HUMBOLDT — The Humboldt City Council approved attempting to take possession of a vacant building located at 30 Taft St. N. at Monday’s meeting.

The building formerly housed the Humboldt Post Office, but has sat vacant for 14 years and is owned by an investment group. According to City Administrator Travis Goedken, the city has received numerous complaints about the building.

In December the council approved pre-applying for a 2018 Catalyst Building Remediation Program grant through the Iowa Economic Development Authority. The grant provides up to $100,000 per project with a local match of donation or in-kind services. The funds are used to remediate a downtown unused building in order to utilize it again.

If the building continues to deteriorate it may become useless, Goedken said in December.

Total project cost was estimated at a maximum of $150,000.

The grant awards were announced two weeks ago, Goedken said.

“Every project that was awarded did have a commercial aspect to it,” he said. ”I think that was a kind of hindrance to our application, because there is no additional job growth, no additional assessed valuation and no additional economic value.”

The other hindrance is the city does not have actual ownership of the building yet. The city has been in contact with the owner who was not interested in gifting the building to the city as a tax write-off. In order to be a tax write-off the building must be tied to some charitable use.

At Goedken’s recommendation, the council approved initiating steps to go to court over the building citing Iowa Code 657A, in which a city may petition the court to enter judgment awarding title of an abandoned building to the city if it poses a public health threat or nuisance.

“No one is going to go in there the way it sits right now unless it is remodeled and cleaned up,” Councilman Jim Vermeer said.

“There is nobody on the private side that is willing to take that on,” Goedken said. ”I absolutely agree with you.”

If the owner does not have any intention of repairing it or making it usable for anyone else then the council should move forward with taking it, Councilman Joel Goodell said.

Councilman Kirk Whittlesey suggested the city notify the owners of their intention and maybe they will change their mind.

Goedken said that would be his next step.

“We want to avoid all legal action” he said.

These things take time, Goedken said.

“It may be into the next election cycle before the city sees any results of this,” he said.

n The council also approved the purchase of a yard load packer from Elliott Equipment Co., of Grimes, for $82,850 for Sanitation.

The city did a trial run with a new method of recycling which went very well. Called commingle recycling, all the recycling is collected in the packer and it is taken to Fort Dodge where it is sent to Le Mars to a multi million dollar machine which does all the sorting. The process costs the city $25 a ton but it will make recycling more efficient and will actually save on the sanitation side.