Resolves Jex Addition dispute by allowing semis everywhere

By BEN KLEINE

Staff writer

Faced with deciding whether to approve or deny a controversial truck route through Jex Addition, Marion City Council voted unanimously Monday to eliminate all designated truck routes in the city.

Commercial trucks as large as 80,000 pounds may now drive legally on any street in Marion.

Until Monday, trucks in excess of 24,000 pounds were limited to doing so only when making local deliveries or, for the most part, when driving on Main Street, North Cedar Street or South Third Street.

“I’m hoping people are going to use some common sense,” Mayor Mary Olson said in an interview Tuesday.

Asked how the city, strapped for revenue, would respond if roads not designed for semis were to deteriorate because of increased heavy traffic, Olson replied:

“I guess maybe we’re going to have to do some planning. I hope maybe people are going to stick with us. We have lots of important issues we need to address.”

Olson said that the city was not planning to submit more ordinances about truck routes in Marion.

“The decisions have been made,” she said. “We’re going to have to live with them.”

The decision put an apparent end to years of wrangling over whether a business offering off-street parking for semis should be allowed in Jex Addition, west of the Union Pacific tracks on the city’s far southwest side.

The council had been prepared to consider an ordinance that would have added to the city’s truck routes an alternate pathway north out of Jex Addition that did not force trucks to traverse a dangerous railroad crossing on a narrow and hilly gravel road leading south from the addition’s main residential area.

Instead the council voted to repeal all truck routes in the city. It also voted to eliminate parking on one side of Grant Street, leading north from the truck parking business to Main Street, and to enforce a 20 mph speed limit on the street.

Neighbor Leah Schmidt attended the meeting to oppose plans to re-activate the truck parking lot, which owner Darryl Brewer actively used between 2006 and 2008.

She told the council she constantly worried that one of her children or any of the 18 children living in Jex Addition might accidentally jump out into the street in the way of a passing semi truck.

Recounting how a young girl had been killed by a semi truck while riding her bike earlier in the day in nearby Halstead, she asked: “Do you want to that to happen here?”

The solution the council offered surprised Schmidt, who said she could not understand why parking was being removed from one side of Grant Street if the council had decided to disallow trucks on any street.

“You don’t understand,” City Attorney Keith Collett told her at the meeting. “The council removed restrictions on all trucks in the city.”

Olson said Tuesday that allowing trucks on all streets made sense because trucks already were using South Freeborn and Roosevelt Streets around the hospital even though those streets were not designated truck routes.

“We had to be fair to all businesses,” she said.

City Administrator Doug Kjellin said after the meeting the repeal of truck routes was the only way the city could fairly settle a lawsuit Brewer had filed against the city.

Brewer sued the city after it denied permission for a non-conforming use for his property at 316 Grant St.

The non-conforming-use permit on the property — zoned residential but used, with permission, for light industrial purposes for 41 years — was revoked in 2008.

Brewer’s attorney Peter Rombold said Friday that Brewer met with Marion Economic Development Director Jami Eickleberger who advised Brewer to go ahead with the truck parking business. She helped Brewer form a business plan.

After a court-ordered review of that decision, the city Planning and Zoning Commission overturned the denial Feb. 28.

However, the viability of Brewers’ business was brought into question when the city insisted that the only truck route to the parking lot be the southerly route, with the dangerous rail crossing.

“He purchased that property with the agreement that it could be used for that purpose,” Rombold, said. “It’s like buying a house and being told you can’t live in it.”

Truck parking is a permissible in areas zoned for light industrial uses.

The problem for Brewer was that the route truckers used from 2006 through 2008 was unsafe. It extended from Third Street west on Water Drive and south on First Street until it became Burbridge, then Arbor, then Grant.

The gravel route is narrow and was especially treacherous in rain or snow, former truck driver Jeff Tomlinson said Thursday.

The most dangerous part of the route is a railroad crossing at the top of a steep hill. A truck hooked to a trailer cannot stop at the top of the hill to check for an oncoming train because of the downward momentum of the hill.

“If a train is coming 55 miles an hour, you’re not going to see it,” Tomlinson said.

The city originally approved Main Street to Grant Street as a viable truck route May 2 until five Jex Addition residents submitted a petition to the council May 16.

While safety was Schmidt’s and other residents’ top concern, they were also worried about the wear and tear on their streets because of increased truck traffic.

Because Jex Addition is zoned residential, the asphalt of Grant is only about 2.5 inches thick, Marion zoning administrator Marty Fredrickson said Thursday.

In preparation for heavy traffic, including trailer-equipped trucks that can weigh as much as 80,000 pounds, the city puts down 8 inches of asphalt in industrial areas.

Fredrickson said heavy truck traffic could create potholes and cracks in the street in as little as two years. In an industrial area, Frederickson said, it would take about 20 years for the streets to wear down even with constant truck traffic.

Olson said Tuesday that the city needs to do more planning and take preventative measures to improve city streets that would be subject to truck traffic. She cited Roosevelt as a street that has been damaged due to heavy truck traffic.

“They’re becoming impassable,” Olson said. “We are going to do something.”

Fredrickson said the city had too many other roads to repair to take the preventative measure of adding more asphalt to Grant before the road deteriorates.

City Administrator Doug Kjellin said during the meeting: “We’ll address any maintenance issue on the road when need be.”

Kjellin also said that there would be no special attempt by the city to address Jex Addition residents’ concerns about the lack sidewalks on Grant.

The city has two programs to assist residents in installing sidewalks on city streets. However, Jex Addition does not qualify for either program.

“If this were in Tanglewood Addition, it wouldn’t be a problem,” Schmidt said Thursday.

At its busiest time in the past, as many as 10 to 15 vehicles were parked at 316 Grant St.

While former owner Rex Savage used the property for industrial purposes, Schmidt said Thursday he used one large truck once a month, during daylight hours only. With Brewer’s use of the property, trucks could arrive at any time of night, and drivers could run their engines all night long, Schmidt said.

City Ordinance 1280, first published Oct. 24, 2007, states, “No truck shall be allowed to have its engine running for more than forty-five minutes on any street or private drive within any residential district within the city of Marion.”

The permit for 316 Grant St. states “the use cannot be noxious or offensive of vibration or noise beyond the confines of any building or emission of dust, fumes, gas, odor, or smoke.”

However, it is not clear whether semis, parked off the street, could keep their engines running.

Schmidt and other residents contend that cattle trucks going to and from the lot spilled cow excrement onto streets in the past.

“It’s called, nuts and bolts, we’re getting screwed,” Schmidt said Thursday.

Residents also have been uneasy about Brewer’s personal history. According to a criminal complaint filed in 2008, he has been convicted four times of driving under the influence. His license was suspended last year.