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Trail enhancements, housing and equity issues lead Charles City Council priorities after workshop

By Bob Steenson, bsteenson@charlescitypress.com

The priority goals of the Charles City Council, city staff and the public don’t match precisely, but they’re close, the council learned at a workshop meeting Monday night.

The council discussed the results of a leadership, goal setting and strategic planning session held earlier this month, which had been facilitated via virtual Zoom meeting by Midwest Municipal Consulting of Ankeny.

Mayor Dean Andrews led the discussion on the strategic planning report. He said goals remaining from previous years include determining what will be done to remodel or relocate City Hall, dealing with nuisance properties, and water quality and storm sewer issues.

City Administrator Steven Diers said he would like to keep the City Hall project on the list, noting that relocating the dispatch department from City Hall to the new county law enforcement center, plus other possible changes, might open up some opportunities to better use the existing City Hall building.

Council members agreed they also wanted to keep nuisance properties and the water quality and storm sewer items on the new goals list.

Andrews said with those three remaining on the list, they should not add too many more.

The only new priority agreed to by each of the five council members and the mayor during the goal setting session was enhancement of the city trail system, including connections among trails in town and with trails out of town, lighting, safety markers and safety enhancements.

The next highest priority was creating a housing committee to identify the needs and develop solutions to a housing shortage in the city.

Possible ways to address the issue include upper story living, creating a rental property rehabilitation program, a residential/commercial tax abatement program for new construction or expansion, exploring construction of new city-owned housing units, a program to assist property owners in repair of blighted houses, and infill and workforce housing.

Next on the list was implementing an equity commission.

The mayor and a council member mentioned other programs dealing with equity issues that they might partner with, including one ongoing in the school district, but Phillip Knighten, the only minority member of the council, said his understanding of the priority was that it would address the lack of minority city employees.

“It was my understanding this was something to be implemented within the city realms, because the makeup of city employment is not very diverse,” he said.

Council member Phoebe Pittman said the city might be able to partner with other organizations such as the school in working on identifying equity issues on all levels, but then the individual groups such as the city could work on how to address those issues in ways that are unique to each group.

The next most popular goal on the council list is a parks master plan, followed by community revitalization.

Andrews said the top priority of a survey of community residents was finding a new purpose for the former Kmart building, but that falls within the council’s goal of community revitalization.

The second most popular community goal was downtown revitalization, and the third was enhancement of the trail system, which align with the council’s goals, although in a different priority order.

The list of council goals tentatively agreed to at the work session Monday is:

1) Enhance the trail system.

2) Housing committee.

3) Equity commission/equity audit.

4) Parks master plan.

5) Community revitalization.

6) City hall.

7) Water quality/storm sewers.

8) Nuisance programs.

Andrews he and Diers would work on the list and bring it back to the council.

Diers said he also wants the council to keep in mind the need to come up with an annexation policy or plan.

According to the strategic planning report, the top priority of city department heads agreed with the council in enhancing the city trail system, but the next most popular new initiatives were paving projects around town, creating a city-wide IT (information technology) management employee, conducting an annexation study, and the need for a firearms training range for the Police Department.

In an area of the report on “issues, concerns and trends” and “what is not working well,” the council identified the housing problem, educated youth leaving the community, aging infrastructure, the challenge of recruiting businesses offering higher-paying jobs and more emphasis on economic development, for the top five answers.

Significant initiatives or “what is the city not doing that it should be doing” included the availability of more city services online and better electronic communication between the city and residents, strategic planning to better promote the whitewater park, enhancement of the trail system, completing capital improvement projects and creating a rental rehabilitation program.

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