Committee will discuss demolition cap fee
When it meets next Monday evening, a Vandalia City Council committee will consider a request to change its water and sewer disconnect fee for demolition projects.
A change will be discussed after a resident told the council last week that he feels that the city’s current fee is excessive.
Mike Wehrle told aldermen that he had to pay a $1,500 fee to cap a water line in the road at a property on which he was demolishing an old, deteriorating building.
“I feel it is excessive, and I would like it explained,” Wehrle said.
He told aldermen that the fee was approximately 30 percent of the estimated value of the property, and that it took workers only about one hour to do the work.
Alderman Jerry Swarm said the fee includes “putting the road back in shape” after the line is capped.
Aldeman Terry Beesley, chairman of the council’s water and sewer committee, said there are several reasons for the higher fee.
“No. 1, we need to make sure that we are not going to lose any money on it,” Beesley said.
In this particular case, Beesley said, the city may come out ahead financially, but “sometimes, we’re going to be on the other side of the boat.”
He told Wehrle that the council set the fee instead of having Public Works Director John Moyer set a fee for each demolition because “it leaves too much on his shoulders and is not transparent government to have him make up fees as he goes.”
Wehrle said a higher fee might discourage property owners from demolishing old buildings that have no value.
“If I wouldn’t have tore the house down, I feel somebody would have contacted me to clean up my mess,” he said.
The fee “is too general and too expensive,” Wehrle said.
He said that “$1,500 to go 5 feet is excessive, very excessive,” he said.
“I would like to see an amendment to the ordinance and come up with a fairer plan,” he said.
Beesley told Wehrle, “I would be more than happy to sit down with the water and sewer committee and revisit that.”
That meeting will be held at 6 p.m. on Monday at city hall.
Also at last week’s council meeting:
• The council set Trick or Treat Night – 6-8 p.m. on Friday, Oct. 31.
• The council approved the transfer of $20,000 from the city’s general fund to its cemetery operations and maintenance fund.
• The council voted to submit to the Illinois Department of Transportation a request to close Gallatin Street between Third Street and an alley between Sixth and Seventh streets for the Vandalia Downtown Merchants’ “Olde Tyme Christmas.”
That section of Gallatin will be closed after 2 p.m. on Friday and on Saturday until 4 p.m.
• The council approved an ordinance prohibiting the use of groundwater as a potable water supply in an area bordered by Fletcher Street on the north, Eighth Street on the east, Taylor Street on the south and Railroad Drive on the west.
• Mayor Rick Gottman recognized Kyle Barker, a Vandalia native who returned home after serving in the Navy, for his work in renovating three of the city’s older homes on North First Street.