Despite the challenges posed by COVID-19 and the loss of major events such as Tulip Time and other tourism-based activities, the City of Pella continued to push ahead with planning for several major initiatives in the community over the past 12 months.

Mayor Don DeWaard says the city council worked to lay additional groundwork for projects that will start to see movement in 2021, despite revenue hits taken in some areas because of closures and the reduction of travel to the community, which he says were offset by other revenue sources that has the city remaining in strong financial position. A growth in local option sales tax, additional electric revenues, and funding from the CARES Act passed by Congress in the spring and state of Iowa programs have kept the city above water and exceeding budget projections.

“At this point, we’re six months into the fiscal year and budget wise, we are actually ahead of budget from a revenue standpoint, so that was really good news because what the city can do is budget driven, and so we were thinking we would maybe have to start thinking about budget cuts, and at this point, we don’t have to do that so we can continue to work on the plans we have moving forward,” he says.

DeWaard says there is a strong base of economic development with housing and industry that is also setting the stage for additional growth in the coming years.

“We have tremendous development happening right now, with the Prairie Ridge Development getting ready — we just approved the final plat, so houses will start going up out there, the South Main project is progressing, the coop project Vintage Estates at Bos Landen, there’s houses going up at Bos Ridge and all over…the Kading Properties rental development they got started on this fall, there’s just a lot of really good things in housing that’s happening,” he says. “Then about a month ago, we had the groundbreaking for Lely, and they’re going to start their new North American Headquarters this spring–that’s a really exciting project.”

Hear more from DeWaard about the year 2020 for the City of Pella on Friday’s Let’s Talk Pella.