Bill Riggins is running for the Rexburg City Council. In an interview with BYU-Idaho Radio, he explained why he is running, what he would bring to the position, what issues he would focus on and more if he is elected. He can be reached onInstagram or Facebook. Election Day is Nov. 4. Candidate Night will be Oct. 21 starting at 7 p.m. in the Romance Theater. Below is a transcript of the interview. It has been lightly edited for clarity.
Hannah: Can you tell me a bit about your background and what led you to running for City Council?
Bill Riggins: I originate from San Diego, California. That's where I was born and raised. I worked in the construction industry for 20 years after. I got married and started sometime around the age of 35. I came home and I told my wife one day, I've got to get an education. So, I started my college education at the age of 35 with a wife and children and all the responsibilities that come with that. I earned a bachelor's from San Diego State, a master's degree from San Diego State and then a doctoral degree from Alliance International University. Right after I graduated from college, I was hired by [The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints] educational system and became the Institute Director at San Diego State. That kind of opened my eyes to a lot of things — university, government, community, participation, and so on. And while at San Diego State, I served on a redevelopment agency board there, they were planning a lot of reconstruction, rebuilding around our Institute building. And so, I served on this board for multiple years. Very, very interesting.
I got hired here at BYU-Idaho in 2006 in the Religion Department and somewhere around 2010 or so, one of my friends ran to be mayor here in Rexburg, and he won. And when he became mayor, he appointed me to be on the Redevelopment Agency Board here in Rexburg. And so, I served for a couple of years there and then became the chairman of that board.
And then I got called to be a mission president in 2014. I came home in 2017. And then in 2020, they called me and said, “Hey, would you like to come back on the board again?” So, I did. And then somewhere around 2021, I was asked to be the chairman of the board again. So, for the last three and a half to four years, I've been the chairman of the Rexburg Urban Renewal Board which it's just a really special board that we have access to increment tax dollars that a city would not be able to have. And we're able to use those funds to put it back into the city. So, during those years, I've worked with the mayors, and I've worked with many others in the city, and it's been just a wonderful thing to see and to participate in. We were originally responsible, my first time around on the board, we were responsible for the building of the swimming pool there, the Rexburg Rapids here. The baseball fields that are over by the junior high school. And just in the last few years, we've been doing things that the common citizen doesn't really realize. Who's paying for that? One of my favorites, perhaps, is the traffic light right by the high school. Where it was just a disaster getting through the intersection. Well, our board paid for that and so on. So, it's been fun to be able to be involved, to help the city, to be able to bring business in, to then help our city leaders to produce. So, the opportunity came up to run for city council and I thought, ‘Well, I'm not getting any younger.’ So, I'll put my hat into the ring and see what happens.
Hannah: What would you say you have that other candidates don't?
Bill Riggins: Well, if you look at the other candidates, you'll probably see that I have age. I'm probably the oldest of all of them. But just experience from leadership experience from a lot of different angles. From a church side of things and of course we live in an LDS community, so most people understand what this means but I've served as a bishop, I've served as a stake president, I've served as a mission president. I've had to deal with budgets; I've had to deal with everything that’s associated with running an entire business. I've had to deal with hard issues here at BYU-Idaho as the director of the Student Honor Office. I have to face not only students, but parents and everyone there. So, I've got experience with that.
And I think my years on the board bring me really, really, really close to what's happening in the city. I know a lot of what's happening within the city and some of the issues that our city's having to face right now.
Hannah: What is an issue you want to focus on if elected?
Bill Riggins: First of all, in my mind, I think maybe the biggest issue is as a government agency being united, right? Being of one mind, coming together and being able to work together peacefully, being able to have really, really hard conversations, but in a spirit of peace and the spirit of understanding, building these bridges of understanding. And I'm not saying anything negative, by the way. I hope no one takes it as negative that I'm saying that's not common or that's not what's happening. But in the world that we live in, and especially in a small community like we're in, things can get heated, and we can get personal about what takes place. I love to listen, I love to learn, I love building these bridges of understanding. And so, I would say that would be as I go in and I sit and work with these other wonderful people, I want to build that kind of a relationship where we can truly be united where we can again deal with hard things and yet be at peace with what's going on.
Now, as far as issues are concerned, we're a growing city. We’ve got a lot of stuff happening and there's limited resources. So again, as I think about our city and I think about its growth, I think that we have to learn to work together differently than perhaps we've done in the past. We can't depend on the tax dollars for everything that we do. And so, I think that we’ve got to look at every aspect of our community. We've got to look at business. We've got to look at the university and we have to look at the Church and we have to look — we're a community where this university, BYU-Idaho, is really central. The number of people that it employs, the number of young people that are here because of the university, the two temples, it just says a lot about the part that the university and The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints plays in our community. So, we've got to figure out how to bring them all together. And as these different issues come up, how do we work together to solve them? So, we have everything from lack of housing and employment. Again, I think about you as a student. Think about our international students. I think about our students in general.
What are we doing to draw business here that would really be preparing our young people to go out into the world and to be great productive citizens. We really don't have that right now. And so, how do we do that, right? We have people moving in; we have people moving from all over. My next-door neighbor just, sight unseen, bought the home, right? He was living in California. But there's growth and so the infrastructure, the redoing of roads, the maintenance, right? All of that, it's all issues that cause pressures for a little town like ours that is growing and perhaps a little faster than we wish it was growing.
Hannah: How would you address the current housing crisis here in Rexburg?
Bill Riggins: It’s a hard one from different perspectives. First of all, I don't believe that it's the city's responsibility to, quote unquote, solve the problem. Again, limited resources and so on. But I do believe that it's our responsibility to bring people together so that the problem can be solved. There's some issues that I think that we can't control. Again, sitting on the Urban Renewal Board, we've had to purchase property. You can't buy a piece of property in downtown Rexburg for under a million dollars per acre, right? I mean, that's San Francisco kind of money, prices of property are up, construction costs are out of control, they're out of sight right now. We were working on a project here downtown trying to bring in some investors, to do some building for us with housing included in this. They started, they looked at the project, they drew a plan, they did everything, but even with us providing the property for them, and money to help them. They couldn't make the bottom-line work. So, they walked away. So, this is problem that we're going to have to, again, we're going to have to look at it together and say, how do we go over these hurdles? These are some very, very, very difficult hurdles to have to go over. Are there investors out there that would be willing to get financing that's long term instead of the normal, say, 30-year financing that's longer? Is there a way for us to work together with private industry, to bring them together and help us solve these issues, right? But yeah, there's a little bit of federal money out there. And of course, as a city, we should be looking for that, for that kind of help. But the circumstances are tough right now. But not impossible to solve if we've all put our heads together.
Hannah: What are your thoughts on extending Fifth West?
Bill Riggins: Taking it as far as the freeway’s concerned, our city is divided by Highway 20. The west and the east. When you really think about it, we have three ways to get to the [freeway], if you're coming from BYU-Idaho heading to the west side, you only have three ways. You're going to go over by the high school, you're going to go down main, or you're going to go over here; they’re the only ways. So, ambulances, any kind of emergency vehicles to get to that side of our city, they've got issues. We've got high traffic, and so I think we have to look at this and say, where are the places where we could cross, where we could go under the freeway, where we could get, again, get the federal help, right? Get the help that we need to be able to do that. So, I personally think it's necessary. That's my own opinion.
I think there's multiple, of course, there's other areas. Seventh, we could go down Seventh South, take it all the way across and go underneath the freeway. That's another option. There are multiple options we could do. But yeah, I think somehow or another, we have to have more roads going to that side of town. The west side of town is growing big. And it's mostly housing, which means cars, which means transportation, which means getting to the junior high school that's on this side, getting to the middle school that's on this side. Now if you live on the east side, you have to get over to the west side to go to the high school. And really, you only have really one way to get over there, unless you want to get on the freeway and go all the way down and then still get off, and you've got one or two places to get there. So again, I think these are issues that have to be looked at. I think we can't hope that we stop growing. It's just not going to happen, right?
I believe there are solutions. I believe it's just a matter of sitting together and really working them out.
Hannah: What message do you have for voters as we approach Election Day?
Bill Riggins: Well, my platform is simple. I think it really comes down to this from my perspective. I moved here from San Diego, California 20 years ago. I love Rexburg, Idaho. I wish I would have, that God would have sent me here earlier. I wish that I could have raised my family here. I didn't raise my family here. But I have grandchildren growing up here. I have a daughter who lives here. I have friends, my colleagues who live here. And I love this place. I love and appreciate the pioneers who built this place. They left us a legacy that is almost unbelievable. When you think about our hard winners here, when you think about, you know what, and you think, why did they stay and how did they make it? Well, they stayed, many stayed because they were sent here, and they had made a promise they were going to do something about it. But once they got here, they were committed, and they helped each other. They labored together. They were hard workers. They were intelligent. They are working out, just figuring things out, right? We have to build on that foundation. That's my philosophy, let's not let do what we already have. We've got to build on what Rexburg was built on, hard work, working together, being wise with our money bringing communities together to solve problems, right? That's what they did.
And then looking to the future we've got to be thinking about our families, we've got to be thinking about our grandchildren and children. I want my children and I want my daughter, my grandchildren, and my great-grandchild to live in a place that has the same standards that we have today, that has the peace that we enjoy, that has the work ethic that is here. But we've got to look, we've got to be dreamers. We've got to look ahead and say, okay, what is it that they're going to need?
In order for that to take place, in order for them to want to stay here, in order for them to want to raise their children here, in order for them to succeed here in Rexburg. So that's me. I want to build on what we have and then I love the dream. But I love to dream with others. I love to be able to put it on, let's look at it, let's work together and what's possible.