Urbandale Honors Forbes for His Work on City Council

Urbandale City Councilman John Forbes had his farewell reception at City Hall on Tuesday night amongst his friends and coworkers.

Forbes won a seat in the Iowa House of Representatives last month and will start his new job on Jan. 14.

Forbes said he's proud of the work that’s been done by the council to establish Urbandale as a great place to live.

“We’ve been recognized by CNN Money magazine as one of the top cities in the United States to live, that’s very important to me,” he said.

Councilman Mike Carver, who’s known Forbes since the early 1980s, says Forbes brought a positive attitude to everything he did and that will carry over into the Legislature.

“The thing I have always appreciated about John is he approaches everything with a very positive attitude," Carver said. "He puts a positive spin on things generally, he’s just not a negative person. He brings that kind of focus to the things that he does and obviously he’s brought that to the city council.”

Forbes said he will miss meeting ever other Tuesday night with the council members, "who I consider very good friends of mine and doing a lot of business work.”

Deb Mains, Urbandale city clerk, has known Forbes since 2005.

“I’m going to miss his level-headedness," Mains said. "He shows a lot of concern for the public and I’m just going to miss working with him. He’s a generally nice person and he cares about the residents of Urbandale.”

Bob Andeweg, mayor of Urbandale since 2005 and a council member before that, said, “John’s been a really thoughtful person who’s always thought through all the issues, deliberated, listened to both sides of the story and made a thoughtful decision.”

Forbes ran Andeweg’s first campaign in 1999 when Andeweg first ran for City Council.

“He’s just a great person and a great representative of our city,” Andeweg said.

The Urbandale City Council will interview six applicants to replace Forbes next Tuesday.