A city-wide project is currently underway in Jefferson.

Work started on an initiative through Jefferson Matters: Main Street when they received a $5,000 grant from the Iowa Economic Development Authority for design work on wayfinding signage back in December of 2016. Since then, City Administrator Mike Palmer says a steering committee put together designs and locations of where directional signs should be placed throughout the city.

“When people come into town, they can see directionals to where the downtown area is, where the hospital is and where some of those different places (are located at). There’s about 32 signs involved with this. And they’ll be from all of the different entrances in town.”

Palmer describes the next steps, which is having the  city street crews install the bases and the poles that will sit on them.

“The poles just won’t be stuck in the ground, they have to be on what they call ‘breakaway fittings.’ So if a car hits it, the sign will break and fall over and just not wreck the car as much. But these bases that are put in are two-feet in diameter by five-feet deep of precast concrete. So we’ll be drilling some pretty good sized holes in the right-of-way to set these signs in.”

The signs themselves are made by the prison industry. A presentation was made by JMMS to the City Council last year, with all of the details as far as the final logo and look of each directional sign and where they should be placed. Palmer says funds for the signage project is through the city’s hotel/motel tax as a way to promote tourism in the city.