The overriding issue at the Ames City Council meeting on Tuesday night was water and Ames’ ever-growing use of it.

“Water plants are expected to start designing an expansion when they reach 85 percent of capacity,” said John Dunn, director of Ames’ Water and Pollution Control Department. “If, in this summer, we see around the same amount of growth in usage as we did last summer, we will hit that number.”

Dunn talked about restructuring water rates to help pay for the additional plant space.

“It’s expensive to change rate structures for the entire year when only a few months really need it,” Dunn said.

In his presentation, Dunn detailed a few methods of conservation, with rate changes being one of them.

“We’ve been promoting water conservation and have found that that message reaches some people, but not all,” he said. “The same is true of price changes, so we’re trying to combine those two approaches.”

Currently, the standard rate for water is $1.39 for 100 cubic feet – about 748 gallons. Dunn detailed the two different plans for rate changes, both of which are based around the estimated price differential for building the plant expansion.

“There’s the seasonal rate, where prices go up during peak usage months,” he said. “And there’s the inclining block rate, where we charge certain amounts for certain amounts of usage.”

He did point out, however, that none of the usage numbers given were out of the ordinary.

“Our water use is no different from any other Iowa community,” he said. “There’s no implication that our customers are more wasteful.”

Also discussed at the meeting was a change to the municipal code for Campustown and downtown.

“Currently, these zones do not allow living units, except for buildings with commercial units on the ground floor and apartments above the second floor,” said Steve Osguthorpe, director of Ames planning and housing. “There is short-term lodging allowed, but not for a period longer than 60 days. Things like hotels, motels.”

Haverkamp Properties, which owns several buildings in the area, planned to remodel the ground floors as short-term lodgings that could be rented out by the week or month.

“When I met with city planning staff, I was told that using them for short-term lodging would be legal,” said Brent Haverkamp, owner of Haverkamp Properties. “I was just looking at what could be done to enhance those properties.”

The tricky wording of the code was what brought this to the attention to the council.

“I just want to make sure that this is used for legitimate short-term housing,” said City Councilman Ryan Doll. “We could have groups of people getting two-month leases, and then swapping out, essentially getting a renewable two-month lease.”