Bud Niekamp is a simple man.

He's been self-employed for nearly 40 years as the owner of Bud's Speed Machine, a machine shop on Gardner Expressway. He dabbled in auto racing when he was younger. He and his wife, Judy, have three adult children, five grandchildren and a few stepgrandchildren. He's better known for his nearly 19 years as a member of the Quincy School Board and for his nearly 17 years on the Adams County Board.

His views on business, cars, grandkids or voting are guided by the simple belief that he treats everyone fairly and owes nobody.

Niekamp ran unsuccessfully three times for the School Board before being elected by 15 votes in November 1989. He has been re-elected four times and was the top vote-getter twice. He'll be 70 when he's up for re-election in 2009. "I really didn't plan on staying this long, but people keep electing me," he said.

Niekamp is serious about being a public servant. To learn about transportation issues, he tries to ride a school bus seven times a year. He says he visits every building in the district at least once a semester. To find out about a superintendent candidate, he said he drove nearly four hours one way at his own expense to talk with a local newspaper, Chamber of Commerce and people on the street.

At his shop, he built a fire-proof vault from cement blocks to keep every document he has received for the School Board and County Board.

Change doesn't come easily. Prices at his shop are unchanged since 1975, though business is down. "The Beverly Hillbillies" and "The Andy Griffith Show" are his favorite television shows.

The platform on which he first ran for election hasn't changed, either. No new taxes.

"I told the people I wouldn't raise 'em, and I'm a man of my word," he said. "If I was to go back on my word, like George Bush -- you know, 'Read my lips' -- well, look what he did. No one believes him anymore."

INTERVIEW

I really didn't want to run for School Board. I didn't think I had the education or the expertise to run for the School Board, but the ones who fit that category, they weren't interested in running, so I felt I had no choice. I had to do it.

I feel it was an accomplishment just to win because I had a lot of people against me. The teachers union, they didn't want to see me on that board. High-society people probably don't want to see me on that board because they don't really understand me. The biggest reward was just getting on the School Board.

I'm probably the only School Board member who has never had a college education, but I graduated from the school of hard knocks, so that ought to mean something.

I wish I could have got more education myself, but I couldn't afford it, and I probably didn't have the ambition anyway. I go to some of these meetings, like at the beginning of the year, they have all the teachers come into the auditorium, and I get to looking around. Every one of these people has a college education but me, and it kind of gives me an inferiority complex a little bit.

I'm glad to see two more School Board members-1 who think somewhat like I do. I don't want to say exactly like I do. I don't think exactly like they do, but at least we've got a little diversity here. Some School Board members used to lay their head on the table, and they would be laughing at me and ridicule me. So I put up with it.

Howard Dewell-2 told me when I first got on the School Board that I could disagree without being disagreeable, and I've always remembered that.

I don't say a lot at these board meetings, but when I do say something, I think it's important. At least I think it is. How can four board members vote in unison on every issue down through the years? It's been this way ever since I've been on the board. Now surely, they have their own thoughts. I want individual thinkers on this board, not somebody who's going to vote yes or no because the board member next to them does. It's just not honest to do that, but the way it's always been.

I want the best education possible for what we can afford. I don't want to go into debt. Taxes are too high in Quincy. This is a retirement community. I try to tell them, they just don't face reality. Most of the School Board members are pretty wealthy people, and they've lost touch with reality.

I want the best education possible, and I told the people back at a candidate forum in 1982, the first time I ran, I said that if I'm ever elected, I won't raise your taxes and I won't vote to spend money we don't have to spend. Well, every politician makes that promise, and they get in and they do just the opposite. Well, I was bound and determined to let people know that I'm going to keep my word, and I have. I'm not right every time I vote, but I try to be. At least I look at both sides of an issue.

Sometimes, I'll look back and say I wish I hadn't voted that way.

One of them was (business manager) Richard Royalty-3. I voted against him, and I didn't know him personally at that time, but I figured, maybe the superintendent-4, since they came from the same school, I wasn't sure that Quincy was going to get a fair shake on their finances. I never told him I regretted doing that.

I think you need to apologize when you do make mistakes. That's hard for me to do sometimes.

I'm usually right (discussing many of the 6-1 school board votes during his tenure). You know, like the Doyle lawsuit, where they gave the local company a contract-5, even though he was $5,000 higher than Doyle in Jacksonville. I voted with Doyle because he was the lowest responsible bidder. Well, the man in Jacksonville took the Quincy School Board to court. He had one lawyer, and the Quincy School District had five lawyers. He beat all five of our lawyers, so I was right on that.

Another one would have been Mike Anderson-6. I voted to keep him, and I also voted not to pay him out $190,000, I believe it was. I still feel I'm right about that.

Another one, let's see what was his name, he was the principal at Quincy High School, Ed Harris. They got rid of him, and Ed told me himself, I went out to talk to him before he left, he said, "You're behind me leaving because you thought I was making too much money." I said that's not true. He went on to be principal of the year, so he wasn't all that bad, either. I voted not to get rid of him.

That was three instances where I was the lone voter, and it turned out I was right. And there's more.

I liked Mike Anderson. I really felt Mike Anderson could have got the job done. He could have got the budget back in balance, but then again, we have these board members who have influence for whatever reason. I never did find out the exact reason. I wanted to keep him. I didn't want him to leave.

I liked Gary Blade-7, too. The School Board came down real hard on him. One time, I gave $25 for the jail and bail and had him throwed in the jail. After I got to know him, he was completely different. I shouldn't have come down so hard on him. I still get Christmas cards from him every year. Same way with Mike Anderson.

Countywide zoning-8. I hate more government telling us what we can do and what we can't do. Big brother government is what it is. As you know, I've lost around here lately on the countywide zoning, and it's gonna cause taxes to go up. You've got to pay for that someplace.

Now we've voted to spend $140,000 to this firm out in Nebraska to implement countywide zoning, but I want to take $140,000 and do some work on the jail. Oh, it's terrible up there. I don't want no Quincy Country Club for them up there, but I just want it to be humane. I get up there and visit four or five times a year, walk through there, talk with the prisoners and the guards. It's deplorable. It really is.

The sheriff's doing the best he can, but with the budget the way it is, you just don't have the money to do things. We're overcrowded. We don't have no place for them to walk around, a yard for them to walk around in.

I don't know how I got the name Bud, but I'm glad it's there. Melvin, I shouldn't really say this, because I was named after my uncle, but I just always though Melvin was more of an English name. I don't know why, but Bud's always been my name down through the years.

Anytime I sign individual documents, or anytime I go vote, it's always "Melvin J. Bud Niekamp." I put them all in there because sometimes, I would write Bud Niekamp, sometimes, I would write Melvin J. Niekamp, sometimes, Melvin Niekamp. I was wondering, maybe it ain't legal to do that, so I better get them all in there. That way, I can't go wrong.

I was in the service for two years. I was a tank gunner, flew reconnaissance in Colorado Springs, Fort Carson. I saw how the other side of the world lives. Before that, I hadn't been more than 150 miles away from home.

I've always been a machinist. I worked at Smith Air Compressor when I was a kid. Then I worked down at Gardner Denver when I got out of the service. I learned a lot down there. That's one reason I was able to start my own business.

A lot of the drills and milling curves, they threw them away. I asked the foreman if I could have some of that stuff, and he said, "Just help yourself." So one night, I took a whole big box of stuff across the highway to the car, and the next day, he says, "Bud, I don't mind giving you something, but don't take so much at once." I guess I got a little hoggish, but that's the reason I was able to start my own business. It's not a big business, but I raised three kids.

Mostly I make drive lines and drive shafts, but that business has slowed down because of the economy. A lot of the vehicles coming out of the factories are front-wheel drives. We don't have drive shafts like we used to. I used to make five a day. Now, if I make five a month, I'm doing good, but I still make them for old cars and semi-trucks.

I used to do a lot of racin'. Pretty good name drivers drove for me, but I couldn't afford to drive all over the country like they wanted to run. One of the drivers I had, Buddy Lasowski, he's won the world outlaw championship. I had another good driver named Donny Beechler. He drove for A.J. Foyt. I think he finished ninth at Indianapolis one year.

I used to run the Knoxville Nationals every year. I never did win, never even come close, because they got too much money. I've got as much expertise as they did, probably, but it takes a lot of money.

I restore antique race cars now. I've got a '26 Buick, I've got a '31 Buick Roadster, I've got a '31 Model A sedan and a '22 Model T. I've got enough to keep me busy. I'll never live long enough to get everything restored.

I never throw nothing away. I've got more paperwork than the School District has got. I even built me a vault just to put school packets in and different information from the county. It's probably fire-resistant, it's made out of cement blocks, and the top of the ceiling is 6 inches thick. It would take a lot to destroy that paperwork.

I like to be visible. I don't want to micromanage anything, but I want to let the teachers know that they're appreciated. I like to see them little kids. I get a big kick out of them. Some of them are really funny.

I'll sit down and, I don't know, I don't want to toot my own horn, but they're reading, they might be in the first grade, and they're way further ahead than I was in the first grade, and I'll sit there, and then there will be a big congregation of these kids. They want me to sit there and listen to all of them read. I try to accommodate most of them, but most of the time, the teachers say, "He's busy, he can't stay here all day." I'd like to, but I'm not independently wealthy.

I tell you what, it's cost me a lot of money down through the years, a lot of money-9. The time I'm gone, I'm not there to meet my customers.

I'm sentimental. If I go to a military funeral and they play taps, that kind of gets to me. If I hear "Amazing Grace," if I see a little kid who's real poor, I feel bad for them. I've got a soft heart. People probably think I'm just the opposite, that I'm coldhearted, but actually, I'm not.

I don't like to talk at funeral homes. Sometimes, I go to a funeral home for a visitation, and people will come up to me and start talking about School Board affairs. That's not showing respect for the dead. I'm polite to them, but I don't encourage them to do that. I wish they would make an appointment, but let's not do it at a funeral home.

To be truthful, I don't get no enjoyment out of either one of them, but I get lot of grief from the School Board. People are so mad at the School Board, they don't trust them, and with good cause.

It isn't how much money you take in, it's how you spend the money you got right now. Every time they get extra money, they find a place to blow it, like giving themselves pay raises. It's got to come to a stop.

When we give them a pay raise we can't afford, someplace down the line, somebody is going to get laid off. So I kinda wish everybody would just hold the line on their wages until we get this budget back in balance.

You know, I haven't raised my prices since 1975 making drive shafts or anything I else do in the shop, and it hurts. But if I raise my prices, I may lose business, because people won't drive down that five miles down there. Gas is so high, so I just bear it.

I just talked to Rich Royalty, and we're trying to pay off 12 different bonds. The Early Childhood Center, we're still paying on that. I don't really know how far we're in debt, but we've got about, oh, a $68 million budget, and surely we educate 7,000 kids on $68 million.

We never had it-10 when I first come on the board, and I would hate to see that disbanded, but that's pretty expensive. I asked Rich Royalty how much government funding we're getting to support that, and it's not very much anymore. They keep spending money on the building. They just spent, I don't know, how many thousands of dollars to put new air conditioners on the roof. I'm not saying we're going to eliminate that or we should even think about eliminating it, but all these different programs we have to look at.

I would put everything on the table, and then you've got to eliminate everything that the government is not going to be paying for. Not really eliminate, but you got to look at that and see if it can be eliminated. They say that's a cop-out, but it's not. You can't have programs if you can't afford them. I won't tell you which ones I would be cutting out, because I don't want to show no partiality, but we need look at them all and see if we can afford them. If we can't, we're going to have to eliminate them until we can afford them. They're all good programs. I ain't got no problems about anything, it's just we can't afford them anymore.

I would give them-11 an A for curriculum, I think they're going real well on that. Finances, I'd give them an F. Not that I'm trying to be a smart aleck. But you've got to run it like a business, because it is a business. We're in the business of educating students. All they're doing is placing a future burden on our students, and we'll never get industry as long as the taxes are high.

They always say, well, when an industry comes to Quincy, the first thing they look at is education. Well, that's not true. The first thing businesses look when they come in is ask: 'What can you do for me? Can you give me a tax reduction? Can you put me in on the enterprise zone?' I'm sure a good education is around third or fourth, but it's not the top priority. The teachers union would like for you to believe that. I've talked to some of the people who come into Quincy and asked them, and education wasn't at the top of the list.

I think extracurricular activities need to be cut back a little bit. You know, they're all good programs. I don't have no qualms with any of them, but if you can't afford them, then you just can't afford them. I really think we have enough tax dollars coming in the way it is right now. We shouldn't have to float these referendums all the time.

The fact is, extracurricular activities, a lot of that is donated funds. You'd be surprised if you knew how much money was being donated for the football program, the basketball program, the fine arts. If you've got donated money, I say you're going to have to keep them activities, as long as it's not coming out of tax dollars. Maybe the people who donate might want to donate some more to keep 'em going.

I don't hear good. I try do the best I can, but if I see something in writing, I've got a good memory. I can remember what I read. I don't know if it's done by design, but they-12 don't talk very loud sometimes.

Sometimes, I'll have to ask them a question, and sometimes, I'll make a comment, and they've already talked about that, and it's really embarrassing. If you'll notice in the front, I've got a monitor up there. That's so I can hear better.

I was born that way. My dad was hard of hearing. My boys are a little bit on the hard of hearing side. That's the way God made us, so we've got to live with it.

As long as my health is good, I'll probably keep going unless I get kicked off. They tried to kick me off the School Board two different times, and they didn't get the job done. I really don't know who it is, but I'm sure it was some of the School Board members who tried to get me kicked off.

They're going to have to take me for who I am or not at all. Half the people love me in this community, and half of them hate me. I'd like for everybody to love me, but I know that's not possible. I'm not going to buy their love, and I'm not going to change my way of thinking for their love.

They just have to accept me for what I am.

1-Jeff Mays and Glenn Bemis

2-former School Board member

3-business manager for the Quincy School District

4-Tom Leahy, who came from the Central School District in Camp Point

5-to install boilers at Quincy Junior High School in 1997

6-a former superintendent whose contract was bought out by the School Board in May 1999

7-a former superintendent whose contract was bought out by the School Board in March 1985

8-explaining why he ran for the County Board

9-spending time on the School Board and County Board

10-the Early Childhood Center

11-the School Board

12-School Board members

Bud Niekamp was interviewed by Multimedia Coordinator David Adam at The Herald-Whig and photographed by Staff Photographer Steve Bohnstedt at his machine shop.