City of Mason City applies for federal grant for State Highway 122 reconstruction

MASON CITY — The City Council in Mason City recently approved applying for a federal grant to help with the cost of reconstructing State Highway 122 between Winnebago Way to the western city limits.

The city has been looking at the potential improvements to that corridor for the last couple of years, and after talks with the US Department of Transportation and the Iowa Department of Transportation, they feel a grant via the “Rebuilding American Infrastructure with Sustainability and Equity” or RAISE Program would be the best fit for an application in this early timeframe.

Councilman Paul Adams says while it’s still early in the process of the project, it’s good for the city to be exploring funding options. “This is still all preliminary work on that project, the bigger project out west. I know we have a smaller project also on the west side of town that’s going to start this spring through the DOT. Obviously the more grant money that we can  obtain and secure for projects like this, the less that city taxpayers will have to pay, so we’re going to be aggressive there.”

Adams says while they are currently talking about applying for a grant, there’s a lot of planning and thought that has to happen before the DOT agrees to do the project.  “This has been talked about, at least on the city’s side,  for a couple of years, and we still want to reiterate, several years from a project actually happening. The last update we got about a year ago from the DOT is that it’s not in their five-year plan. They’ll release the next five-year plan, tack a year on to what we know very, very soon. So if we’re in that plan, it’s going to be about five years before it starts.”

The Clear Lake City Council and Cerro Gordo County Board of Supervisors also recently passed resolutions of support of Mason City’s RAISE grant application.