Government : Meet the Candidate: Joan Flecksing

Below is the candidate profile for District 3 Supervisor candidate Joan Flecksing, in the candidate's own words.

Benton County Supervisor democratic candidate in District III, Joan Flecksing is 38 years old and resides in Walford with her husband, Bob Ford Jr., and their three children, Olivia, Zoey and Dominic. She was born in rural Toddville and as the youngest of twelve children, raised in agriculture by her hard working parents, Robert and Barbara, neither of whom had a high school education, but who stressed the value of education for their children. Joan’s parents sacrificed to send their children to private schools in Cedar Rapids. As Barbara Flecksing was of American Indian, Mexican and French descent and born in California, the choice to take their eldest son to St. Joe’s in Marion was originally due to experiences of racism in the local rural school in the mid 1950’s. This choice would evolve into a long dedication to education for their 12 children, which has fostered in Joan a passion for education for people of all socioeconomic backgrounds, with the understanding that it is first and foremost through education that a society can stop cycles of dependency, drug and alcohol abuse, violence, crime and failure to contribute to one’s own community.

Paired with education was Joan’s upbringing on a large homestead that was as self-sufficient as possible, working on a llama farm from the age of 12 to 17, sports, church and 4-H. After graduating from Regis High School in January of 1995, Joan would go onto Kirkwood Community College to study liberal arts and parks and natural resources, earning an Associate of Applied Sciences. She would then transfer to Upper Iowa University and earn a Bachelor of Science in Conservation Management. Throughout college, Joan worked seasonally for the Iowa Department of Natural Resources in local state parks in the pursuit of her dream to become a Park Ranger since the age of 12. Currently Joan will graduate from Drake University on June 8th from the Certified Public Managers program. With her college education being solely her own responsibility, she took ten years of working full to part time while attending school to earn her bachelors. “I understand the complexities of youth today that are facing the real world and struggling to make their own world a place they want to live and grow in, these people are our future and we must work to support them in a myriad of ways.” Joan has also served as an adjunct professor of Natural Resources at Kirkwood Community College.

Since 2001 Joan has managed Pleasant Creek State Recreation Area for the Iowa Department of Natural Resources, a 1927 acre state park, located north of Palo. In her career Joan is a diverse manager, with skills in public administration, staff mentoring and training, public relations, natural resource management, visionary planning, construction project management, public budgeting, environmental education, farm management, law enforcement and maintenance to name a few. Having been raised in diverse home that supported differences naturally led into a diverse career where adaptability, rational decision making and leadership are a daily necessity for Joan.

In her personal life Joan and her family attend Stonebridge Church in Cedar Rapids and are involved in Pheasant Forever and 4-H. Joan’s passions lie with those issues that keep us from improving our society and allowing people to live the Full lives which we are all intended to do – education, health care at all phases of life, a healthy environment to live and play in, public services that work for all, equal pay, childcare, family dynamics and more. “My goal in further serving the public in the political arena at the local level of Supervisor is to try to begin to affect positive change to governing policy and laws which may not suit ever-changing and diverse communities. We have got to all work together to ensure that we empower people to respect themselves and the community in which we all work and live. We have all got to contribute to OUR greater good.”