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When the City Council of Webster City convenes Monday night, for its first regularly scheduled meeting of two November meetings, it will decide whether to award a $547,000 contract to demolish four downtown buildings, the final detail in a project Council has worked on the last two years. It will also decide whether to spend nearly a million dollars on hot melt asphalt street paving in 2027.
If the council votes to proceed with the demolition contract, four downtown buildings, two of which are vacant, would be torn down over the winter. These include 547 Second Street and 612 Willson Avenue, two buildings at the corner of Second and Willson that were once the home of Coulter's drapery shop. The buildings have been vacant for at least five years.
The structure immediately to the east, 545 Second Street, was once home to Kelly's Bar & Grill. It shares a common interior wall with 547 Second St., which has been cited in an engineering report as unstable.
The other two buildings slated for demolition are 518 and 529 Second St., owned by Chris McNeil, and headquarters for his electrical, plumbing and HVAC business. McNeil sold the building to the city this summer. An engineering report maintains one of the building's north walls, facing Second St. is leaning and is beyond repair. McNeil always disputed this, and expended substantial labor and expense to save the buildings.
Separately, the council will vote on a project of hot melt asphalt [HMA] repairs to parts of four streets - Division, Water, Elm, and Locust - scheduled for next summer. In recent years, the city has used HMA to quickly and economically rehabilitate residential streets throughout the city. If approved, the project would begin in June and run through August.
At the recommendation of its consultant on matters concerning municipal bonding, Dorsey & Whitney, of Des Moines, Council will consider what's known as "an additional action," which would position the city to issue up to $32,000,000 in bonds to design and build improvements and extensions to the city's sewer system.
Robotic cameras have revealed many degraded conditions and leaks in the city's sewers in recent years, suggesting a major capital campaign is needed to return them to a state-of-good-repair. At least some of the proposed budget will be spent extending the sewer network to serve a large apartment community now under construction on Wall Street by Kading Properties of Urbandale.
Finally, a third reading of a proposal to establish a minimal rental housing code covering all rental properties in Webster City, is on the agenda for Monday's meeting. If passed, it would likely be adopted into the city code, and would be the first comprehensive regulation of rental housing in the city's history.