Another building in downtown Jefferson is receiving financial help from the City.

The City Council recently approved a $42,800 economic development agreement with Jefferson Veterans of Foreign Wars (VFW) Post #9599 to help repair the roof of the VFW Hall. City Administrator Mike Palmer says the agreement is a four year forgivable loan after the VFW has tried to raise the money on their own through various fundraisers.

“It’s a type of program that we’ve had for some years now that we do to try and help out, restore some of these buildings because we know it’s very expensive to do this. So we utilize tax increment finance money to do this.”

Palmer talks about another improvement that the VFW is going to do as part of the economic development agreement.

“The VFW will do some facade upgrades. They’ve already had their conceptual done by the Main Street (Iowa) program. It’s a beautiful looking conceptual. It has more open glass area in the front of it. Everybody is pretty excited about how that would look.”

Palmer adds the start date for the project would depend on coordinating with another roof project with the former AirTemp building next door to the VFW in order to save money overall by bidding the two projects together.