Charles City loses one of its best backers in the passing of former Mayor Erb

By Bob Steenson, bsteenson@charlescitypress.com

People who knew him say Charles City lost one of its greatest and most effective cheerleaders with the recent death of former long-time Mayor Jim Erb.

Erb, a Charles City attorney who was mayor for 22 years from 1996 through 2017, died Friday, Nov. 5. His funeral will be 11 a.m. Friday, Nov. 12, at Immaculate Conception Catholic Church in Charles City. Erb’s obituary is online and published in the Tuesday Press.

“You couldn’t ask for a better champion for a community than James Erb,” said Steve Diers, the current Charles City city administrator who worked with Erb for years, even after Erb left elected office.

“I was working with him as late as last Wednesday,” Diers said, recounting how Erb had called him for information about a project.

“I’ve worked with many mayors over my career, and he was all things for Charles City,” Dier said. “Maybe unrelenting is the word, in the most positive way. He was just never satisfied with what could be done to improve Charles City and always had the best of intentions with everything he did.

“I really respect the man and really enjoyed working with him when he was mayor, and then even after that when he would be on various committees in the community. … Even now four years removed from being mayor, he’d still call from time to time and ask about different things he read. He was always, up until the very end, just so very involved in doing whatever it took to make this community better,” Diers said.

“He was just the sweetest person. He was just always so nice. I’m going to miss working with him, for sure,” Diers said. “He’ll be sorely missed.”

Jerry Joerger worked with Erb for about 20 years as a member of the City Council.

“He was a very strong mayor — good for the city,” Joerger said. “He worked hard, much harder than he really needed to, but he was very good, very supportive of the city. He did a lot of things that people weren’t even aware of.”

Joerger pointed to Erb’s work in economic development and helping start the Southwest Development Park and other developments in the city as examples.

“He had a real strong reputation throughout the state,” Joerger said, noting that Erb served on the Iowa League of Cities executive board and was president for a year.

Tim Fox, the executive director of the Charles City Area Development Corp., said Erb could be demanding — “there’s no question about that.”

“But he never assigned more than he expected out of himself. I think that made him a very good leader,” Fox said.

Fox recounted how Erb sold the Area Development Corp. the farmland for what became the Southwest Development Park at the prevailing Iowa State University ag land price, when he could have sold it for a lot more.

“It was very generous,” Fox said.

“I do know that whenever we wanted to do something out of the ordinary, the first guy with his hand up was Jim Erb. The guy that would do all the research and help make the decisions was Jim Erb,” Fox added. “He’s going to be sorely missed, and we need a collection of people to step up and fill the void.”

Trudy O’Donnell, the current city clerk, worked with Erb for 10 years from when she started with the city in 2009 until he left the office of mayor in 2017. She also had the perspective of knowing him personally as well as professionally, as Erb was married to O’Donnell’s sister, Cheryl Erb.

“He was just such a quiet leader. When things were getting kind of crazy he just had a way to bring things down and just calm everybody down,” O’Donnell said.

“The one thing I will always remember about him is he always tried to find compromise. He always wanted to try to work with other groups to get to a common goal. He was always for that, sharing resources and trying to get things done,” she said. “He just always wanted what’s best for Charles City.”

Diers said Erb’s reputation reached beyond Charles City, and he knew of Erb even before he started working here.

“He just had a presence,” Diers said.

Under Erb’s guidance, Charles City became the first community under a population of 10,000 to become a STAR-rated community, Diers said, referring to the Sustainability Tools for Assessing and Rating (STAR) program that looks at how a community fosters innovation, redefines progress, lives within its means, cultivates collaboration, ensures equity, embraces diversity, inspires leadership and continuously improves.

Erb also helped lead the effort for Charles City to be declared an AARP Age-Friendly Community — the first rural community in Iowa to win that designation and only the second city of any size in the state.

“You could put your finger on just about anything in town that’s been a positive force and Mayor Erb had a part to do with it,” Diers said.

In recent years, Erb has pushed hard for water quality initiatives, helping get the city’s permeable paver project going and working on other projects.

“The water quality projects with our RCPP (Regional Conservation Partnership Program) project north of town, bringing that together and partners with that, that was Jim that helped bring the DNR and Soil and Water Conservation and the University of Iowa group. All those partners were brought to the table with Jim’s efforts,” Diers said.

Programs like that one show what Charles City can accomplish, and that in turn attracts more attention — and sometime more funding, Diers said.

“These communities see Charles City doing this, it leads into other projects. Just that residual impact has been very helpful to Charles City and came about because of Jim and his presence and leadership,” Diers said.

Erb’s obituary includes some of the long list of activities and groups he was involved in, and the awards he won over his career.

Just this past summer, Erb was honored with one of the first-ever Rural Hero awards, at the Iowa Rural Summit held Aug. 18-20 in Cedar Rapids.

The Iowa Rural Hero award designates someone who has “made a difference in their rural community or region through leadership, innovation and accomplishment.”

Erb was recognized for going “above and beyond” in rural development efforts on behalf of the community, giving as an example Erb’s efforts to have Charles City recognized as an AARP Livable Community and his work to help the community develop the whitewater course.

“Our Rural Heroes have had a huge impact on Iowa,” said Mark Reinig, board chairman of the Iowa Rural Development Council.  “Their work demonstrates the impact that a local leader can have on a rural place.”