Mathis Eyes Tower Terrace Road Improvements for Marion as Legislature Gets Underway

As Iowa State Senator from our district 18, Liz Mathis, told Marion Patch Monday, this next legislative session is going to be focused on mental health care and education and tax reform.

But what about Marion? These state-wide issues will certainly have their trickle down effect to our city, but what specifically is our senate representative doing on Marion's behalf?

She said she's put a priority on the Tower Terrace Road improvements.

Mathis said she aims for the road, which would bridge Highway 380 directly to Marion and initiate commercial development along the north side of Marion, to be eventually brought before the legislature.

She said she has been speaking with the Mayor of Hiawatha and the Marion's City Administrator on how to best address the issue.

Mathis said her role in pushing these issues as a legislator is not to take charge of the plans and then hand them over to the legislature, but to be a medium between her and the local governments in her district.

"I am certainly not standing in the way or making any opinion on it," she said. "The city decides what they want to do, then I help."

Though she admits this project has been in the works for a long time, and has struggled to gain approval from the Iowa Department of Transportation, she said recent events have made this session the perfect time to address the issue.

Mathis said the Iowa DOT sees its role in building new highways and roads as aleviating traffic, instead of commercial development, which many say will be the by-product of diverting traffic to the north side of Marion. But now, after years of pushing the issue, traffic along Seventh Avenue and other roads have grown so much that the Tower Terrace Road project is necessary to aleviate traffic, she said.

With that hurdle crossed, the state funding won't come this year. Mathis said she hopes to get a full plan in June for the funding, which will be brought to the next legislative session in 2013.