Finding a way to grow Jasper County responsibly is a priority for this year, according to Jasper County Board of Supervisors Chairman Brandon Talsma. Talsma says the County Supervisors will be working with the County’s Community Development Department and the Zoning Board to control urban sprawl.

“There’s one thing I have found that almost everybody in Jasper County agrees on. When you talk about community development and urban sprawl and Bondurant and Altoona pushing against us, everyone says we do not want to be a suburb of Des Moines. We don’t want to be Polk County or Bondurant. We want to grow, but we don’t want to grow like that.”

This past year, Talsma says the County Supervisors began working on this issue and there were some unintended consequences. One of the goals, according to the Jasper County Board of Supervisors Chairman, is to prevent large areas of housing from surrounding small pockets of 20 acre farm fields.