Councilman wants city to consider golf carts, ATVs on streets

BY CHUCK VANDENBERG
PCC EDITOR

FORT MADISON - With Lee County and several of the smaller communities in the county opening their streets to golf carts and all-terrain vehicles this year, a Fort Madison City Councilman wants a similar ordinance considered.

At Tuesday's regular City Council meeting, Third ward city councilman Matt Mohrfeld asked, during a discussion phase of the meeting, that city staff put a discussion of a possible ordinance on the agenda for a future meeting.

'Who doesn't want that. There the greatest thing in the world. Have you ever gone to West Point and seen the community camaraderie around golf carts?," Mohrfeld said after the meeting.

"Who doesn't, on a nice Sunday night, want to get in their golf cart and ride up to Central Park with their wife, and their lemonade, and their sandwiches, and go listen to the concert...that's Americana at it's finest.

West Point passed it's ordinance this month allowing all the vehicles on city streets if they are permitted with the city and the state, and properly insured. The Lee County Board of Supervisors approved a similar ordinance for secondary roads only, with allowances for use on paved streets if the vehicles are going from one secondary road to another and cross the paved road.

City Manager David Varley questioned which roadways would be allowed to have the vehicles on them.

"Most of them," Mohrfeld said.

"So we can allow a golf cart on a street with a 50-mph speed limit?" Varley said.

Councilman Chris Greenwald, who's a proponent of the move and owns River City Motors Plus, said there would have to be some limitations on higher speed roadways.

Sheriff Stacy Weber advised the city to be very careful to make sure any ordinance be specific as the county has had a few issues with riders.

"Ok, we will bring something forward to you," Varley said told Mohrfeld.

"Or we can just request it be on the agenda, with possible action," Greenwald said.

In an unrelated issue, Public Works Director Larry Driscoll said the bid for work to redo former Hwy. 61 from 2nd to 6th Street was $3.3 million, $600,000 over engineering estimates.

Driscoll said the city missed the bidding season due to archeaological issues with the stretch of road. He said it was his goal to try to negotiate the bid down to $2.5 million by removing work that won't alter the project in a major way. He said any major changes would force the project to be rebidded to be fair to other bidding contractors.