116 3rd St SE
Cedar Rapids, Iowa 52401
Jones Regional Medical Center one of eight Iowa projects funded in federal spending package
Other projects include facility upgrades in Lee County and surgical tech improvements in Winneshiek County
Nov. 14, 2025 5:43 pm
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The bipartisan spending package President Donald Trump signed into law Wednesday also advances several Community Project Funding requests from Iowa’s U.S. House Republicans.
Community Project Funding — the revived “earmark” process — allows members of Congress to steer federal dollars toward specific state, local or nonprofit projects in their districts, provided the projects are “shovel-ready,” tied to an existing federal authorization and demonstrate community support. Each House member may submit up to 15 requests, though there is no guarantee any will be funded.
Republican Iowa U.S. Rep. Mariannette Miller-Meeks, who serves on the House Energy and Commerce Committee — including its subcommittees on health, energy and environment — as well as the House Veterans’ Affairs Committee, secured several 1st District requests in the package.
Eric Briesemeister, president of UnityPoint Health – Jones Regional Medical Center in Anamosa, got a personal text from Miller-Meeks on Wednesday asking if he could meet in the afternoon.
“Of course, when she calls, I say yes,” Briesemeister said. Later that day, Miller-Meeks walked into Jones Regional Medical Center and announced it would receive $2 million to upgrade the medical simulation facilities the center uses to train its own nurses as well as nursing students through the Purdue University Global School of Nursing.
The center partnered with Purdue to develop a mobile simulation lab 2021. With the incoming funding, it can establish a permanent simulation facility that will graduate an additional 14 nursing students each year. Briesemeister said the advantage goes beyond training for nurses at the center.
“One of our hurdles in recruiting staff is they don’t get to see the rural environment,” said Briesemeister. “Getting them here is the challenge. Now, when we’re training nurses here, we have that advantage of seeing them and them seeing us.”
Miller-Meeks, herself a physician, said the project encourages the development of a rural health care workforce.
“We consider this a very important project, very helpful to getting more health care workforce in rural areas, which improves access to health care,” she said.
Jones Regional Medical Center is one of the state’s 82 critical access hospitals, a designation for hospitals in rural areas that makes health care accessible while remaining financially viable.
Miller-Meeks’ currently funded projects
Miller-Meeks’ FY 2026 funding submissions included hospital upgrades, flood-mitigation infrastructure, wastewater improvements, road construction and transportation-safety projects across southeast Iowa’s 1st Congressional District.
“Whether it is child care, whether it's rural access to health care and health care workforce, we're working hard on those areas, and those are priorities with us,” Miller-Meeks said. “We show that in what we have advocated for in appropriation funding.”
In addition to the Jones Regional Medical Center, two more of Miller-Meeks’ projects received funding on Wednesday:
- $2.78 million of the requested $4.79 million to expand the Newton YMCA and open 50 more spots in the center’s child care program, expanding child care access in Jasper County.
- $825,000 for facility improvements at Keokuk Area Hospital to expand outpatient specialty services alongside emergency care — restoring access in a community that has lacked a hospital since 2022 and improving health outcomes for Lee County.
Miller-Meeks requested funding for an additional 12 projects that are still on the table awaiting approval. They include:
- $3.45 million for flood-mitigation infrastructure at Davenport’s Water Pollution Control Plant, including construction of an earthen levee to protect the Mississippi River-front facility from increasingly frequent major flood events and prevent sewer backups, plant shutdowns and untreated discharges.
- $2.9 million for a redundant force main connecting Muscatine’s Papoose Creek Lift Station to the Water and Resource Recovery Facility, expanding capacity during heavy rain events and providing an alternate pathway during repairs to reduce combined sewer overflows.
- $1.8 million for the Montgomery Drive Improvement Project in Tipton, converting a one-lane gravel access road into a concrete street with a parallel pedestrian/bike trail to open 20 acres for new single-family housing development and support the city’s housing needs.
- $4.9 million for safety and capacity upgrades at the U.S. Highway 6/Deer Creek Road intersection in Coralville, adding lanes, signals, lighting, railroad protections and turn lanes to improve traffic flow and support economic growth in the area.
- $2.8 million for Route W21 pavement improvements in Iowa County, upgrading and extending the rural road to support school bus routes, emergency response, law enforcement access and agricultural transportation.
A full list of Miller-Meeks’ requested projects is available on her congressional website.
Five of Rep. Hinson’s community projects receive funding
Rep. Ashley Hinson, a member of the House Appropriations Committee, said she worked to ensure “every single dollar possible is brought home to Iowa to better our communities,” adding that she was “proud to secure funding to improve emergency services, support rural drinking water projects, and invest in maternal health and surgical services that will strengthen care in rural Iowa.”
Funding for five of Hinson’s FY 2026 requests was included in the spending package:
- $1 million for a new Aplington Protective Services Building serving the community’s fire and EMS departments.
- $4 million to upgrade Belle Plaine’s drinking-water system to provide clean, reliable drinking water to 2,300 residents. The community frequently faces water supply challenges due to drought, and the city recently implemented water restrictions to prevent a water shortage. Hinson’s office said the project will allow the city to improve water quality from its emergency well, construct additional wells to bolster the water supply, upgrade electrical systems to support drinking water infrastructure, and strengthen the city’s water storage and distribution.
- $265,451 for a renovated public works maintenance facility in Dysart.
- $1 million to expand the labor and delivery unit at Grinnell Regional Medical Center, increasing their delivery capacity up to 250 births annually. The current facility is unable to meet the demands of the rural six-county region the hospital serves. The project will “allow them to better handle acute and unexpected medical needs of obstetrics patients, ultimately increasing safety and efficiency of patient care,” according to Hinson’s office.
- $700,000 for surgical-technology upgrades at WinnMed in Winneshiek County.
In addition to the continuing resolution, Congress approved three full-year appropriations bills covering Congress, military construction, veterans affairs, agriculture, rural development and the Food and Drug Administration. Hinson’s office said the five projects included in this week’s funding package were part of the Ag-FDA bill, while her remaining project funding requests are tied to other House spending bills still awaiting action.
Hinson's office said she will continue pushing to secure funding for those additional projects as the full-year appropriations process moves forward.
- $1.6 million for a backup generator at Cedar Rapids’ Third Avenue SE Downtown Pump Station, a FEMA-required redundant power supply needed to certify the city’s flood-control system. The generator would ensure uninterrupted pump-station operations during severe flooding, prevent interior flooding, and protect downtown property and businesses in one of Iowa’s two designated FEMA Community Disaster Resilience Zones.
- $2 million for Phase 2 of Ely’s Old Town District redevelopment, adding stormwater, sewer and road improvements needed to revitalize the city’s rural downtown. The project aims to make the area viable for commercial businesses — currently unable to operate due to outdated infrastructure — while improving fire protection, stormwater management, pedestrian safety and historic preservation.
- $3.7 million for Kirkwood Community College’s Swine Career and Technical Education Barn, replacing an aging facility with a modern training center supporting Iowa’s pork industry — which employs more than 148,000 Iowans. The new site would train more than 1,000 students annually in farm management, veterinary services, animal nutrition and other high-demand fields.
- $10 million for an aircraft deicing facility at The Eastern Iowa Airport, creating a centralized pad to dramatically reduce deicing-related environmental impacts. The project would cut the amount of water sent to Cedar Rapids for treatment from 36 million gallons annually to 7 million, reduce strain on city wastewater infrastructure, and improve the airport’s operational reliability during winter weather.
A full list of Hinson’s requested projects is available on her congressional website.
Comments: fern.alling@thegazette.com
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