City, county clash again over 302nd Avenue

LEE COUNTY – Lee County officials are appealing a decision from the state City Development Board regarding what County Attorney Ross Braden described as a decision that doesn’t follow state law.
County officials went before the City Development Board, a board that’s part of the Iowa Finance Authority, on Wednesday about 302nd Avenue.
The county’s position is that the City of Fort Madison should own the half of the roadway nearest the PORT trail as the city annexed that property to help with the construction of the trail. Because they annexed that portion of property next to the roadway, they are required, Braden has argued, to annex the roadway to the midline, under Iowa Code.
The county wants the property annexed because of maintenance issues and some flooding that has occurred as a result of the construction.
The city argues the two governmental entities share a multitude of roadways and this is no different than any others. Fort Madison City Manager Laura Liegois said at Tuesday’s regular meeting of the Lee County Board of Supervisors that the issue may stem from animosity over the trail.
Enter the IFA’s City Development Board that functions as an impartial third party responsible for placing an objective influence on the boundary change process.
At last week’s meeting, the development board declined to uphold Lee County’s argument that the city was required to annex half the roadway. Engineer Ben Hull said the county had been obligated to report the annexation and failure of the city to annex the adjacent roadway. However, local efforts to resolve the issue were at work prior to anyone notifying the CDB.
Iowa Code 368.7A Secondary road annexation reads:
"1. The board of supervisors of each affected county shall notify the city development board of the existence of that portion of any secondary road which extends to the center line but has not become part of the city by annexation and has a common boundary with a city. The city development board shall provide notice and an opportunity to be heard to each city in or next to which the secondary road is located. The city development board shall certify that the notification is correct and declare the road, or portion of the road extending to the center line, annexed to the city as of the date of certification."
However, the code continues to state "This section is not intended to interfere with or modify existing chapter 28E agreements on jurisdictional transfer of roads, or continuing negotiations between jurisdictions. (emphasis added)
The emphasized part is where the CDB appears to have anchored its ruling.
Braden addressed supervisors Tuesday saying the county needs to appeal the CDB decision saying they did not follow the law.
“He essentially said we met every single requirement leading up to the city ‘shall’ or the Development Board ‘shall’ consider that annexed,” Braden said. “So we fit every criteria necessary and then it was like, ‘well, we're not gonna do it anyway because we don't want to interfere with negotiations’.”
Braden said he didn’t understand how the CDB could just disqualify the code language that requires the annexation and said due to that error in legal interpretation, the county should appeal the decision.
Liegois said it’s not just 302nd Avenue.
“From the city’s standpoint, we feel 302nd is just a jab regarding the trail. This wonderful trail to Rodeo Park that we all should be proud of, and I think that’s been a key issue along the line,” she said.
Liegois sent a letter prepared by a firm retained by the city to county officials outlining the current shared roads and how they are maintained in a shared agreement with the county.
“You’re going to make your decision whatever you want to make, but we really need city and county to sit down and maybe get rid of whatever agreement this was and look at snow removal and mowing. I agree, it makes no sense for your plow to drop a plow on a road we’re going by. That’s a waste of all taxpayers' money and resources.”
Braden said the city and county had a handshake agreement in place to deal with 302nd Avenue that included resurfacing the road, which the county did. But Fort Madison Mayor Matt Mohrfeld opposed the agreement when it came for a vote in front of the City Council and the council voted the agreement down.
Supervisor Garry Seyb pointed that out to Liegois.
“Just so we’re clear, prior to the mayor at that council meeting making the famous statement he made concerning the subject, we did have an agreement that hadn’t gone to the council yet. We spent a lot of money because of the good faith agreement that we had.”
He said the trail is wonderful but created issues that have been discussed including drainage issues.
“It appears to me that the city is trying not to take that because of a problem it created with the trail that’s there. With that being said, it would be up to the city then to deal with that drainage issue,,” Seyb said.
Liegois said there were already drainage issues on the road including culverts she said were 90% full until the county cleaned them out, but said she wasn’t on staff when these issues were discussed. She said the two parties need to come together again, per the CDB's ruling that the two bodies get together and work the issue out.
Board member Tim Wondra asked what would be different than the way the handshake agreement was handled last time.
“You guys worked really hard on this before to get it all agreed upon. And then the mayor came and blew it all up. Who’s to say we don’t sit down and get it all worked out again, and the mayor’s not going to sit down and blow it up again,” Wondra said.
“History has shown he’s done that at a couple different spots.”
Liegois said she can’t speak on Mohrfeld’s behalf, but said there were some hard feelings.
“I think the mayor had some heartburn about how it all evolved to how it did and what happened that evening I can’t explain. But we did our due diligence with your staff to come up with the best plan.”
Supervisors voted unanimously to appeal the CDB decision and Braden will file that appeal in the near future.
Pen City Current has requested the recordings from Wednesday’s meeting, which were open to the public, but hasn’t received a link to a recording, or a transcript of the proceedings as of this publishing, from IFA.