FORT MADISON – Just barely a quorum of Supervisors made a statement to the City of Fort Madison that the 302nd Avenue squabble is far from over.
With just three of five supervisors present Monday morning at the regular meeting of the Lee County Board, discussion was dominated by Supervisor Tom Schulz and the condition of 302nd Avenue near Gethsemane Cemetery near Rodeo Park.
Supervisors Matt Pflug and Ron Fedler were not in attendance. Both supervisors were defeated in November's general election.
The city and county are once again deadlocked on how to approach a drainage issue the city says is minor and the county says is so pronounced that someone is going to get hurt.
The drainage problems are being pointed at construction of the PORT trail near the cemetery that has caused drainage to run across 302nd Avenue instead of natural ditches and culverts that previously drained water in that area. The county claims the design of the trail failed to take drainage into consideration, and the city says the issue is minor and the county signed off on the design. A recent conversation between County Engineer Ben Hull, Supervisor Tom Schulz, Fort Madison Public Works director Mark Bousselot, and City Manager Laura Liegois produced what the county thought was an agreement to allow both sides to move forward.
But that agreement was derailed at an October Fort Madison City Council meeting.
Ben Hull said the meeting resulted in an amendment to the current 28E agreement regarding maintenance of all shared roadways in the county, and for the city to accept ownership of 302nd.
“It’s just a matter of time before there’s an accident out there, and then there’s going to be a lawsuit,” Holmes said.
Schulz said the county and city have discussed the issue multiple times.
“We’ve had multiple meetings, multiple discussions, multiple attempts to discuss it very much to the city’s benefit. Our staff has bent over backwards to try to make an arrangement that would be accommodating for them and benefit taxpayers,” Schulz said.
“On Oct. 1, the City Council voted not to accept the agreement to take over the routine maintenance of that road after that had been negotiated both informally with the mayor and more formally with the city manager and the public works director.”
Schulz said Mayor Matt Mohrfeld called the agreement B.S. and he agreed with him that the process has been B.S., but for completely different reasons.
Schulz and Chairman Garry Seyb said no one disagrees that the trail is a great benefit to the community. However, the county has threatened a lawsuit to force the city to take responsibilty for the drainage issue and correct it, or put the stretch back to its original condition which could result in moving the trail at a substantial cost.
“No one wants to have a lawsuit where taxpayers are the ultimate losers, but the city, in my opinion, hasn’t negotiated in good faith on this," Schulz said.
He said the county went ahead and rsealcoated the roadway again, even though the city said under the agreement, they would be responsible for that. Even with that, Schulz said the mayor continued to blow up the agreement.
Schulz also asked that the issue be put back on the city council agenda so he could speak on the issue.
“The mayor does not want me there, unless we're open to a simple agreement on snow removal,” Schulz said.
He went on to say that he doesn’t believe the Fort Madison City Council has been fully informed on the issue and that needs to take place..
“Other than that, I do not see an option other than to proceed with some kind of legal action,” Schultz said.
“It’s a sad disservice to the taxpayers in this community. Every one of those taxpayers is also someone I represent and the way this has been handled by the community is disgusting,” he said.
Supervisor Charles Holmes said he agreed with everything Schulz said and doesn’t understand why the threat of a lawsuit isn’t already moving forward.
County Engineer Ben Hull said both sides sat in a room and hashed out another agreement and shook hands afterwards.
“We had talks and sat in a room, shook hands that this had been settled,” Hull said. “At that point in time, we had reason to believe that it would be superfluous to move on with the lawsuit,” Hull said.
“Since that time, we’ve done some more research on property issues and that’s under (Lee County Attorney’s) review right now to make sure that legal actions taken would be the proper ones.”
Holmes said the ultimate responsibility falls with the city’s engineer.
“I would think the city would see that and they would have recourse to sue the engineer,” he said.
Schulz said when he was on the City Council that he suggested just that very thing to the Mayor and Public Works Director.
The city has argued that the county signed off on the project, but Schulz said that isn’t true, but with the tight timeline the city and the PORT Committee were working on to secure funding for the project, the county agreed to allow them to move forward with the project, while letting them know there were significant design problems with the project.
“I think the discussion, as I recall it, was that these things would be addressed during the construction phase, and they weren’t,” he said.
Seyb said he’s hearing significant talks took place and some agreement had been reached prior to Oct. 1 but they had fallen apart.
He said the city’s ability to do maintenance is a little different than county procedures specific to pretreatment for icing and the city is better designed to take care of those situations because of the work that was done.
Hull said his biggest concern is snow in the winter that melts and runs across the road and then refreezes, creating a dangerous situation for motorists through the area.
Holmes, who was an original member of the PORT advisory committee, said the city knew there were issues but they wanted to move ahead to qualify for grants.
Seyb said no one argues about the project being a good one, but said it appears it was done a little hastily.
“It sounds like we had an agreement, at least in principal, that was shook on, prior to the Oct. 1 meeting,” he said. “My thoughts are that I reach out to the Mayor and City Manager one more time to see if we indeed have reached an impasse. If we have, I think the board has already voted on where we go from here.”
Lee County Attorney Ross Braden said he is checking on the ownership issue and the requirements of the city to annex half of the roadway to the center of the road. He said he wanted to firm up that requirement before reaching out again to the city.
“I think I agree with Tom that we’ve really bent over backwards and made every attempt possible to reach an accord with the city, but it was completely blown up by the mayor and the agreement failed by a unanimous vote. I wanna research this and get back with Ben on the ownership of this roadway.”
In other action, the county:
• approved the final reading of an ordinance on alcohol enforcement that would offer a training course for retail establishments caught selling alcohol to minors, in lieu of paying a fine.
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