Longtime Cerro Gordo County Sheriff Kevin Pals is not seeking reelection Tuesday and is retiring at the end of the year.
Current Chief Deputy for the Cerro Gordo County Sheriff’s Department, Dave Hepperly, and longtime member of the department and current trooper for the Iowa State Patrol, Brian Koob, are running for the position of Cerro Gordo County Sheriff.
Hepperly has been working with the sheriff’s department for over 20 years and tells RadioOnTheGo News his experience working in Cerro Gordo County is why he should win this election.
“I’ve got over 30 years of supervisory experience with the Mason City Police Department and the Sheriff’s Office at Cerro Gordo County. I’ve helped run the department for the last 22 years. The day in, day out operations of the Sheriff’s Office were part of my daily responsibilities. I have over 20 years of criminal investigation experience. I have also over 20 years of involvement with the Drug Task Force doing state and federal drug narcotics investigations. And then with my day-to-day operation experience at the Sheriff’s Office, I’m the natural choice to be able to step right in and it’d be seamless for me to take over the department.”
Koob currently works as a trooper for the Iowa State Patrol and worked for the sheriff’s department for over 17 years. Koob says he will bring stability to the department.
“I’m going to be here a while. It’s one of those where a lot of these programs don’t just happen over a four-year deal. A lot of them take a lot of time to be able to get developed, strategically planning them to make sure that they are successful. And then also you have to have a strategic plan for not only for the short term of three to five years, but also a long-term plan as well. For deputies, half the deputies can retire in the next five to eight years. And so that’s something where you need a strong leader to be able to ride through that, making sure we’re doing our due diligence to get highly qualified individuals and to just work with our employees and capitalize on our employees’ strengths to be able to create a stronger department so we can better serve the community, to be able to maintain the quality of service we can provide for the Sheriff’s Office and the citizens of Cerro Gordo County.”
Kevin Pals has led the department since 2001.
