Preparing for the future

A brighter future is about to take shape for Jasper County.

After a year’s worth of work, including compiling information from surveys and organizing focus groups for direct feedback, county staff are just about ready to roll out an updated comprehensive plan. Nick Fratzke, director of community development, describes it as a “roadmap” for development.

“It takes into consideration all the elements you want to make sure are included — transportation, conservation, economic development,” Fratzke said. “It’s kind of a broad roadmap of everything you want to consider when taking development into account.”

Right now, the county and its engineering, planning and design firm Snyder & Associates are working on condensing the current draft into something more manageable. The drafted plan can be viewed at www.jaspersbrightfuture.com. Split into 11 chapters and an appendix, the plan certainly lives up to its name.

Fratzke presented the plan to elected officials and the county department heads, and the general consensus was to reduce the size of the document. Since they will be the people using the plan, Fratzke said he did not want it to be something that would immediately overwhelm them.

“There are so many action steps,” Fratzke said of the comprehensive plan. “Some sections are obviously larger than others. It’s a lot to look at and it just seems overwhelming. I think we’re going to get it broken down to where it’s just a couple (objectives and actions) and then keep some of them on deck.”

Within the next month or so, Fratzke would like to see Jasper County’s new comprehensive plan be compressed into a more “palatable” draft.

Counties across the state are required to have comprehensive plans. They are designed as living documents to be amended and changed accordingly depending on the region’s character and infrastructure. Oftentimes comprehensive plans serve as guidelines for community development.

Prior to hiring Snyder & Associates for the planning process, the county’salmost 20-year-old comprehensive plan was considered outdated. Brandon Talsma, chair of the Jasper County Board of Supervisors, said the document made several references to infrastructure and assets which no longer exist.

“Because of that you can’t base ordinances and your long-term gameplan off a document that’s referencing things that are no longer in play in the county anymore,” Talsma said. “So it became abundantly clear at that point in time simply amending it (was not ideal). What we had was not salvageable.”

Jasper County had to go back to square one.

Generating community feedback was a long and difficult process for Fratzke and Talsma, both of whom largely spearheaded the effort. This past year, the two were frequently found at local festivals and special gatherings like Newton Fest and Monroe Old Settlers in order to gather input from their fellow citizens.

Surveys were distributed, too. Snyder & Associates also collected data from numerous focus groups last year. As it stands now, the plan covers land use, transportation, housing, agriculture, conservation and recreation, the economy and public health and safety. All of which form the county’s character.

According to the recent draft of the plan, one of the county’s goals is to establish a character “that is family-friendly, evokes a rural feel and celebrates the unique attributes of the county.” When a comprehensive plan is in place, the county can keep goals like this in mind when making important decisions.

Fratzke said, “With a lot of the development going on to the west, I think we want to put ourselves in a position to be able to be more appealing to some of the people that may not want to be in that kind of hustle and bustle of Des Moines but also maintain the county’s character.”

Other parts of the comprehensive plan are more direct. For instance, the plan opts to improve communication between the county and its cities when it comes to land use and zoning. To implement this, it is proposed an electronic data sharing system and protocol be established between county and cities.

Across the board, the county’s plan wanted to strike a balance between progressive and smart development within the region while also preserving rural farmland for the agricultural sector. As a result, there were a number of agricultural focus groups held, Talsma said.

Solutions in the Land, LLC, of Illinois, helped lead those discussions. Farmers gathered to explain what they wanted and what they thought the county could do to help “facilitate agriculture, promote beginning farmers and stuff like that,” Talsma said. Those focus groups were particularly difficult to sort through.

“Especially us being so close to the metro, one of the things we wanted to get out of this was: is there a way we can find a balance between economic development, residential development and all this other stuff while still protecting the agriculture and rural feel of Jasper County?” Talsma said.

Even when focus groups got heated, Talsma is confident Jasper County found that balance and the resulting comprehensive plan will reflect that. Acquiring an updated comprehensive plan for the county was something Talsma had an interest in when he was as a candidate for supervisor in 2018.

Talsma is happy the comprehensive plan is in the final stages of development. Once completed, the county has a reference point for the future.

“It’s going to unable us as the three supervisors and all the other elected officials to kind of look at what the list of priorities for Jasper County are and exactly what we need to be concentrating on moving forward the next several years,” Talsma said.

Contact Christopher Braunschweig at 641-792-3121 ext. 6560 or cbraunschweig@newtondailynews.com