March 28, 2024

Hometown Pride has first year success in Newton, Jasper County

It’s hard to believe we are through year one of the Keep Iowa Beautiful Hometown Pride program in Jasper County already. Thanks to a dedicated corps of community volunteers, we are off to a great start.

Seven towns in Jasper County are participating — Baxter, Colfax, Lynnville, Monroe, Newton, Prairie City and Sully. Each have their own community vision and set of priorities. That’s been part of the fun — having each town’s personality emerge. They are all distinctive and unique. They have one thing in common — great people with a great attitude.

Each town committee has developed a five-year vision plan. The vision plan addresses the question of what are the important things for our community? What is most important? What are our strengths to build off of, and what are our weaknesses to be addressed?

There are some common themes.

Housing — We cannot attract new families to Jasper County unless there are places for them to live. Places where they want to live. We need to make sure we have all housing types in Jasper County, in neighborhoods people want to live in.

Downtown — Downtown is the heartbeat of our towns. If downtown dies the heart of the town dies. We need to make sure our downtowns remain vital.

Parks — Our parks need to be modernized and made accessible to everyone.

When I asked one of my committee chairpersons what his expectations were of the Hometown Pride Program, he said “find money and do stuff.” An excellent goal. The seven committees filed 31 grant applications between January and May, for projects that emerged from the community visioning. We’ve been awarded a lot of the grants, and ones we haven’t received we’ve figured out how we can strengthen our applications and try again next year.

What have we been doing in Newton specifically? Newton has such a distinctive, important history. The 10 year anniversary of the Maytag closing is the perfect time for Hometown Pride.

People all over the world know what Newton has been for the last 100 years — the question now is what is Newton going to be next? What is the new identity for Newton? Some things have already emerged. Clean energy. The Speedway. Newton is very favorably positioned in the world — right on I-80, Main Street of the USA, and close to the 600,000 population Des Moines metro. Close, but not too close. That is key.

It’s an exciting time with the new economy. With the internet, for the first time in history a large segment of the population does not need to live in a particular place because of employment.

They can live anywhere. So why should some of them want to live in Newton? We all know what a great place Newton is, but how can we make Newton as appealing as possible? How can we position Newton so that when people are making a choice of where they want to live, some of them pick Newton?

We have a great opportunity to create a new urban neighborhood to Newton, on a scale that is appropriate for Newton. Our Implementing Newton’s Future Hometown Pride Committee will be working on such a concept in the upcoming year. Imagine having new, urban-style housing downtown with views of the courthouse, a beautiful community greenspace behind DMACC, walkable to the grocery store, the library, the Centre for Arts and Artists, the movie theatre and churches. Feel like the symphony, or taking in an Iowa Cubs game? You’re 25 minutes away from downtown Des Moines. You can get there as quickly as someone who lives in West Des Moines or Waukee.

Soon there are more restaurants and shops in downtown Newton because there are more people living there. When you step out in the evening there are people out walking, sitting on benches and at outdoor restaurants, and riding bikes. Yes, this can be Newton.

Keep Iowa Beautiful’s great tradition is in community beautification. But to truly make our towns in Jasper County stronger, we need to go beyond beautification and delve into community development and economic development. This is what we’re doing at Hometown Pride. Figuring out how to make all our communities in Jasper County stronger and more desirable places to live. Feel free to join us and make a difference.