Several people attended a meeting to help decide where a new monument should be placed in Greene County.

The Greene County Veterans Memorial Foundation was created to establish a veterans memorial that would encapsulate all military veterans in Greene County, as well as any current serving or future individuals that decide to go into serving the country. 

Mike Bierl is the chair and led the presentation and discussion where she shared that their organization initially reviewed 12 locations across the county and they narrowed it down to three places, including their first choice of Russell Park in Jefferson, then the Greene County Courthouse grounds and the Greene County Community Center. He also talked about the pros and cons of each of those proposed sites. 

Following the discussion, most of the people that attended agreed with the foundation’s recommendation of Russell Park as the location for the memorial. Jefferson City Administrator Scott Peterson mentioned that the city wanted to be a good partner with this kind of project and added that it would need to go through the Parks and Recreation Board and eventually to the City Council for final approval. Bierl gave his impression of having that decision as the outcome from the meeting.

“Well, from the Parks and Rec Department and the City Administrator, it was a very good discussion and it sounded like they are really all in on having that location and moving forward with that and working with us. So that was really good and productive, I would say.”   

Bierl explained what their group is going to do as their next step towards establishing a monument.

“What we’re thinking is to get the public’s input on what they would like. We want to get this right and consider everyone’s thoughts on it. But, I think we’re going to start moving forward with the fundraising portion now. Because I think we really need to decide how much budget we have to work with. So the more we receive, the better this project will look.” 

Bierl added that comments and suggestions for design ideas can be emailed to him at mandsbierl@gmail.com. He said another public input meeting is going to happen later this summer before the final design is made. People can also make monetary donations to the Greene County Memorial Foundation, P. O. Box 149 Jefferson, Iowa 50129.