The City of Keota wants to be a more attractive community to reside in for young families.

The city is seeking to achieve that by building a daycare center, that they would own and rent out to a provider. City Clerk Niki Osweiler explains how plans began, “A community member brought it to my attention and I brought it to the council’s attention for the need of a daycare in this community. Since many of the in-home daycares have closed here in the last few years and a lot of people are taking their children out of town for day care which then opens up the families into open enrolling their children into a different school district.”

A request-for-quotation (RFQ) committee met at the city hall on July 6 to go over the qualifications of Curtis Architecture & Design P.C. The committee gave them a perfect 100 point total score. Osweiler has since asked them to draft an agreement for preconstruction that will be expected to be presented along with committee meeting notes to the city council at their meeting July 17.

Osweiler tells how the building will be funded, “It’ll be funded through, hopefully, CDBG (Community Development Block Grant) Grant funds, we did qualify again. And also we are hoping to get a loan through the USDA and that could potentially bring up some grant funds through them, depending on what funding is available at the time.” The city also plans to apply to endowment funds like the Washington County Riverboat Foundation and the Keokuk County Endowment Foundation. The city also plans to put a measure for a debt service levy on the November ballot. The projected cost of the facility is $600,000.