Mt. Pleasant, Henry County to meet on federal funds

The city of Mt. Pleasant and the Henry County Board of Supervisors agreed to collaborate on how the money from the American Rescue Plan will be spent. Though neither the county nor the city know exactly how much the two will be receiving or the exact parameters of how the money should be spent, City Administrator Brent Schleisman thought it best to begin discussing and planning ideas.

'I don't think we're jumping the gun by trying to get together and strategizing, thinking about what the future of Henry County and Mt. Pleasant looks like,” he said. 'I'd rather be proactive and have time for the thought process and conversations to vet out what we can.

Mt. Pleasant Mayor Steve Brimhall agreed with Schleisman and expressed the city's interest in collaborating with the county.

'We know we're going to get money from the government, and we know that we could spend it on one project in 30 seconds and it'd be gone,” he said. 'We'd like to brainstorm with [the Board of Supervisors] and potentially Southeast Iowa Regional Planning to try to come up with some projects that would move our community into the future.

'We think that chunks of this money could be used for a lot of different things,” Brimhall said. 'We need to incentivize construction housing for one. We also need to potentially buy more land for economic development around this community.”

The Henry County Board of Supervisors was on board with working with the city of Mt. Pleasant. Supervisor Marc Lindeen was vocal with his support.

'We'd be glad to set that meeting up, and I'd like to have the rural input, too,” he said.

The two groups agreed to meet in April to discuss potential ideas for the American Rescue Plan money.

'It takes a lot of thought, it takes a lot of thinking, and it takes a lot of foresight,” Brimhall said. 'We'd like to put a group together to find something that would work for both of us, and I think having a solid plan for all this money coming our way would be good for all of us.”

'This has just spurred a conversation I think we need, because there's economic development, there's housing, rec trails, and a lot of different initiatives that we should really work together on as we have in the past,” Schleisman said. 'This is a perfect opportunity for us to rekindle that group we used to have, to sit around and chit chat about ideas to better our community.

'We all want the same thing: great communities, reasonable taxes and growth,” Schleisman said. 'We have to keep growing and keep moving.”