotiate deals to buy the property and things like that. And so, it takes a long time, and we've been patient and just trying to work with people, but we're getting pretty close now to be able to put out a request for proposals to developers to be able to actually get going on that project. And so, I'm really excited to see that come to fruition and see what we can do in our downtown to make it a little more alive and exciting and things like that.
Chandler: So, we look forward to the future. You talked about developing downtown. Let's look into the past. What is probably one of the most favorite things or proudest moments you've had as mayor.
Jerry Merrill: I think one of the things that I am most proud of is we've established really good relationships with all of our community partners. And in the past, sometimes that, frankly, hasn't been the case. There have been a few frayed relations and some things that haven't gone well. But I've worked really hard to establish really good relationships with our county officials, our school district officials, our BYU-Idaho officials. We always jokingly say if one of us catches a cold, or if one of them sneezes, the other one's going to catch a cold. Right, because we're all in this together, in this city, and we all rely upon each other. And when something happens, especially if it's a major happening, like when BYU-Idaho went to a four-year university, that was a major impact on our little city. And so, to be able to work with each other, to prepare for those kind of, you know, that kind of growth or maybe there's implications that come along with that. We need to be able to work with each other to be able to and one example I can throw out is with our recreation programs, we rely heavily on the school district to be able to use the gymnasiums in their schools. And it only makes sense, I mean, the taxpayers have paid for those, so we might as well get maximum use out of them, right? Well, sometimes if we have people during our basketball games, for example, on Saturdays, if people are letting their kids run around in the school and they break things, then that doesn't go over very well with the school district officials. Understandably, we've got a good enough relationship that they can say, “Hey, this is happening. This is going on. You guys need to take care of this.” And we say, “Yeah, you're right, we do.” So, we've tried to work back and forth on things like that to really be able to save the taxpayers money by getting maximum use out of the facilities they've paid for, and then be able to get along with each other at the same time and not be pointing fingers at each other. We just say, “Hey, this is what's happening. How can we solve this?” And we get together and talk about it and make things work.
Chandler: So, we talked about your proudest moment, and in tandem with that, I wanted to ask if you, looking back at your tenure, wanted to change anything, anything that you may have done, what would that be?
Jerry Merrill: One of the things we're working on all the time, and I think we can always improve on, and that is just communications. I always say to my staff, communication is key. And sometimes, when we're working on projects, sometimes we'll get in our own little silos. And maybe the left hand doesn't know what the right hand is doing. Or maybe we're waiting on, say, the Idaho Transportation Department or somebody like that. We're waiting on them for decisions or for things to happen. And sometimes I think we let those kind of things go too long before we follow up on them. That's one of the things that we've been working on internally, is saying, “Hey, let's follow up on these things quicker and make sure that things are happening that need to be happening.” And so, that's one of the things that I think can always be improved on. And we're working on that currently. That's one of our projects to work on right now.
Chandler: So, last couple of questions for you. What would you say is the biggest issue facing Rexburg right now and what would you do to solve that?
Jerry Merrill: Well, that's a loaded question, but the biggest issue right now for us typically always centers around the growth that we're experiencing. And, I don't know that that's going to slow down anytime soon. It could possibly if we go into a recession that could slow down a little bit, but we don't see it slowing down a lot and we want to be prepared for it. So, growth is always kind of a sticky issue because you've got to put in new roads, you got to put in new subdivisions. And sometimes people are used to the way things are and change is hard and understandably because sometimes things, when they're going to change, it's not going to be as easy or as convenient or as nice as it was before. So, those things are always a little bit difficult. But what we try to do, and what we can even do a better job on, I think, is trying to bring people together to discuss the issues so that they understand all of the, because there's always two sides to every story. And so, if we can try to understand each other's needs and try to come up with some kind of a solution that maybe is not the thing that everybody wants particularly, but it's something that we can come up with that will work. And, we can try to do the best we can with the situations we have, then those are the kind of things we try to work towards.
Chandler: My final question is what message would you give to voters?
Jerry Merrill: Well, I appreciate the citizens of Rexburg. People often ask me, “How do you do this? Don't you get complained to all the time?” And I say, not really. I do get complaints. The roads have potholes, and the snow plowing is difficult sometimes and they're just things that happen, and I understand that. When I get complaints, I try to do what I can to resolve them to the best of my ability and work with my staff to try to do what we can. But overall, I would say, you know, I really appreciate the residents of Rexburg. We have, I think, the best people on planet Earth right here in Rexburg. We're like the safest city in Idaho, one of the safest cities in the country. There's a couple of reasons for that. One is just because the citizens here are very good people, and we have a really excellent police force, and our citizens and our police, people respect each other and get along well. And I think our citizens look to our, they respect our police officers, and they don't badmouth them like they do in a lot of places. They're grateful that they're here and they do a good job. So, I would just say that's been my goal, is to try to keep Rexburg the great place that it is. And there's a lot of things that go into that. It's not just saying, “Hey, I'm going to keep it a great place.” There are a lot of things that go into that with all of the things that are happening and the things that have to be coordinated and try to keep track of. And so, I think one of the things I believe in servant leadership, I think people don't necessarily just follow me around. My wife does a little bit, but she will attest to you that when I walk down the street, it's very rare that I don't end up looking for a garbage can because I've been picking stuff up along the street all the way. And people always say, “Don't you have somebody to do that?” And I say “No, not really. It's up to us as citizens to help keep Rexburg clean and nice.” We don't have people that can just go around picking up garbage. We just don't have enough money, or time or people to do that. I care. I really care about Rexburg. I care how it looks. I care how we treat each other. I love going to the activities of the youth. I go to ball games, I go to plays, I go to concerts. And I love it. I just love serving the people of Rexburg because they are such good people, and this is such a good place. And that's really my goal is to keep it that way. And so, that's why I'm asking for people's support to help me do that for the next four years. And, I hope that we can work together to do that.
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To view the Candidate Q&A for another candidate, please select their name below:
City Council:
Brian Thackeray
Mayor:
Luke Evans