OTTUMWA -- The Ottumwa City Council approved during Tuesday's meeting at Bridge View Center a temporary easement to the Iowa Department of Transportation for a project that will run from Woodland Avenue to the north end of the Wapello Street Bridge.

IDOT paid the city $100 for an easement adjacent to Central Fire Station, as the project will require removal and replacement of sidewalk near the building.

The project likely won't begin until 2027, so there is time for advanced notice of any disruption to the fire station, city development director Zach Simonson said.

"It's still well into the future," he said. "The easement will just give them temporary access during construction to use that property, replace the sidewalk and do the concrete work in the area."

The project is larger in scope, and will be a change near the bridge. The plans call for removal of the off-ramp at Fourth Street to connect Second Street and making that a sidewalk. As a result, there will only be one way onto 149 from Second Street, and that is with the current on-ramp.

Council member Keith Caviness was troubled by the removal of the off-ramp.

"I was extremely interested in them doing away with the (off) ramp," he said. "I think that's a problem for stop-and-go traffic because it's going to come just before those entrances and exits."

Simonson said that was a concern when IDOT officials had a public meeting about the project a couple weeks ago.

"It sounds like they got quite a bit of feedback on that particular element and some other elements," he said. "I think the down ramp into downtown is pretty valuable because I think it makes it as easy as possible for folks on Highway 149 to pull off downtown. It'll be interesting to see if they continue to receive comment."

Simonson said there is a chance the project at some point could block one of the entrances to the fire station.

"I think it sounded like from the meeting that they had started to have some conversations with the fire department, to ensure that they were informed and could start to plan in case there is a blockage," council member Cara Galloway said.

In other business:

-- The council voted to assess $201,155.46 across 10 properties to the property taxes of the owners. Simonson said the properties were demolished this year, but the city is trying to cover the cost.

One of the properties included are six trailers that were demolished in the trailer park on Albia Road. Simonson explained the city's position of buying the tax deeds and then resell the properties as vacant lots.

"I do think the trailer park is probably the assessment ($48,000) that we're most likely to recover, because there is a lot more value than $50,000 in that park," he said. "The rest of them, we likely won't recover the assessments through property tax. We'll have to get the property and try to recover our costs by future development."

Councilmember Dan Reid said any expense created should travel with the landowner who created it.

"There is the possibility of pursuing civil judgements, but in almost all these cases, they didn't have the money to put a new roof on, the house to where it was falling in, and there's not much chance for recovering that either," Simonson said.

"The idea is just that we want to unload our responsibility for the lot. One of the goals is to stop spending on these properties, and we've spent a lot of money chasing these issues," he said. "We spent a lot of inspectors' time with proper cleanup. There's also a lot of value to the rest of the neighborhood as we take care of this, because they see their values go up."

-- The council approved the Ottumwa Water Works 2025 budget, which has $4.4 million built in for hydro dam repair. General manager Tim Albert said water meter replacement takes up a significant portion of the budget.

He also emphasized that water rates will go up 5% in both January and July.

"We don't see any new big water users moving into town, so we expect sales to remain relatively flat. The increases are to offset inflationary pressure, and are the beginning steps toward hydro rehabilitation," Albert told the council.

He said the projected deficit for 2025 will be about $254,000, and expenses are projected to increase by 9.9%, largely due to the inflation effect on chemical prices. There also will be a new boiler in the water plant as part of the budget, as well as work begins on Unit 2 in the hydro.