Waukon City Council special session addresses variety of specific topics

by Joe Moses

The Waukon City Council met Monday evening, April 11 for a special session covering a variety of items including streets, electronic record storage and discussion of a proposed City Manager position, in addition to a couple more specific projects.

The deteriorating condition of the retaining wall between the city parking lot along First Avenue NW and the JaDecc’S/U.S. Cellular property was the first item discussed. Questions of ownership and responsibility for repairing the wall were raised, with JaDecc’S owner Corey Shelton explaining that the worst part of the wall is where the City piles its snow from plowing that city parking lot and the subsequent impact of the loader bucket often catching the raised portion of that wall when the snow pile is loaded up and hauled away. A suggestion was made to make the retaining wall flush with the sidewalk to avoid that impact issue in the future, with the Council approving the City taking on the responsibility for repairing the wall in light of the situation created by the City snow removal process in that area.

Keith Burrett with the City Streets Department presented the Council with a list he developed of core-out and blacktop projects throughout the city in 16 different street areas. Strub Blacktopping provided a quote of $4-$5 per foot for the cost of applying blacktop at a four-inch thickness for those projects, but additional costs with digging and rock base replacement could not be pinpointed for the projects due to the unknown depth of some of the underlying base problems in those repair areas. Burrett will prioritize the project list and present his recommendations at the April 18 regular Council meeting.

City street light wiring issues were discussed along the initial block of West Street in downtown Waukon, in addition to other sporadic areas throughout the city. Location of junction boxes that would be instrumental in fixing the problems have been difficult to determine. There was discussion about a set of plans from the Main Street project that was completed in the downtown area in 1987, but no such plans have been found within the City’s possession as of yet. It was recommended that Voltmer Electric, the electrical contractor that was part of that 1987 project, be contacted to see if they have any of those plans remaining on file that may help in locating those junction boxes more easily.

ALLEY REPAIR
Discussion of the alley behind Howards Home Furnishings just off of Main Street was the next agenda item, with Howard Van Ruler of Howards Home Furnishings advising the Council that the business intends to replace a problematic section of concrete located just behind its building but has realized that the rest of the adjoining alley in that location is also in need of repair or replacement.

Questions arose in regard to the ownership and responsibility of repairing the alley, with it being determined that the alley needs to be surveyed and property lines formalized in order to determine the best course of action. The Council agreed to have Fehr Graham Engineering survey the property.

RECORDS STORAGE
City Clerk Al Lyon advised the Council of the need for the City's paper records to be transferred to an electronic format to help aid the process for locating information for public or government requests. The City's meeting minutes, ordinances and other documents are all currently in paper format and stored in boxes, requiring extensive time and research to locate when needed.

Lyon presented the Council with an estimate for the purchase of software and equipment that would aid in the transferring of such documents using Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software to scan these files that could then be electronically organized and searched much more efficiently. The Council also discussed the use of a part-time seasonal position to accomplish the scanning process and the importance of establishing a procedure moving forward with electronic records and also working backwards to convert archived paper files. The Council approved the purchase, as well as the pursuit of the part-time help in completing the process.

CITY MANAGER
The Council then discussed the need for a City Manager position within the administrative realm of City operations, identifying the need for such a position but questioning the overall duties, role and authority of such a position. It was agreed that more information was needed before a decision could be made, and it was suggested that several regional contacts and experts involved in city administration be contacted to come and speak with the Council in regard to the advantages and concerns with such a position being added to the City's overall administrative realm.

In one final action, the Council gave its approval to City Clerk Lyon to obtain a more specific vehicle count for ownership in Waukon from the Iowa Department of Transportation. The vehicle count is being considered as a means to determine further protocol for the funding and prioritizing of street improvement projects.