T-R PHOTO BY ROBERT MAHARRY - Marshalltown resident Tom Farley addresses the city council about an alley vacation request near his home during last Monday night’s meeting. By a 5-1 vote, the council declined to move forward with the request.

A resident on North 8th Street who asked the city to consider selling him an alley that runs behind his property will not have his wish granted after the city council declined to move forward with the request at the tail end of last Monday night’s meeting.

After City Clerk Alicia Hunter presented the item to the council, Public Works Director Heather Thomas shared some background on the alley adjacent to his property at 206 N. 8th St. and said both the storm superintendent and street superintendent had advised against vacating it.

“In short, we do have a large diameter storm sewer running through this alley that we would like to maintain access to and keep it in a condition that’s easy to access,” she said. “Additionally, vacating this portion of the alley would make traveling through the section in the east/west direction more difficult because it’s not vacating the entire alley from street to street.”

Thomas noted that there was an incident last winter where a vehicle got stuck in the aforementioned alley at the west end of where the vacation was being requested. Tom Farley, the property owner who made the request, explained that he wanted to purchase the alley because of the amount of traffic that goes through it and the fact that kids in the neighborhood use it to play and ride scooters.

“If you’re aware, it’s a long block. Fremont does not go between 8th and 9th Street, so people seem to think that it’s just OK to cut through that alley because they don’t want to go another half a block,” Farley said. “We’ve had two neighbors that have had fences damaged from people driving through that alley at high speeds that shouldn’t be happening, and it just hasn’t been a safe situation.”

He added that he didn’t plan to put up “a big fence” to block the whole thing off completely and would allow for an easement to provide access to utilities. Councilor Gary Thompson spoke in favor of the request, citing a number of factors and recounting his conversations with Farley and his neighbor, Alex Needham.

“I think this is a good use for us to vacate this — one less alley to plow for city staff, so I’m in favor of this,” he said.

Conversely, fellow Councilor Mike Ladehoff described some of the city’s past attempts to reach “side deals” with property owners as “a mess” and said that while he understood the reasoning for Farley’s request, he didn’t feel that he could support it.

“There’s just too much down there to try and do some kind of agreement that we can sell it, but we can still have this attorney and this agreement and this comes up. We see this quite a bit, and I”m not going to be in favor of this,” he said.

Councilor Barry Kell characterized the request as an extreme reaction to what he didn’t doubt was a legitimate issue.

“If access remains. If nothing will be blocked off, how does vacating this address any of those concerns?” he asked. “Putting a sign saying it’s private property may deter some people, but that same argument could say (to) use a ‘Slow, children playing’ sign there too. I guess I don’t understand this really solves the issue if we are to believe that there truly is no alteration to the access.”

Farley then came back to the podium and said his idea was to avoid putting up any sort of permanent structure that would block any access to any utilities.

“My plan was to put a barrier of some kind that would be movable that would at least deter from just driving up there, up the alley knowing that it’s private property,” he said. “Again, I’m not putting a permanent structure on it. I’m not planning on putting a shed back there to keep my tools and things in, but something that I can put across there so that people will realize it’s private property — and a sign, of course.”

Councilor Mark Mitchell asked who would be responsible for repaving the alley if the street department needed to get underneath it for any reason, and Thomas responded that the city currently has no reason or requirement to keep it as a paved alley. Thus, if staff did need to perform any maintenance on the storm sewer, they would put it back as gravel.

Councilor Jeff Schneider felt that granting Farley’s request would set a dangerous precedent and could result in a flurry of similar requests from property owners who don’t like drivers passing through the alleys behind their homes.

“I do understand the safety concern Mr. Farley’s talking about. People are driving way too fast down alleys, but I just don’t think this is the thing we need to do. I don’t think selling it will do us any good,” he said.

Mayor Joel Greer joked that they should place an Automated Traffic Enforcement (ATE) camera in the alley, and Thompson then motioned to direct staff to prepare the alley for sale to Farley. It failed by a 5-1 tally, with Thompson as the lone affirmative vote.

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Contact Robert Maharry at 641-753-6611 or rmaharry@timesrepuboican.com.