12 People You Need to Know in 2016: Brian Steele

Brian Steele is a planner who didn’t plan on running for mayor of Nixa.

“I’m not a big risk taker. I always have a solid plan,” says Steele, who was elected last year. “That was probably the least planned out thing I’ve ever done.”

Steele is good at making plans and remaking them when life has other ideas. As an Army brat, he planned a career designing fighter jets after attending the United States Air Force Academy, but a football injury his senior year at Nixa High School kept him local. He got his bachelor’s from Missouri State University before leaving the idea of engineering behind for Washington University’s law school for a career as a prosecutor and judge.

Life once again handed Steele a curve ball. During his first semester law finals, Steele was diagnosed with Type 1 diabetes, missed school and lost his scholarship. He switched his focus yet again to computer software and found his niche.

Steele now runs his own firm.

He ventured into community work 15 years ago as a member of Nixa’s Comprehensive School Improvement Plan and later joined city council. After becoming mayor, Steele examined the budget line by line.

“I found that the city was doing a really good job,” he says. “A friend of mine said, ‘I hated when you first came in. You had all these spreadsheets.’”

Efficiency is especially critical in Nixa, a bedroom community whose residents are attracted by quality of life but are resistant to sales-tax increases for new parks and roads, Steele says. Voters rejected a capital-improvement measure in 2014 and a sales tax for parks in August 2015.

“We don’t have the areas and facilities we need,” he says, noting Little League games are held on the same fields he played on as a kid. “You have to try and do more with what you do have.”

Nixa doesn’t sit near a major road businesses seek and many residents leave during the day, so Steele says attracting retail and its tax dollars is challenging. The one bright spot: technology.

Nixa is positioned to support so-called white collar jobs with its designation as a Gig City, made possible by Suddenlink’s offering of up to 1 gigabit per second download speeds. Suddenlink also is extending fiber into Nixa’s industrial park and paying the $250,000 price tag.

The project shows the value of partnering with private enterprise, Steele says.

“We’re trying to position ourselves as the technology leader and that gave us status in a big way,” he says. “I think that’s really where we can differentiate ourselves.”

Nixa also is working with Alabama-based Retail Strategies LLC to aid in retail recruitment as the city looks toward a population projected to reach 25,000 by 2020, up from 20,000 now.