Mike Beck's FREE Street--Cascade Pays his Legal Fees

 

In the good old days before greedy councilmen, Cascade citizens could petition to have a street vacated and conveyed to them: appear before council and make the request, pay the legal/filing fees and the street was conveyed to the person.

            In 2018 Ida Trumm was assessed $1 a sq. ft. for an unopened street through her property considered prime building lot, over $17,000.       

   In 2016, I was assessed 15 cents a sq. ft. because the unopened street required so much fill it was not considered buildable. Council refused to acknowledge that it had been put into the flood plain by city development decisions, the sewer was never accessible, and that I had requested it, when Richie Knepper was mayor and it would have been free. $1,690.

            In June 2021, while I was at an out-of-town wedding, Mike Beck was given a street FREE. Zilch. Zip. Nada. He didn’t even pay legal fees, we paid them. I complained the following meeting and Councilman Andy Kelchen hollered, “It was HIS street; he gave it to the city.”

            “He’s the developer; that’s his obligation!” I replied.  At the last meeting Oct. 11^th, Kelchen tried to give Eastern Iowa Excavating Owner Chad Demmer, a valuable piece of industrial property free. Demmer was eventually charged 15 cents a sq. ft.—same as me for valuable property council in the industrial area. Not in the flood plain.  Bill Hosch brought it up at the last meeting called it “a very bad precedent,” exactly what I called it when they were doing it. But it was a 5-0 vote!?

            Still have any doubts about how you will be treated when you get down there?