City Council gets Highway 100 Extension back at the top of its agenda with a shift of funds

The City Council moved this week to steer $3 million in locally controlled road funds to the long-delayed Highway 100 Extension project.

City Council member Monica Vernon, who addressed her council colleagues on the project, said the city's intent is to put the $3 million of federal dollars in place to be used to help fund pre-construction parts of the $100-million-plus project such as design and right-of-way purchases. The city earlier also received special federal funding of $950,000 for use on the project.

The larger intent, Vernon explained, is to use the $3 million to allow the city to make a case to the Iowa Transportation Commission to return the Highway 100 Extension project to the commission's all-important five-year construction plan. Getting into the state's five-year construction plans is a prerequisite for a project to obtain federal funding, Vernon said.

The Highway 100 Extension project – which has been supported by City Hall and the local business community for years and would take Highway 100 seven miles west and south from Edgewood Road to Highway 30 - had been in the state five-year plan several years ago until the project was delayed over unresolved questions about its proximity to the county's Rock Island Preserve. Linn County officials accepted a donation of land to add to the preserve from a developer opposed to the project, a move that helped put the project on hold.

Vernon, 52, told her council colleagues this week that her father walked her out to a spot more than 40 years ago and told her that spot was where Highway 100 was slated to go. The highway now runs from Highway 13 to Edgewood Road and stops.

The $3 million in money directed to the Highway 100 Extension project is coming from money the council had identified to use for work on First Avenue East between 19th and 27th streets and Bever Avenue SE, Vernon said.

The Corridor Metropolitan Planning Organization, which is comprised of representatives from the metro-area jurisdictions, must approve the city's idea for the funds.

Vernon said both the city and Linn County intend to lobby for Highway 100 funding during a trip to Washington, D.C., next month.

Council member Justin Shields said the project was important. Council member Tom Podzimek noted that the city is landlocked in a couple of directions, but has room to grow to the west. Podzimek said the city needed to make sure that good planning came with the new road so it wouldn't simply result in additional urban sprawl.