A businessman and real estate agent by trade, John Brocker is running for county commission District 3, looking to serve his first full four-year term in office.
“I’ve always promoted things that would help Iola,” he said, and “one of the reasons I’m running is to give back to the community.”
“I’ve been involved in politics for a long, long time,” he added, and is proud, for example, of his recent accomplishments on the hospital board.
“We got the hospital change … put it in St. Luke’s hands,” Brocker said.
Brocker’s background in business guides his political outlook, and will guide his policies and vision moving forward.
“I’m a businessman. I look at everything from a business standpoint,” he said.
It’s key, then, he argued, to “run the county somewhat like a business. Otherwise you’re not doing justice for the people that you’re working for.”
As a businessman, Brocker is especially concerned about taxes and transparency regarding taxation, having even traveled to testify on the issue at multiple levels.
He said he wants to “reduce some of the tax burden to the people of Allen County,” while trying “not to cut services.”
“We are noted as one of the most taxed counties in the U.S.,” Brocker said.
He also said he wants to help residents understand what precisely their tax dollars are funding across the county.
“We’ve got to find a way to communicate” that information to people, he said.
In relation to the county making investments into business and industry, Brocker said “the problem I have when helping out new starts [is]: what do you say to the guy who’s been here?”
“That’s a slippery slope,” he said, when the county is “throwing cash on the table” to promote economic development.
By contrast, Brocker said he was interested in recruiting business and industry with incentives other than financial ones.
