Charles City considers increasing parking fines

By Travis Fischer, tkfischer@charlescitypress.com

The Charles City Council discussed carbon pipelines, downtown parking, and water department equipment during its planning session on Wednesday evening.

City Attorney Brad Sloter discussed with the council about whether the city should bring in outside council to explore options for regulating carbon dioxide transport pipelines.

“My understanding is that counties that have attempted to regulate CO2 pipelines have done so either through zoning ordinance or through filing intervention at IUB (Iowa Utility Board) proceedings,” said Sloter. “The initial step would be bringing in outside council to go into more detail as to what those two options would entail and the pros and cons of those options.”

While the issue of CO2 pipeline regulation is generally relegated to county government, a portion of Summit Carbon Solution’s proposed route crosses through city-owned property.

“Charles City may be the only city where the route goes into municipal limits,” said Sloter.

Regulating the pipeline would involve the Planning and Zoning Board making an update to the city’s Unified Development Ordinance, but Sloter advised waiting for the state to establish its own baseline regulations before the city implements an ordinance that may conflict with the state.

Before that even happens, the council discussed finding a neutral party that can explain the pros and cons of the pipeline.

Council member Patrick Lumley spoke in favor of bringing on a specialized attorney, however the mayor and other members of the council favored getting more information about the pipeline itself before taking that step.

“I don’t think we want to get involved with attorneys at all at this point,” said Andrews. “We’re going to have very, very little impact even if we do something, and our costs could be extreme.”

Moving to downtown, the council discussed parking regulations and fines as the community adjusts to the newly implemented 90-minute parking limit on the 100 and 200 blocks of Main Street.

Charles City Area Chamber of Commerce Director Mark Wicks was present at the meeting to provide feedback from the business community about new limits.

Wicks said he had sent out a survey to the affected business owners and received a wide range of responses with five in favor of increasing the limit to three hours, three that were happy with the 90-minute limit, three that didn’t care so long as vehicles were not parked overnight, and one that was surprised to hear that there was any enforcement at all.

Some business owners like the 90-minute limit as it encourages customers to cycle through faster, while others, particularly salons, raised concerns about the limit putting pressure on customers coming in for lengthy appointments.

Police Chief Hugh Anderson noted that, by-and-large, enforcement of the 90-minute limit is complaint based and that officers typically don’t “start the clock” until after a car has been parked for a significant amount of time already.

“We don’t have our meter maid,” said Anderson. “We don’t mark them or anything else.”

Anderson said that only seven tickets have been written since the start of the new limit and three of those were overnight parkers.

Overall, the council agreed that the new rules were still new enough that it would be better to give it more time for people to get used to them before making any changes.

On a related matter, Chief Anderson presented the council with a proposal to increase the fines for parking violations, noting that the current $15 fine may not even cover the administrative costs of filing and collecting the ticket.

Anderson recommended increasing the fine to $25, which the council supported, along with raising the fine for violating a snow ordinance to $50 in order to discourage people from parking in the streets during snowfall. No official action is taken at a planning session.

“It sends a very clear signal,” said Lumley about the increased fines.

In other business, Street Department Superintendent Cory Spieker presented the council with a request to purchase a new vac truck. The city’s current vac truck was purchased in 2012 and is used by multiple city departments. A new truck will cost $612,039.36, which will be paid for over two fiscal years out of the budgets of the sewer, street, and water departments. Trading in the current truck will prorate $150,000 off the price.

Spieker also asked the council to approve the purchase of a portable generator for a booster pump station in the city’s high pressure zone, which supplies water to the large commercial and industrial users in the city. In the event of a lengthy power loss the generator would mitigate the loss of water pressure in the high pressure zone as water levels across the city balance out.

Finally, Spieker brought up a proposal to plug the city’s Well No. 4.

Originally constructed in 1939, the well has been out of regular use since 1965, does not run through the water treatment plant, and can only be used in case of emergencies. Spieker recommended that it be plugged and abandoned all together.

“Without putting some money into it to get it to where it would be useful, it’s just going to keep deteriorating,” said Spieker.

Plugging the well will cost an estimated $50,000 and has already been factored into next year’s water budget.

In other water-related matters, Mayor Andrews asked the council if the city would be interested in contributing to the shared funding of a coordinator position for the Upper Cedar Watershed Management Improvement Authority. The watershed authority is a 28E organization made up of representatives from the cities and counties along the Cedar River that coordinate assessments and projects involving the river’s watershed area.

“What they’d really like to do is to have a person be an overseer to that rather than have it all be on a volunteer basis,” said Andrews.

Finally, City Administrator Steve Diers updated the council on the latest condition of the city’s property tax levy rate as the state adjusts property valuations each year.

While the actual property values in Charles City have increased at a healthy rate, Diers said, reductions in the rollback rate – how much of that valuation can be taxed – has forced to city to adjust its levy rates in an attempt to make up the difference.

The city will be scheduling a public hearing for March 20 to approve the max levy rate of $14.3645 per $1,000 in assessed taxable valuation. The max levy rate is not all-encompassing though as there are some taxes separate from the maximum levy, such as taxes for debt service and the library. A second public hearing is planned to be scheduled for April 3 to set the overall levy at $16.5366 per $1,000 for the next fiscal year.

In spite of this overall levy rate being 33 cents higher than the current fiscal year, Diers is anticipating that the city will bring in $70,202 less in revenue due to reductions in how much property value the city can tax.

“The rates are going up and the total dollars collected are going down,” he said.

Diers also noted that there are still potential unknown factors that could impact the city budget as the state Legislature considers changes to the Local Option Sales Tax, Homestead Tax Credit, and whether or not they will backfill missing dollars.

“We’re dealing with several policy changes that deal with our taxable revenues,” said Diers. “It’s really hard because we don’t have solid numbers to work with.”