Following regular business Monday, the Pella City Council held extensive discussion about converting two gravel roads to hard-surface during policy and planning.

City Administrator Mike Nardini says the city council spent more than an hour discussing whether or not to surface gravel roads on 218th Avenue near Shady Brook and 218th Place leading up to St. Mary’s Catholic Church.

“Now in these cases, what you have is an issue where the road is half in Marion County, half in the city limits,” Nardini says. “The issue is if there’s a project, who is going to pay for it and what is the design standards for the new road? That’s what we spent a lot of time on, and the council discussed policy items such as if the road is currently outside the city limits, who is it appropriate to be spending money on the road for portions outside the city limits.”

Nardini says the conversion centered around the cost-effectiveness of any potential upgrades and how they would be paid for, because both would include areas outside of the current city limits.

No policy decisions were made, and discussion about the potential conversions will take place later this summer. Hear more from this week’s Pella City Council meeting on today’s Let’s Talk Pella.