The county provided most of the essential services. Grading on the gravel roads did not require much effort. There was no need for much law enforcement since there was little crime. Water came from individual wells behind the few houses, and septic tanks provided necessary sewer service. Everyone had heating oil delivered to his house. There was no need for incorporation.
In late 1955, with the threat of a substantial increase in school taxes, becoming a town was an idea that could be accepted. Under the school laws of the time, votes for and against consolidation were counted two different ways. The method was determined by whether the people lived in a town or in the country.
For the first school consolidation referendum, the votes of the Youngstown area were added in with the votes of all the other rural area. That is why the county superintendent of schools could say the measure had passed in all of the proposed district. The votes of incorporated towns were counted separately.
Ipalco Official: Youngstown Should Incorporate
Lew Slade of Iowa Power and Light had known about the separate vote counting provision in the corporate laws. He made the suggestion that Youngstown incorporate. The idea was passed along, through the lawyers dealing with the school issue, to the Pleasant Hill School Board. The school board was the only elected body at the time and as such was representative of the area's people.
A group of citizens started a petition asking that the area be incorporated. Many of the signers believed that they were asking for Youngstown to actually become a town, named Youngstown. However, on November 21, 1955, when the petition was filed with the district court, the name of the proposed town was listed as Pleasant Hill.
The petition was signed by W. A. Culp and Fern Culp plus twenty-five others. It asked the court to "set a date for a special election and appoint five commissioners to give notice of said election as provided by law and to conduct said election, and that the court make such other orders as maybe necessary or convenient for the incorporation of said town of Pleasant Hill.” The same day, November 21, a hearing before Judge C. Edwin Moore was set for November 25.
At the hearing, Moore appointed five commissioners. They were C. P. Hurd, James Bianchi, William S. Faust, Ralph Grant, and Frederick J. Chmura. Their duty was to conduct a special election on the question of forming a town. They were to provide for the polling place and act as the supervisors for the voting. The vote was to occur on January 7, 1956.
Right away the incorporation effort became controversial. The proposed town was to include the Iowa Power and Light Company plant in the extreme south. Also included would be the Great Lakes Pipeline Company. These companies plus some others, as well as the people of Youngstown, were in a rural area. Not being part of a town meant they paid taxes to Polk County. So, again, the main issue for the people of the area was money.
County Fights for Taxes
The Polk County Board of Supervisors tried to file a petition of intervention with Judge Moore. Their purpose was to halt the incorporation process and therefore save a substantial portion of the county's revenues. The petition was overruled. The Board of Supervisors next step was to file for a temporary injunction to delay the incorporation vote. This was filed on January 3, 1956. Instead of an injunction, the judge ordered that a hearing be conducted on January 6 to listen to arguments on why the people of Youngstown could not have their election.
Six witnesses were called upon to testify at the hearing. Polk County Assistant Attorney James swss tried to use the witnesses to prove that the proposed town did not have enough people to become a town. Professor L. S. Pearl, head of the Drake University sociology department, defined a village as the smallest organized community capable of providing a minimum of services to the people. "In my opinion," Pearl said, "Pleasant Hill would not qualify as a village." He felt that it would take the town a long time to provide essential services since it had a low population. The county contended that only 174 voters lived in the area, not enough to support a town.