MISSOURI VALLEY VOICES

Editor’s note: Lori White is the founder and publisher of Missouri Valley Voices and was a petitioner, along with her husband Barrett White, in the court action discussed in this piece. This editorial combines documented court findings with her first-person account and reflections.

What began as an effort to protect our family became a nearly two-year lesson in local government, due process, persistence and what it really means to care about the community you call home.

MISSOURI VALLEY, Iowa — On August 27, 2026, nearly two years after Missouri Valley Building Official John Harrison revoked a fence permit the City had already approved for our property, an Iowa District Court ruled Thursday that the revocation was unlawful.

The court found that our due process rights were violated, that Harrison acted “arbitrarily and unlawfully” when he relied on a private easement to revoke the permit, and that the Missouri Valley Board of Adjustment acted unlawfully when it affirmed his actions. Perhaps most strikingly, the court found Harrison had actually complied with Missouri Valley ordinances when he originally approved our fence permit.

He was right the first time. The permit wasn’t the mistake. Revoking it was.

The ruling brings an end, at least for now, to a fight that consumed nearly two years of our family’s life. Winning in court is only part of the story. Somewhere during those two years, Missouri Valley changed me.

The Missouri Valley we thought we were choosing

As a child my family found ourselves in Olde Towne Bellevue because Offutt Air Force Base was my dad’s final duty station before he retired from the Air Force. There’s an old saying around Offutt: “Once you get Offutt, you never get off it.” In our case, that turned out to be true. What was supposed to be one more military assignment became home. We stayed in Olde Towne Bellevue from the time I started kindergarten until I graduated from high school.

I grew up there with seven siblings in a three-bedroom house with one shower. It wasn’t a big house, and we certainly didn’t have much, but it was full. Full of kids, noise, personalities, arguments, laughter and the kind of memories that come from growing up with almost no personal space and a whole lot of family.

Barrett grew up in rural Nebraska with two brothers and a single father who worked at a power plant. Neither one of us grew up with much.

So we did what people are told you’re supposed to do. We worked hard. We built careers. We bought the bigger house and moved into a newer Omaha development with an HOA. Then we started giving our children all of the opportunities we thought successful parents were supposed to give them.

Our girls took violin and ballet. Our son took cello. The kids did martial arts. There was always another lesson, another practice, another activity and another opportunity we didn’t want them to miss.

Somewhere along the way, I realized something uncomfortable: the more we gave them, the more we were losing them. Our time was disappearing into activities, and our money was disappearing into maintaining the lifestyle required to sustain them. Our children were growing up right in front of us, and we were spending so much time trying to manufacture a magical childhood that we had forgotten to leave room for the magic to happen on its own.

We hadn’t protected the magic. We had filled its space with things.

At the same time, there was a dream I had carried around for most of my adult life. I wanted to become a nurse. No matter where I was in my career, somewhere in the background I was always taking another prerequisite — microbiology here, anatomy and physiology there — quietly moving toward a goal I wasn’t willing to let go of.

Eventually Barrett and I began asking ourselves what exactly we were working so hard to maintain. The mortgage, the taxes, the HOA, the lessons, the activities and the schedules had become the architecture of our lives. We started wondering whether any of it was actually the life we wanted.

Barrett would tell me stories about growing up in rural Nebraska: the one-screen movie theater where he and his buddies lined up on Friday nights, the sheriff seeing him speed down Main Street and his father somehow knowing about it before Barrett even walked through the front door, people knowing one another, kids having freedom and life moving a little slower.

That sounded like the magic we were missing. It also sounded like the kind of change that might finally make nursing school possible for me.

So finding a small town became a family adventure. We drove around Iowa looking at Riverton, Red Oak, Harlan, Woodbine, Logan and eventually Missouri Valley. We didn’t know Missouri Valley. We had no relatives here, no childhood friends, no political connections and no history tying us to this community. What we had were hopes and dreams.

Missouri Valley started checking boxes. The library. The little downtown. The one-screen movie theater. Interstate access. Then we found this big old house on a corner lot within walking distance of the library and Main Street. From our front door we could see two churches. Across the street, our neighbors had a beautiful yard and garden that made the view feel almost borrowed — like having a free pass to Lauritzen Gardens every time we stepped outside.

It felt like the kind of place where we could finally slow down.

It did not take long for that dream to become something very different.

Police confirmed our concerns were real

Within weeks, we began dealing with constant activity around the neighboring property and shared driveway. People came and went throughout the night. Vehicles blocked access. There were bright lights, power tools and vehicle work at hours when most of the neighborhood was sleeping. Tires, trash, vehicle parts and other belongings extended across the property line.

At first, we tried to handle things like reasonable neighbors. We asked for belongings on our property to be removed, for the driveway to remain accessible, for our property line to be respected and for the nighttime activity to settle down.

Instead, we began hearing versions of two messages: “This isn’t how we do things in Missouri Valley,” and “We were here first“, “Your property line doesn’t matter”

What made everything especially unsettling was that I didn’t know Missouri Valley yet. I didn’t know these people. I didn’t know what was normal here. So rather than assume the worst, I tried to find out.

Less than three weeks after we moved in, I contacted the Missouri Valley Police Department. I explained that I was new in town, that Barrett worked overnight in Omaha, that I was home with our children and that I was becoming increasingly concerned about the amount of traffic I was seeing going to and from the neighboring property.

Police Chief Lange came to our home with another officer. Rather than telling me I was overreacting, he confirmed police were already familiar with problems connected to that house and that drug use at the house was a problem and that police had arrested people associated with the property multiple times. When I asked what I should do about suspicious activity, he told me to call it in.

That mattered. I had been in Missouri Valley less than a month and was still trying to convince myself that maybe I was reading everything wrong because I was new. The Police Chief was telling me I wasn’t. So we installed security cameras, not because we wanted to watch our neighbors, but because Barrett worked overnight and I wanted to know what was happening around the home where our children slept.

Then, on May 28, everything escalated.

William Jordan emerged from the neighboring garage carrying what appeared to be a rifle and began running around and shooting in the area around the neighboring property, our private property, and the shared driveway. Our four minor children hid beneath the pool table in our basement while police responded and arrested him.

I remember looking at my children and thinking, “We have lived here for a month. What did we move our family into?”

We later learned the weapon was a BB gun, but Chief Lange told us it looked enough like a rifle that officers could have responded as though it were a real firearm if Jordan had pointed it at them.

Then came the part of that conversation that changed how I understood everything happening around us. Lange told us he had been with the Missouri Valley Police Department for 27 years and described having dealt with issues involving that neighboring household throughout that time. He described Jordan’s behavior that day as methamphetamine-related paranoia based on his experience with him. He told us to report suspicious foot traffic and to send security-camera footage to police so officers could address what we were seeing.

He knew some of the people we were seeing. He knew their histories. He even explained that Jordan had recently been sleeping in a church garage before being removed from there, which helped explain why we had seen Jordan sleeping around the shared-driveway area.  Most importantly, he wasn’t telling us to ignore what we were seeing. He was telling us to document it and call police.

That distinction matters because later our story would sometimes be reduced to newcomers who didn’t like their neighbors and decided to put up a fence. That isn’t what happened.

Within weeks of moving here, the Police Chief was confirming that officers already knew about serious problems associated with the property, confirming concerns involving drug activity, identifying people we were seeing and telling us to report suspicious activity. Then a man who had been frequenting that property came out of a garage carrying what appeared to be a rifle while our children were nearby.

My children hid under a pool table.

Immediately after Jordan’s arrest, we called the owner of the neighboring property. I expected her to be horrified. Instead, she told us she wished we had contacted her before calling police so she could have had an opportunity to handle it.

I remember thinking: Handle what?!

From that point forward, I stopped questioning whether I was simply being the overly cautious outsider. I knew what I was seeing was serious. The police knew it was serious. And we still had to live next door to it. There were additional confrontations and more police involvement. In June, Police Chief Lange returned to our property, reviewed the easement and property information with me, walked the property, spoke with people at the neighboring house and asked that belongings and a junk vehicle encroaching onto our property be moved.

That context matters because the fence did not begin as a fight over an easement. It did not begin because we moved to Missouri Valley and disliked how somebody else lived. It did not begin because we wanted to take away anyone’s access to a shared driveway.

It began with five children, a father working nights, a mother home with those children, repeated activity around their property, police involvement and a growing realization that the environment around our home wasn’t something we could simply neighbor our way out of. We wanted to know where our property ended and somebody else’s began. We wanted some part of our home to feel like ours.

The fence didn’t create the conflict. It was an attempt to create a boundary in a situation where every boundary we tried to establish seemed to be ignored.

And after all of that, we did not simply go outside and build one.

We asked the City for permission first.

We followed the City’s process

Long before there was ever a fence permit application, I had been communicating with Missouri Valley Building Official John Harrison about the neighboring property, the shared driveway and our concerns. I gave him the easement. I discussed our plans for a fence. He had been to the properties and knew there was a shared driveway.

The District Court would later specifically find that the record showed I had shared the easement with Harrison during our communications leading up to the permit application.

Then we paid for a professional survey, completed the City’s application, paid the fee and submitted the survey. Harrison reviewed it and, on Nov. 5, 2024, approved our fence permit.

Then our neighbor complained. Eight days later, Harrison revoked the permit. The reason centered on the easement — the same easement I had personally given him months earlier. That is when this stopped being only a problem with our neighbors and became a problem with our City government.

I contacted John Harrison, the City Administrator, Turri Colglazier, Mayor Shawn Kelly, and City Council members Sherman Strueble, Patty Stueve, Kevin Taylor, Marilyn Keizer, and Aaron Tuttle. I asked for review. I asked for meetings. I attended Council meetings. I provided documents. The record shows those efforts continued for months. It was an extraordinarily helpless feeling. John had the institutional credibility. He was the Building Official.

I was Lori — a newcomer, an outsider, a transplant, and increasingly, a complainer, a troublemaker, a pot stirrer. I didn’t understand my place yet. I didn’t understand the unwritten rule I kept hearing in one form or another: “This is how it’s done in Missouri Valley.

What I was beginning to understand was that asking why could be treated as a problem all its own.

I was the person asking too many questions, sending too many emails and refusing to let something go simply because I had been told to. He had the title, the familiarity and the benefit of being the person people already knew.

I had the documents.

And I was beginning to understand that being right and being believed were not always the same thing. After months of trying to get the City to review a revocation I believed was unlawful, we built the fence.

Missouri Valley Changed Me

By then, I had spent an extraordinary amount of time learning how local government worked. I read ordinances because I had to. I learned who had authority over what because I had to. I kept records because statements I heard didn’t always seem to match the documents I could see.

Eventually my question stopped being, Why is this happening to us?

It became: What happens to the people who simply take the City’s word for it?

Most people aren’t going to spend hundreds of hours reading municipal code, researching legal cases and opinions, and doing open records requests. Most aren’t going to preserve every email or repeatedly attend meetings. They’re going to assume the City knows the law. They’re going to assume that if they have a right to appeal, someone will tell them. They’re going to assume that if they submit evidence for an appeal, the Board deciding their case will receive it.

Once I started asking those questions, I couldn’t stop. I began attending meetings differently. I read agendas differently. I wanted to understand how decisions were made and what authority officials actually had. Some of what I saw troubled me, but something else happened too.

I became invested.

I began caring deeply about how Missouri Valley worked because I began caring deeply about what Missouri Valley could become. Despite everything, I fell in love with this town — not with every decision made at City Hall and not with every part of its culture, but with its potential.

I saw the library. Main Street. Historic buildings. Families. Volunteers. Business owners.

And I kept thinking: This place could be the gem of Harrison County.

That is part of what eventually motivated me to become more involved in local government and to create Missouri Valley Voices. I wanted meetings recorded, documents accessible, votes explained and residents informed. I had learned firsthand that asking questions does not make someone difficult. It makes them a participant.

The Board hearing put the entire problem in one room

In July 2025, Harrison issued another enforcement letter concerning our fence. Unlike the original revocation, this one actually told us we had a right to appeal.

So we appealed.

I prepared 27 exhibits for the Missouri Valley Board of Adjustment, including the approved permit, the survey, the easement, communications showing what Harrison knew and records documenting my attempts to challenge the original revocation.

But the Board did not receive those 27 exhibits. Harrison had told me that morning: “None of that was relevant, so I didn’t send it to them. There’s 27 exhibits.”

The official whose actions I was appealing had decided which evidence challenging those actions was relevant enough for the reviewing Board to see. I wasn’t asking Harrison whether my evidence mattered. I objected to proceeding without the complete record, but the hearing continued.

I was appealing Harrison.

The discussion wandered into hypothetical access issues, materials from separate civil litigation and even my criticism of City government on social media. Board member Mike Nielsen questioned me about what he called my “continual bashing.”

At another point, Dennis Collier said he believed I had received notice and gone ahead and built the fence anyway. When I told him the Board could recognize that Harrison had overstepped his municipal authority, Collier responded: “That’s not my job.”

Then came the exchange that captures the hearing for me.

I explained that Harrison knew about the shared driveway and easement, had our survey, had been on our property and had approved the permit.

“I can prove that with my exhibits,” I said.

Collier responded: “I don’t care.”

My response was immediate: “You have to care.”

Those words stayed with me because they represented how the entire process had felt.

I could prove it.

He didn’t care.

But the people exercising government authority over citizens have to care.

Ronald Jones ultimately moved to deny my appeal. Nielsen seconded the motion. Collier, Board Chair John Dems, Nielsen and Jones voted to deny it. Mary Jo Buckley abstained. My appeal failed. I had been told that whether Harrison exceeded his authority was for a court to decide.

So that is where we went.

Taking the Case to District Court

Barrett and I represented ourselves in district court.

On Aug. 27, the court issued its ruling.

The court found that Harrison was familiar with the properties, knew there was a shared driveway and had been provided the easement during our earlier communications. It found that we obtained a survey, completed the permit application, paid the required fee and received an approved permit from Harrison on Nov. 5, 2024.

The court also found that after Harrison revoked the permit, I immediately demonstrated a clear intention to challenge his decision. The original revocation did not tell me I had a right to appeal, how much time I had to appeal or where the appeal needed to be filed.

The court concluded: “White’s due process rights were violated.”

The judge also addressed the fundamental question I had been asking since 2024: could the City revoke our fence permit because of a private easement?

The answer was no.

The court found that a private easement is not a zoning ordinance and that using municipal regulatory authority to resolve a private easement dispute exceeded the City’s proper role.

Harrison, as affirmed by the Board, had acted “arbitrarily and unlawfully.”

And the court found something that turned nearly two years of argument on its head: Harrison had actually complied with Missouri Valley ordinances when he originally approved our permit.

The permit wasn’t the mistake.

Revoking it was.

The court also rejected the argument that the later Board hearing had adequately fixed the problem, finding that the Board had not truly considered our challenge to the original revocation and that we had not truly been given the opportunity to argue that issue.

The revocation was unlawful. The Board acted unlawfully. Our fence can remain.

Somewhere in the Chaos, I Found the Magic Again

I thought winning would feel simpler.

It doesn’t.

There is relief and vindication, but there is also anger and grief over the amount of our lives consumed getting here. A court ruling cannot give my children those two years back. It cannot erase hiding under the pool table, the cameras, the meetings, the unanswered emails or the hours spent reading ordinances and trying to understand how something I believed was wrong could continue simply because someone with authority said it was right.

But somebody finally looked.

And that matters to me more than the fence itself.

Because the fence is wood and metal. It will age. It will need repairs. Someday it will probably be replaced.

The lessons from these two years will remain.

I learned not to assume government is right simply because government says it is. I learned why due process matters, why records matter and why ordinary citizens need to understand the institutions exercising authority over them.

But I learned something about Missouri Valley, too.

Because while this fight was unfolding, so was our life.

I ran for mayor.

I completed an accelerated nursing degree, passed the NCLEX and became a registered nurse.

My children made great friends and found a school they love.

My son started his own landscaping business and learned how to repair small engines.

We found people here who became some of the best friends we could have imagined having.

We went to the movie theater. We spent time at the library. We found restaurants we loved, parks we returned to, and days at Willow Lake that became part of the rhythm of our lives.

And somewhere in the middle of all of that, we built relationships that became deeper and richer than I ever expected.

That is the strange part of this story.

The nightmare we were walking through did not isolate us from Missouri Valley in the way I once feared it would.

In some ways, it did the opposite.

It pushed us into the community. It made us meet people we may never have known otherwise. It forced us to show up, ask for help, learn names, sit in rooms, have conversations and build trust.

And out of something incredibly painful came some of the most meaningful relationships our family has ever had.

That is not the magic we came here looking for.

But it is magic nonetheless.

Despite everything, I still see what Barrett and I saw when we chose this town. I see the library, Main Street, old buildings waiting for somebody to believe in them, families, volunteers and business owners who care deeply about this community.

I still believe Missouri Valley can be the gem of Harrison County.

We came here trying to make room for magic. For nearly two years, fear and bureaucracy occupied some of that space instead.

But somewhere in the chaos, I found the magic again.

It just wasn’t where I expected to find it.

I found it in discovering my own voice. In learning what citizenship actually requires. In seeing my children build lives here. In the friendships that formed when life was hard. In realizing that loving a community isn’t passive.

Sometimes loving a place means showing up, asking questions, expecting better and then doing your part to help build the community you believe is possible.

That may not have been the magic we came to Missouri Valley looking for.

But it found us and changed us. In the middle of one of the most difficult periods our family had experienced, we were also quietly putting down roots. Somewhere inside the chaos, this town was becoming home.