New Scranton Mayor Steve Scheffler. Photo courtesy of Steve Scheffler
The new Scranton Mayor has a humble background when he decided to take a courageous step forward to become a public face of the community.
Steve Scheffler is originally from Wisconsin and has lived in Greene County for almost 15 years, while also serving for 13 years in the Jefferson Fire Department. The 43-year-old Scheffler tells Raccoon Valley Radio that he didn’t have a notion to run for mayor until an individual asked if he would consider it.
“Being the smart husband I am, I went home and talked to my wife about it to get her thoughts on the matter. And her being as supportive as she is, she’s like, ‘If this is something you want to do, I will support you and we’ll see how far it goes.’ And obviously it went all the way because here I am.”
Scheffler points out that once he made the choice to throw his hat into the mayoral ring, he took it seriously from the governmental aspect as he went to city council meetings since last June.
“So I could get the jest of how things ran, who the council members were and everything, we actually have a couple new ones now. The City Council is a great team, the City Clerk is an awesome person, there’s great communication between everybody. So I feel that it’s a great team to work with and we should be able to get hopefully quite a bit done.”
Scheffler wants to upgrade the town’s infrastructure, but he recognizes that in their smaller sized community, financial resources are not vast and so he is working to figure out how to bring more funding to accomplish those types of projects. He and his wife are also small business owners of Blue Collar Lawn Care and in the winter, Steve works part-time for the Iowa Department of Transportation.