Charles City Council starts new year at new meeting location

By Travis Fischer, tkfischer@charlescitypress.com

The Charles City Council held its first meeting of 2025 at the public library’s Zastrow Room on Monday, Jan. 6.

Due to City Hall renovations, the city will be holding its regular meetings in the Zastrow Room throughout the year and well into 2026.

The meeting started off with a review of council committee assignments. Council members will largely remain on their existing boards and commissions, though Council Member Patrick Lumley noted that the Floyd County EMS Advisory Council has been disbanded since the failure of the levy vote last year and must be reformed by county supervisors.

Council Member Phoebe Pittman also noted that the Upper Cedar River Watershed Management Committee has been meeting infrequently and, without having any funding mechanisms to actually do projects, may no longer serve a practical purpose. The board will be reaching out to new Watershed Project Coordinator William Kopp to talk about its function in the future.

In other business, the council held the third and final readings of two ordinances to amend the city’s Unified Development Ordinance. The first being a request to change the classification of 605 and 607 South Iowa Street from residential to commercial to facilitate a new business endeavor by Dave Davidson, and the second a series of amendments and updates to the city code to relax restrictions on setbacks and land use.

“We’ve talked about this a couple of times before,” said Mayor Dean Andrews. “A lot of this is just bringing it up to date basically.”

Having received no comments from the public, the council adopted both ordinances.

City Administrator Steve Diers reported that City Hall and Police Department operations have mostly been moved out of City Hall to their respective temporary locations. City business is now being done at 507 Clark St. while the Police Department, Code Enforcement and Parks and Rec offices are in the process of moving to 623 Beck St.

“By and large we’re all getting in where we need to be,” said Diers.

The next meeting of the City Council will be held on Wednesday, Jan. 8, at 5:30 p.m. for a special meeting to approve the amount of funding for the City Hall renovations, followed immediately by the city’s goal-setting session, which had been postponed from December.