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Urbandale staff outline phased municipal code update to correct citations and obsolete language
Summary
City staff presented a phased project to clean up the Urbandale Municipal Code by correcting statutory citations, removing obsolete zoning language and documenting instances where state law preempts local authority; ordinances to codify phase 1 are targeted for the first December meeting.
City staff told the Urbandale City Council on a lunch-and-learn that they are undertaking a phased update of the Urbandale Municipal Code to correct citation errors, remove obsolete language and make future maintenance simpler.
"One of the things you're gonna see as front and center is that the codification editor ... focused on citations," Maria, who has been working with city staff on the code updates, said. She told the council that aging legislative-history entries and statutory references had accumulated over decades and that cleaning those items would reduce future maintenance workload.
Nicole, a city staff member leading the appendix review, said the codifier returned a 75-page research report with 95 items, ranging from clerical citation fixes to more substantive wording updates. "They provided us back a very thorough, 75-page report with 95 items," Nicole said, describing the team's line-by-line review of chapters and the plan to publish a redline appendix that separates clerical fixes from legislative-history conversions.
Staff highlighted several concrete changes included in phase 1. Nicole said Chapter 30 will be updated to match recent changes in state law that set the appointment period for council vacancies to 60 days (Urbandale’s code previously read 40 days). The police chapter (Chapter 33) will explicitly reflect current practice by clarifying that the police chief appointment in Urbandale’s mayor–council form is subject to the consent of a majority of the council. The updates also split duties in administrative language (separating finance, records and marketing/communications) to match current operations.
Councilmembers asked about how the city will track future legislative changes. A councilmember suggested tagging or otherwise documenting state-law changes so staff can quickly identify affected code sections; Nicole said the annual enacting ordinance and yearly incorporation of an updated zoning map and street map are opportunities to formalize that practice.
The staff presentation explained that department-specific items — including fireworks, franchise fees, civil-rights language, liquor licensing and open-records provisions — will pass through departmental review and then be folded into the codification process. Nicole said ordinances to codify the phase 1 items will be drafted with the city attorney and targeted for the council’s first meeting in December after staff and the codifier complete a thorough review.
Councilmember Carberry Montgomery asked whether the project can flag places where state legislative preemption has reduced local control. Maria said the city can document preemption on an ordinance-by-ordinance basis by adding clarity in the ordinance text or inserting a 'whereas' clause that cites the state law prompting the change.
The presentation closed with staff committing to bring ordinance language forward for council consideration and to send approved changes to the codifier for inclusion in the official code.
