The Indianola City Council held a discussion regarding fire prevention at storage facilities at their meeting Monday, after concerns were brought forth regarding new construction. City Manager Ben Reeves tells KNIA News the discussion centered around safety, and the city wants to be in unity with other Des Moines metro cities regarding building and fire codes for developers, and the direction to city staff was to require the safest course of action.

“We had a storage unit development that wanted to put in storage units, and because of the square footage, we don’t know what’s being stored in those units, the propensity for fires and what we’ve seen in other Des Moines areas. On top of that, the fact that we are a little more isolated than some of the other Des Moines metro neighborhoods, we want to make sure that our standards are going to meet the safety needs going forward. And even though we’ve always done it one way in the past, we want to make sure we are increasing our standards to make sure we have the best community moving forward.”

For more information, tune in to today’s Let’s Talk Indianola.