Cherokee Co. Supervisors table 480th street vacationBoard attorney says Mongan, Petersen can vote

The Cherokee County Board of Supervisors indefinitely tabled a resolution to vacate 480th Street because the county hasn’t received responses from two notices from property owners in the corridor between F and E Avenue. 

The supervisors closed a public hearing on vacating the 16 acres of 480th Street so Little Sioux Corn Processors can undertake a rail expansion, grain receiving and possibly a plant expansion, as promised by its CEO Nick Bowdish, who was present at the meeting. Chris White, a Sioux City attorney specially retained by the board in its dealings with Little Sioux, said “there can’t be a vote” without responses from every property owner who needed to be served notice. 

“We still haven’t gotten signed receipt back from two of the entities, one of them being an entity out of California, which has to do with the utility lines,” said White on why the county couldn’t proceed with vacation proceedings. “So we can’t have a vote on this today because the notices haven’t come back in.”

Vacation will proceed when receipt of notices are filed. If the supervisors vacate the road, the county will then notify a multi-jurisdictional farm-to-market review board on the privatization. The current route is considered farm-to-market, meaning the county needs permission from the review board and the Iowa Department of Transportation before it can be vacated. 

When the vote happens, all of the supervisors are believed to be able to vote on the proposal, White asserted. 

He cited a 1988 decision by the Iowa Supreme Court in Helmke v. Board of Adjustment City of Ruthven that arguably allows Supervisors Rick Mongan and Bryan Petersen to vote on the vacation. Petersen owns a miniscule fraction of LSCP. Mongan Painting, from which Rick Mongan retired in 2021, also owns outstanding stock. 

“My legal interpretation of that case: this is not a conflict,” White told the board in response to a Cherokee Chronicle Times story that reported Mongan and Petersen’s stakes in LSCP. Zach Goodrich, executive director of the Iowa Ethics & Campaign Disclosure Board, told the Chronicle Times Petersen and Mongan must recuse themselves from the vote or face the possibility of violating a state code that bars public officials from voting on measures from which they derive financial benefit. 

White said he conveyed his opinion to Goodrich. 

“I have done the research. I believe that (Iowa Code Section 68B.34) isn’t the only piece of law that needs to be looked at,” said White in his explanation of why a conflict doesn’t apply. 

Goodrich told the Chronicle Times he hasn’t yet reviewed the Helmke case. He noted the matter falls under the jurisdiction of County Attorney Ryan Kolpin, who hasn’t responded to requests for comment on whether a conflict applies. 

None of the supervisors said how they’ll vote either way. 

Supervisor Duane Mummert asked whether the county should be recompensed for the $1.8 million it invested into 480th Street; a hard surface three-lane road was installed in 2017 with county money. Bowdish, the CEO, said the newly resurfaced road should be considered “a sunk cost” by the supervisors. 

Mongan and Petersen disclosed their holdings in the ethanol plant. Supervisors Dave Skou and Cheryl Ellis declined to speak. 

At a meeting earlier this month, Bowdish promised the supervisors a series of investments that would drive up the ethanol plant’s bottom line, as well as property tax valuations and farm prices. 

For those reasons, the supervisors should vacate the road, said Marcus farmer Rod Ogren. 

The ethanol plant is believed to be the seventh-largest source of revenue for county coffers. The ethanol plant is a boon to the Marcus economy, which has flourished amid a backdrop of decline in other small towns under 5,000 population. Marcus Mayor Pat Bunt and Marcus-Meriden-Cleghorn-Remsen-Union Supt. Dan Barkel encouraged the supervisors to vacate the road. 

“We want the ethanol plant to move forward with progress and expansion if they so desire,” said Bunt, highlighting the business openings in Marcus since the ethanol plant opened in 2002. “When you look up and down Main Street and think about how many different businesses that have occurred in this area in the last 20 years. We’ve got a dentist’s office. We’ve got an eye doctor. We’ve got a meat processing plant. We’ve got a new lawyer’s office in town. We’ve got a new bank. All these things are helping the county as a whole.”

Barkel said the ethanol plant would hopefully stanch the district’s negative enrollment trend. He pointed to the district’s name, a five-letter acronym that stands for five communities that can’t support a school on their own. 

“We actually have an opportunity to grow our schools and to stem the tide of enrollment decline and instead grow our enrollment because of the jobs it brings to our area and the prosperity it brings to the farm economy,” Barkel said. “We want to do whatever we can to enhance the opportunities to grow our schools.”

Others were less enthused about the ethanol plant receiving a piece of infrastructure that was improved by taxpayers. Dennis Bush, a former supervisor who negotiated development agreements with Little Sioux, said Bowdish’s proposed arrangement “leaves a bad taste in my mouth.”

He personally pushed for the resurfacing of F Avenue from C16 to 480th Street, a $10 million project that’s scheduled for 2025. It will also be financed by Cherokee County taxpayers, not the ethanol plant, who sued the county when it tried to back out of its commitment in 2015 to improve the road surface. Bush said the county made the commitment due to safety concerns — trucks were turning into the ditch. 

Bush struggled with the ethanol plant suing the county to ensure the resurfacing of F Avenue, while at the same time, purchasing property north of 480th Street in anticipation the supervisors would later cooperate with the ethanol plant’s development plans. Bush insisted the county hold firm on being repaid the $1.8 million.

“They knew at some point or the other that they were gonna have to do something with (480th Street) that we just spent over $1 million improving,” Bush told the supervisors. “But they drug us through the mud taking us to court.”