Afton goes for Hometown Pride

AFTON — Afton has become the second Union County town to officially approve applying for the Hometown Pride project after unanimous approval at Tuesday’s Afton City Council meeting.

A Keep Iowa Beautiful program, Hometown Pride is a five-year community project in which a specialized coach works with each individual town to accomplish goals.

“That coach helps the communities identify the projects that they’d like to complete. They help them seek additional funding,” Union County Development Association Director Mindy Stalker explained. “They are a resource in grant identification as well and then they really help kind of keep that group of volunteers together and they help to coordinate regular meetings with those communities.”

Stalker first heard about this program through a friend who works with Keep Iowa Beautiful. After some research, Stalker said she knew this would be the perfect match with Union County.

While the program requires a $20,000 commitment each year, Stalker has created a funding model in which each involved community would only have to contribute $500 a year.

“If each city commits $500 each for five years, UCDA would match those $500 each for five years,” Stalker said. “And then I have spoken to other organizations, businesses and organizations about also matching that amount of funding for the five years. So essentially, I’m taking on the responsibility of coming up with the remaining $20,000 per year.”

Union County Supervisor Rick Friday encouraged the council to take advantage of this project, citing the price as unbeatable.

“I don’t know where else you could get a coach for $500,” Friday said. “You can get a coach to help bring those people together and work on some of these projects, and those projects would be specific to your community.”

The coach would stick with Union County through the whole five years, so Stalker said the coach’s attention wouldn’t be divided between too many projects. And for each town in the community, plans would be made around their specific needs.

“The other thing that I love is that while this is a countywide effort, each community still maintains their identity, their goals, their projects,” Stalker said.

Past Hometown Pride projects in other communities include welcoming new homes and businesses, a splash pad, renovations to historic buildings and new events to bring the wider community together.

However, to make it worth the coach’s time, there is a required number of communities that must be involved.

“The kicker is, six out of seven of our communities have to sign onto this for us to move forward with the application,” Stalker said. While not all communities in the program have to part of the same county, UCDA would not be able to offer a funding match for a community outside of Union County.

Stalker said that many communities find so much success with the program that the committees continue their work after the five years, continuing on as Hometown Pride communities.

For example, Warren County has been a Hometown Pride community since 2017. Even after the five-year program ended, the various committees are still working to improve their towns. Since the official partnership ended, the committee in Hartford has come together to create a new “welcome to town” sign, brought lighting to their county’s freedom rock and contributed to sidewalk repairs in town.

The Pocahontas County Hometown Pride program started in 2012. The nine communities involved have procured over $890,000 in public and private funding since joining Hometown Pride more than a decade ago. Most recently, the committee in the town of Pocahontas has put up new murals in downtown, planted flowers around the city and is actively designing a new patio seating area at a local park.

Council woman Kristie Nixon professed her excitement for the opportunity to have Afton be a part of the program.

“I just want to say I am really excited about this opportunity for our communities. I think a lot of good can come from this,” Nixon said. “We’ve got a lot of great people in Afton that want to see things improved, so I think this is a wonderful opportunity for our small communities to really start making some things happen. We’ve had a couple of groups really working on things, but we could do more. How exciting would that be?”

Nixon motioned to approve Afton joining the Hometown Pride program and contributing $500 a year, seconded by Jeff Burger. The resolution was approved unanimously.

With this approval, Afton joins Cromwell in being on board. Stalker said she is anticipating approval from Lorimor and Thayer at their next meetings. Shannon City and Arispe have yet to respond to Stalker regarding the project. Stalker said she has just started conversations with Creston officials, but so far the idea has been well received.

In other Afton council news...

With no one speaking against the proposed tax levy for fiscal year 2027, the council has approved another public hearing at 6:15 p.m. prior to their next meeting on April 14. This public hearing will be regarding the proposed adoption of the entire FY27 budget, with a vote likely to follow.