March 18, 2024

IDOT Training Center likely to land in Jasper County

Project may also prompt Iowa Law Enforcement Academy relocation

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The prospect of the Iowa Traffic Incident Management Training Center coming to Jasper County was discussed in detail during the Tuesday Jasper County Board of Supervisors meeting.

Dave Lorenzen, of the Iowa Department of Transportation and Scott Marler, Director of the Traffic Management Center were on hand to lay out the details of the project and why it is a sought after investment for the state of Iowa.

The proposal is to construct a training facility that allows responders including law enforcement, fire and rescue, emergency medical services, towing facilitators and any other entity that may be a part of a traffic incident to train in on real life scenarios in a safe setting. The ground selected is located south of the Jasper County Sheriff’s Office on the 36 acres that previously housed the county care facility.

“It is a concept that allows all of the different disciplines that may be on some type of scene or an incident, a crash, hazardous materials spill, a road closure, any type of incident that effects the highway system in Iowa, this would be a training area that would allow them to practice all of those things in a real life scenario but not doing it on the side of the road which is going to be better for everyone,” Lorenzen said.

Lorenzen said the department has been working on the project for about three years following a visit he and Marler took to Nashville, Tenn. to see the training center located there. Currently, the training center in Nashville is one-of-a-kind throughout the entire United States and has already started to see benefits in incident response.

“They have developed a three-day curriculum for some of their training. They have towing and recovery rodeos, they do different simulations such as cable guard rail breaking,” Marler said.

The facility will be beneficial to Iowa for several reasons, with the most important being added safety training for traffic incident responders.

“Here in Iowa, and nationally, vehicle miles are up. We’re looking at nearly 32 billion miles annually in Iowa alone,” Marler said. “In 2016, we saw a 27 percent increase in a traffic fatalities. What we are seeing on the primary system is 2,000 traffic incidents every month. It takes time to clear traffic incidents out of the lanes, and we have started to count these in terms of minutes because we know for every minute there is an incident, the potential for a secondary crash goes up about 2.8 percent. After roughly a half hour, we are at about 100 percent chance of a second crash.

“These are not the kinds of conditions we wish to see on our system. We know that training has resulted in some savings in terms of shaving minutes off of those response times, so our law enforcement community, our fire, EMS, our towing and recovery are all working toward the end goal of quick clearance for these traffic incidents.”

While in search for a location to build the facility, the department ran into road blocks twice before coming to Jasper County. They found property located near Cumming and in Dallas County could not be utilized for the project and were on the search for a new location when a partner project brought them to the Newton area.

“One of the projects we have been working on with the Iowa Law Enforcement Academy Council is the academy needs some fixing, it is a very old structure and there is some space issues. Director Judy Bradshaw started to explore different opportunities and in the meantime through the whole process of the gifting of the Maytag Campus to DMACC came about and conversations were had about the possibility of what that could mean for Iowa Law Enforcement Academy in the future,” Lorenzen said. “We were out here touring the Maytag Corporate campus and were looking at the land around there to see if this facility could fit there. Due to the proximity and the residential, it wasn’t the best fit in getting large types of apparatus might have been somewhat problematic. Some of the economic development agencies in those meetings suggested we look at the land that may be available directly across from the sheriff’s office to the south.”

While talks continue about the future of the ILEA, the DOT is moving forward with the training facility center. It would be beneficial for the two education centers to be close to each other, Lorenzen said, but neither project is near a point to say where they will end up.

The DOT sees the project developed as a partnership with Jasper County. The county would retain ownership of the land through a 28E agreement while the department would take on all responsibilities for financial needs, activities or incidents on the property.

The Jasper County Animal Rescue League, located within th eland will not be impacted.

Several public officials spoke about the possibility of the training center coming to Jasper County, including Jasper County Sheriff John Halferty and Jasper County Treasurer and Jasper County Economic Development Corporation chair Doug Bishop.

“This sounds like an outstanding opportunity, at least from our perspective whether we get both or one. Our traffic and roadways, any law enforcement agency, fire, EMS, will tell you that the most dangerous part of our job is out there on those roadways,” Halferty said. “The opportunity to have the ability to train and work with our fire and EMS partners and have this training facility, not only countywide but statewide, would be a huge asset. ILEA would be a tremendous addition to our county to be able to draw them in there. There is training year round. I think it has a lot of potential, we’re looking forward to something to move ahead here and be a very positive project for our community.”

Bishop said preliminary financial numbers had been put together to assess the impact the facility could bring to the county. For one three-day training session, taking into account hotel costs, meals and a tank of gas, Bishop said a very conservative number of $90,000 could be brought in local option sales tax funds.

“It is almost a 10 percent increase in what we have now. One facility, on a very conservative estimate, on just one three days would be close to $90,000,” Bishop said.

Bryan Friedman, director of finance and development for the City of Newton, shared the city’s viewpoint on the possible addition.

“Based on numbers that have been stated in terms of increased tax revenue, that is certainly a benefit. Increased visitors and it is a great benefit to law enforcement training. Anything to make things safer and run more smoothly, we see it as very beneficial,” Friedman said.

Supervisor Joe Brock questioned the impact the facility would have on the environment and the efforts Jasper County Conservation has been making toward building a nature center to be located across the street from the proposed training center. Bishop said prior to the meeting he had a conversation with conservation director Kari Van Zante about the project and received positive remarks back.

“She said she was very excited about the project and said it would be a great compliment to what she has been working on out there,” Bishop said.

Marler added that any road designed in Iowa is designed to be environmentally sensitive and the addition of the conservation aspect to the facility is welcome.

“It would be interesting if we were to include some of the environmental aspects into the facility that would highlight some of those more innovative techniques that preserve the environment when we would build highways,” Marler said. “We could even partner with the conservation board to highlight some of those techniques.

To conclude the discussions, Supervisor Doug Cupples suggested putting the proposal on the agenda for the next scheduled meeting Tuesday to give approval or denial for the project to move forward.

Contact Jamee A. Pierson at 641-792-3121 ext. 6534 or jpierson@newtondailynews.com