By: Stephen McCollum

Kathy Bantz counts. 

That’s not a campaign slogan; it’s the way she governs. Everything counts.

“I’m somewhat of a control freak when it comes to budgets,” she explains. “I don’t like the process of just plugging in numbers according to a formula. I have to know where those numbers came from.”

The two-term Blackford County Auditor, now in her third term as Mayor of Montpelier, says “I always liked math. Numbers fascinate me. I attribute that to some very good teachers.” 

Her Detailed Revenue Comparisons spreadsheet is the holy grail by which decisions are rendered. Unsatisfied to think of or treat the mayor’s position as part-time, Bantz, the first woman to hold the office, comes to work every day. “I’ve always had to have a purpose.”

Bantz knows that the citizens of Montpelier are more than just numbers. But she also knows that improvements in the quality of life are embedded in those spreadsheets. “I analyze our financial numbers down to the monthly level,” she says. “I make decisions based on previous years’ history.” 

She got some very excellent preparation on the way to becoming a public servant when she and her husband, Les, already parents to Sherry and Devon, became foster parents to as many as 15 children ranging in age from newborn to teenagers in the 1980s. 

Bantz’s passion for people is encapsulated in the way she fought for the youngest foster child, whom she picked up at the hospital nursery, named, and cared for until the child was more than a year old. When placement of the child bogged down and required a court session to sort out, Bantz held the child in front of the bench and admonished the judge not to think of this as a case number but to see the real person whose life was at stake. 

When it came to that child’s life, Bantz knew she had to find a way to decrease the stress and increase the compassion. When it comes to governing the city, she knows that expenses must be decreased and revenues increased to enhance the quality of life. 

“I knew when I got here I would have to make changes,” Bantz says. “When you’re losing more than $100,000 a year providing services to our constituents and have $80,000 in unpaid utility bills, you have to do something different.”

Consider Bantz by the numbers. When she took office in 2012, the General Fund balance was less than $23,000. At the end of 2019, it was more than $240,000. Cash on hand in 2012: $329,000. In 2019: $2.7 million. The bottom line: the people of Montpelier are more than numbers, but their lives are in better “balance” now than a decade ago.

The trajectory for Bantz to occupying two prominent elective county offices wends through Rural Savings & Loan, where she was a branch manager, and the Blackford County Hospital, where she was a data processing manager for 12 years. Then came the phone call in 1999.

“Rollin Brown, whom I had known at Rural Savings & Loan, was County Auditor,” she recalls. “He asked me about my current job—benefits like vacation and sick time—and said that sounded pretty good. I asked about the deputy auditor’s job he wanted to talk to me about and he said there would be no benefits for the first year!”

She wasn’t dissatisfied with her job at the hospital. But she was intrigued by Brown’s offer, discussed it with Les and her faith, she says, guided her to walk through the door being opened. She became the Deputy Auditor.

Three years later, Brown was finishing his second term and the primary election was at hand with three Democrats declared. They all extended an overture to Bantz to continue as Deputy if they got elected.

“At first I was gratified to think that it would mean job security, but then I realized that I already had more experience at the job than any of them, so I decided to run,” she says. 

And that’s how the lesson of every vote counts got put to the test. Sheriff candidate Kevin Mahan took Bantz under his wing as a campaign partner and they canvassed the county door-to-door. Husband Les’s home turf was Dunkirk, where the Blackford County line captures the Shady Side neighborhood with 50-plus houses. Bantz knocked on every door and she was surprised at some of the response.

“Nobody from Blackford County has ever campaigned here before,” some said. On election night, Bantz carried that precinct and won by approximately 100 votes. More evidence of how Bantz counts.

Now that the balance sheets are healthier, thanks to more efficient property tax and utility fee collection procedures, the sanitation, street and law enforcement departments reorganized for greater efficiency, Bantz is turning toward the big picture challenges of dealing with blight and attracting new business to the community’s industrial park.

It won’t be easy, but it will take someone with the vision to see and believe that a door is open and walk through it. It will take someone with a politician’s savvy and a public servant’s heart. 

“My husband sometimes says I’m just stubborn,” smiles Bantz, “but I prefer Joe Pearson’s description. He says that when it comes to Montpelier, I’m just ‘very passionate.’”

By the record so far, you can count on that.