The Perry City Council moved Monday night to set some firm limits to the construction of driveways, including driveway entrances and extensions.
Following an extended discussion, the council approved the first reading of a proposed amendment that would replace the current driveway ordinance, found in chapter 135.10 of the Perry Code of Ordinances.
Perry City Administrator Sven Peterson briefed the council on the impetus for the new rules, saying the city noticed last year large driveways built “that encompass significant portions of a property’s front yard.”
A review of the current driveway ordinance showed that such wide drives were not prohibited, so the city staff spent the winter “researching and workshopping possible standards for driveway construction,” Peterson said, and they came up with a proposal for rules on the material, size and location of driveways.
“It basically keeps all driveways away from the front of the dwelling portion of the home,” Peterson said, “so if it’s an attached garage, it just would not go in front of the house. It would have to be in front of the garage and to the side yard.”
Perry City Council member Chuck Schott asked whether the amended ordinance could be made retroactive.
“It seems to me that we should really try somehow to figure out a way of going backwards just a little bit on this and, first of all, make sure we’re enforcing the rules where they’re being violated,” Schott said.
“And tear out the new concrete?” Perry City Council member Barb Wolling asked in jest.
“I don’t think for years that we have enforced the ordinance that we have,” Schott said. He offered examples of past driveway variances that were permitted by the city.
“With driveways, there really has not been much of a code to enforce,” Peterson said. “That’s really been the crux of the issue in the last few years, especially as we’ve seen more and more driveways being upgraded.”
He said between 50 and 60 permits for driveway upgrades were applied for in 2021 and while the city encourages residents to improve their properties, some definite rules are needed.
A new drive “is great,” Peterson said. “I think it’s fantastic, but I think it got a little bit out of hand as to how much people were paving. So this sets clear limits on how wide a driveway can be, so you can’t have a four-car-wide driveway entrance to the street.”
Other features of the revised ordinance would require all new driveways to be of a solid surface, and any major driveway reconstruction would trigger a review of the condition of the property’s sidewalks in order to confirm their compliance.
The second reading of the proposed ordinance will occur Monday, April 4 at the regular 6 p.m. meeting of the Perry City Council on the second floor of the Towncraft Building at 1122 Willis Ave.
First of all, disclaimer: I do not live in Perry. In fact, I have not lived in Iowa for several decades now. Further, due to bigotry and racism displayed against my immigrant wife and step-daughter, I may very well never again set foot in Iowa. With that out of the way:
This proposed ordinance change is the very personification of white-privilege-meets-small-town-America. In the case of the photo of the brownish home with the Jeep parked in the drive, that is a simple, standard, two-car-wide driveway. It does not appear as though there is a garage on the property. To restrict the width of a drive, premised on the frontage of the property, is to say, “Sorry, you can’t afford a large enough home/property for a side garage. Too bad. Park on the street. Except, of course, in the winter, when our snow ordinance requires you to NOT park on the street.”
You see, back in the ’50s and ’60s, when most American labor was union labor, one income supported a household. Such has not been the case for many, many years now except for the privileged few. So now we have America’s working poor in need of two vehicles, one for him to take to work, and one for her to go to work. Is it truly the intent of the Perry City Council to tell the working poor they need to sell one of the family cars and somehow get two people to two different work locations using one vehicle, all because they lack the finances to buy a larger property?
We as Americans need to stop slapping biased band-aids on our social problems and start addressing the root cause of those social problems. The privileged need to stop stepping on the underprivileged.