Mills County Becomes 88th County To Earn Home Base Iowa Designation

Mills County is officially a Home Base Iowa Community for military veterans.

On Thursday, Mills County became the 88th county and 151st community in Iowa to receive the designation during a presentation at the Dog Days Of Summer veterans’ appreciation event in Glenwood.

Home Base Iowa was initiated in 2013 with the mission of providing military veterans and service members making the transition to civilian life in Iowa with employment, housing and educational opportunities and other benefits and incentives in local communities across the state. In 2014, the Iowa Legislature passed the Home Base Iowa Act, which provides numerous incentives to veterans, including a state income exemption on military pensions, $5,000 military homeowner assistance and in-state tuition rates at public universities and community colleges for qualified veterans, spouses and dependents.

“Home Base Iowa is really a statewide incentive to entice veterans to move to Iowa and settle in to the communities, by offering them either ways to find jobs, maybe career planners to help them find careers and kind of walking them through some of the benefits that they may be eligible for – maybe educational benefits or things like that,” said Mills County Veterans Affairs Administrator Elizabeth Richardson.

In 2017, the city of Glenwood and Mills County both agreed to be participants in the program, but it’s taken nine years for the county to meet some of the requirements of the program. The Mills County Board Of Supervisors reaffirmed the county’s commitment to the program in May through passage of a formal resolution.

Richardson noted that initially, the Home Base Iowa requirements were simply too expensive for rural counties in the state to meet, but changes in the program leadership and incentive requirements for rural counties finally made it feasible for Mills County.

“In the last couple years, the state has changed its requirements,” she said. “Some larger counties offer like a $2,000 ‘you move in’ housing allowance. There’s some really nice things out there and I think the state was looking for all these counties to do it, but more rural counties don’t have the money to offer some of those things, so we have to lean a little bit more on the businesses in the community. It just kind of depends where it’s at and what they can offer.

“This was something that we really wanted to get done, but the state has gone through a little turnover in the position and the incentive package requirements have changed. It was just kind of a perfect storm that had us limping along.”
Richardson credits the effort of veterans advocate Sandi Winton, who voluntarily went door-to-door to secure support for the program from local businesses in the form of discounts to customers who are veterans or actively serving in the military.

“Sandi was at one of our VA commission meetings and heard that we needed some leg work done and she just jumped right in and offered and helped get all the incentives put together,” Richardson noted. “That really was the key point that made this turn around.”

A list of over 30 businesses that offer the discounts is available at the Veterans Affairs office in Glenwood and on the Mills County link of the Home Base Iowa website. It will also be added to the Mills County website. A military identification card is required to receive the discounts.

Four signs designating Mills County as a Home Base Iowa Community will be installed later this summer – two on Highway 34, one at an entrance into Silver City and one near the entrance into Malvern. Two Home Base Iowa signs are already in place at both the east and west entrances into the city of Glenwood.