Mayor optimistic Amtrak deal coming soon

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BY CHUCK VANDENBERG

PCC EDITOR

FORT MADISON - Fort Madison mayor Brad Randolph said at Tuesday's City Council meeting that he's hoping to have an agreement in place in two weeks for the council to consider regarding the relocation of the Amtrak Depot.

Carolyn Foss, a member of the Fort Madison Old Fort Commission, addressed the council about her support in moving the Depot to its former location at the Riverview Park depot.

After Foss spoke to the council, Randolph told her that he hoped to have the agreement in front of the council at the November 6th meeting.

With an agreement in place, the council would be able to forward plans for construction of a rider platform to be built at the proposed depot site. The platform has a $1.2 million price tag with about $300,000 coming from the city.

After the meeting, Randolph said Amtrak officials were being very helpful as the city worked to reduce some of the costs associated with operating and maintaining the depot at the new location, but was cautious about saying anything specific, simply because he doesn't have a working document in front him.

RANDOLPH

"Until I see something in my hand, in writing, and we can say, 'Hey, you know what, this looks pretty good,' and we can present it - I just don't want to say too much."

Randolph said he's been working with Amtrak railroad personnel on certain costs he thought were maybe a bit high to make the operation a bit easier on the city's budget.

"I would just say that the numbers that we were getting on the insurance, we're trying to massage that number to make it more economical for us to go forward. We've looked at that, we've looked at other communities and how they are doing it, just to get a handle on why the costs are so high for us and how other communities are dealing with that."

Councilman Chris Greenwald said once the city has the agreement in hand he's going to push for the approval.

"Whether its more palpable or not, once we have that agreement in our hands, we'll be fighting to get it passed," Greenwald said.

Randolph said he's very pleased with the efforts being put forth by the railroad's personnel in helping Fort Madison get to an agreement.

"Amtrak has been very understanding of our position on that and we've been working with risk management personnel and they're trying to work to come to a common understanding with us and we're seeing some positive movement there. That's what we're hoping for."

He said he does have a concern, however, about the process being incomplete because it pushes back the process to get the Iowa Department of Transportation on board and get bids out for construction of the platform.

"My concern is that the DOT is waiting for signed agreements and, until they get it, nothing is happening. While this continues to happen, we keep getting bumped on the bid let. If we keep pushing that back we're gonna be late summer or fall before we get going on construction," Randolph said.

Randolph reached out to the CEO of Amtrak earlier this year about the project and the fact that it had fallen dead with the Amtrak officials. He said the CEO responded with an email that said they were going to get the project done and assigned a new person to the project.

At a meeting earlier this summer City Manager David Varley said the project could cost the city up to $50,000 per year to run the depot, but Randolph said at that meeting he thought those numbers were high, but would continue to work with Amtrak to see if some of those costs could be reduced.

"Again, this person with Amtrak is a really good guy. It's been a fluid process and we get these numbers and we kind of peeled through them line by line and said, 'we don't know why you'd charge us this and this'. I think David's numbers were too high, but I needed some figures to back that up. I didn't just want to say that."

Amtrak, Chris Greenwald, city council, depot, fort madison, Mayor Brad Randolph, railroad

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