Supervisors Say The Supreme Court Should Decide Airport Future

Florence Rempe spoke to the Mahaska County Board of Supervisors on Thursday, encouraging them to continue the legal battle against the regional airport.

In a separate case, the board also approved continued legal action against Mahaska County Emergency Management and Mahaska County E-911.

Oskaloosa, Iowa – The Mahaska County Board of Supervisors met in a special session on Thursday morning, beginning at 11:00 am.

Before the regular agenda items were discussed, the board opened the floor to public comments.

John Bandstra, a regular commenter about the regional airport, asked the supervisors to carefully consider the next steps the board would take in regards to a lawsuit over the regional airport. “While this here litigation may cost us some money, the liabilities for making improper information is, you know, could be a lot more. It appears the SCRAA is using bully tactics and I think to support this here airport to continue on would be to support bullying.”

Oskaloosa City Manager Michael Schrock was the next to address the supervisors. The cities of Pella and Oskaloosa are the plaintiffs in the lawsuit against Mahaska County, where an 8th Judicial judge ruled that Mahaska County was in breach of the 28E agreement to build a regional airport.

“The reason I’m sitting before you and talking today is really more about the question about how much money are we going to spend on this, and I know based on our own expenses as a city, and also the city of Pella, there’s been quite a bit of expense paid to attorneys to essentially get a ruling on something that was unanimously agreed upon by the parties. The rulings seem to be pretty straightforward,” said Schrock. “We have spent a significant amount of money on this and I suspect you have as well.”

“I don’t understand why we would continue to have these discussions. Why we continue to fight,” said Schrock. “We’ve paid quite a bit, and we don’t want to pay more. That’s taxpayers funds, that’s taxpayers money.”

Florence Rempe spoke next. She owns land that could be impacted by the new regional airport if it was to be built. “I want to support the people who want to appeal this ruling because there were things that were not brought up properly in the last one. We need better representation, and the county can spend some money. It doesn’t hurt to spend money on everything else. Taxes keep going up.”

“Airport doesn’t need to be built on our farm,’ added Rempe, who believed that appealing the district court judgment was the “right thing to do.”

On the agenda was consideration of hiring legal counsel to replace Dan Gonnerman, who has been representing the county in regards to the 28E over the regional airport.

“At our last meeting, I said there’s some issues that didn’t get resolved in that ruling. I don’t think it’s ever been addressed in the Supreme Court how long a 28E is valid for,” said Groenendyk, who questioned if a political entity can always be tied to a predecessor’s decisions.

“The estimate to finish it out is 10 to 15 thousand dollars,” said Groenendyk of the expected legal fees to appeal the judge’s ruling.

Mahaska County Supervisor Steve Wanders said, “A lot of people say this is a city, rural issue. To me, it’s not a city, rural issue. I campaigned, for a month or so ago, for election for supervisor, and I talked to a lot of city people, they are just as concerned about this airport as the rural people. And we’ve got a highway lined with signs between Pella and Osky about property rights and all different things. All this does is cause a wound or a divide in your city and in your county and I think at the end of the day, in order to maybe start to heal this divide, we need to take it all the way to the top and have a ruling from the Supreme Court of Iowa, to tell us who’s right and who’s wrong so we can move ahead. And that’s my point of view.”

The supervisors, on a motion from Groenendyk, then approved hiring Gary Dickey, who has also been representing the landowners. The vote was 2-1 with Groenendyk and Wanders in favor, while Van Weelden opposed.

Dickey had previously filed motions in court to bring the landowners into the lawsuit between the two cities and the county. The courts struck down that motion.

Supervisor Willie Van Weelden said he believes it’s a conflict to hire the same attorney the landowners are using.

Van Weelden said that Dickey told them in closed session he believed that if the county was to appeal the ruling, the cities would back away from their lawsuit.

Van Weelden called the move to appeal the court ruling “a complete waste of money. The judge was very clear in his ruling.”

“Has the Supreme Court ever ruled on a 28E before,” asked Wanders.

“I do not know,” replied Van Weelden.

“I don’t think so,” said Wanders.”I think it’s time we figure out where we’re at with 28E’s myself. I know it’s going to cost us a little money, but…. we write a lot of them if they worth what they’re wrote on. So let’s find out. That’s my point on this.”

“I make a motion we appeal the 28E,” said Wanders.

“I’ll support that,” said Groenendyk.

The motion to appeal the court ruling passed on a 2-1 vote with Groenendyk and Wanders voting in favor, while Van Weelden resisted.

In another legal matter, Groenendyk said that he had spoken with hired legal counsel on Wednesday. “Today has been five weeks since we asked them to give us two weeks to get back to us and basically the only word we’ve heard back was the 911 Board asked for more time to get a lawyer and they’ve had a difficult time doing that.”

A meeting of the Mahaska County Emergency Management on Wednesday was canceled because the legal counsel that had been chosen stepped away after they applied to become a judge.

Mahaska County has one seat on the 911 Board, and one seat on the Mahaska County Emergency Management Commission as well.

“We offered for the parties to come and talk with us and we’re still spending more legal fees trying to get the parties to come and talk,” added Groenendyk. “So we’ve got issues all over the place of conversing to try and get things worked out.”

“I was not part of this reorganization back in 2015,” said Groenendyk who says he believes that the 28E agreement for the 911 Board hasn’t been amended and that it’s not being followed.

Supervisor Mark Groenendyk said that $17,000 has been spent, “to show that the 28E is not being followed for the 911 Board.”

During those discussions in 2015, the two boards, as well as the Mahaska County Board of Supervisors, had a work session to review the proposed 28E agreement that would put emergency management in control of 911 operations.

During the discussion back in 2015, potential changes for the new 28E agreement were discussed. Groenendyk believes those notes in the minutes are in reference to a 28E agreement set in place decades before.

“So this has been a discussion going on now for three, three and a half years,” said Groenendyk. “But the 28E is still the same, but we’ve got a different structure.”

Groenendyk said their attorney suggested handing a new letter to both Mahaska County Emergency Management and Mahaska County 911 Board in a follow up to the June 21 letter, in which the Supervisors demanded that both boards alter the 28E agreement to allow the parties to remove themselves from the agreement.

That letter expressed the Supervisors concern with the 28E agreement that delegated the E911 Service Board’s authority to the Emergency Management Commission. “We believe the 2015 agreement is void or voidable as described in the draft petition for declaratory judgment and preliminary injunction we provided you,” Groenendyk read.

Groenendyk went on to say that he believes amending the 2015 28E agreement between the 911 Board and Emergency Management “is the best and most amicable solution to the issue.”

“We asked you to review the materials and tell us by July 5th, whether your amendable at all to resolving this differences. At your request, we granted additional time to find legal counsel. They have given you five weeks to let us know whether you’d be willing to discuss an amendment. We have not received any correspondence from you, or even indication that this matter can be addressed. We believe this matter is pressing because we may be entering into invalid contracts,” Groenendyk said as he was reading from the letter. “Thus, if we don’t have some indication of progress on these issues by August 6th, 2018, we will have no choice but to proceed with filing our petition for declaratory judgment to protect our constituents and those who seek to enter into contracts with an invalid entity. We have done our best to be patient, but this matter needs to be resolved for all concerned.”

The board then approved sending the letter to the two boards on a 3-0 vote.