Linn snowplowing can’t match CR’s numbers; but Linn engineer’s county car almost a banged-up BMW

Last week, the city of Cedar Rapids reported that the tough winter of ice and heavy, frequent snows made it challenging for the city’s snowplow drivers.Fifty-five people had filed claims with the city after plows struck vehicles, most of them parked. Most winters, there are fewer than 10 claims.

Steve Gannon, Linn County engineer, on Monday reported that, to date, Linn County had recorded five plow-vehicle accident reports and had paid three claims, two for vehicle repairs and one for a windshield replacement.

One of the accidents involved a BMW, the damage of which, at first, looked fairly substantial. Gannon initially thought that the claim would be sizable enough that it might sense to buy the owner’s interest in the BMW out. Gannon said he then might have ended up driving the banged-up BMW for his county car. It didn’t work out that way.

Gannon said it was a tough winter out in the county as it was in the city. Snowplow drivers encountered many more abandoned vehicles stuck along roadways, which made plow damage more likely.

In one instance, one motorist got stuck, went home and got a second car to pull the first out, and it got stuck. In short order, a couple neighbors came to help and got stuck, too.

“I think we (our snowplows) missed all of them,” Gannon said.

He said the county’s view of things is that the county is not liable if it strikes an abandoned vehicle.

“Now we don’t try to damage cars,” Gannon said. But it becomes the motorist’s responsibility if a car is left in harm’s way, he said.

Controverisal Tudor Rose will test City Hall’s commitment to smart growth, in-fill development

Tudor Rose — a three-story, 60-unit condominium project proposed on six acres that had been home to the former, west-side Baumhoefener Nursery — is coming back in front of City Hall for a new look.

In August, the City Council declined to approve an updated plan for the project, which required John Baumhoefener III to wait until at least February to once again submit the plan.

Neighbors who live in newer, single-family homes next to the proposed Tudor Rose project have resisted the plans, saying it is incompatible with the existing neighborhood.

On Monday, Dick Ransom, president of Hall & Hall Engineers Inc. and the Tudor Rose project engineer, says he already has met with neighbors to inform them that Baumhoefener is bringing the project back to try to win city regulatory approval for it.

The neighbors still oppose the project, he said.

Ransom acknowledged that the developer’s hope is that the City Planning Commission and City Council now will look more favorably on the project in light of the city’s new support for smart growth and in-fill development and  the city’s interest in containing urban sprawl.

“We believe a project like this is representative of the kind of well-planned and well-designed facilities that would match up with the smart growth and in-fill policies of the city,” Ransom said.

Tudor Rose is planned for the corner of Johnson Avenue and Wiley Boulevard NW. The existing Tudor-style home on the six acres will be renovated and used by those buying the condominium as a meeting place, Ransom explained.

The project is now slated to go in front of the City Planning Commission on April 29.

Baunhoefener needs to win approval to change the city’s land-use map from low-density residential to medium-density residential and to change the zoning to allow for the condominium project.

Ambulances and fire trucks both are coming to help: Is that the ideal approach?

 Look for a community discussion in the coming months about the way emergency medical services are provided here.

The Area Ambulance Service isn’t particularly happy about such a discussion, it has said in recent months, because it is one had and thought put to rest just a few years ago. Back then, the cities of Cedar Rapids and Marion and others signed on to support the ambulance service.

In something of revolt, though, the city of Hiawatha, unhappy with what it said was marginal service, decided it would run its own ambulance service with its own ambulances and its own firefighters.

In the intervening few years, the city of Cedar Rapids hired its first city manager. And in the last several months, he, Jim Prosser, has suggested that he’d like to see a discussion about how the city’s firefighters, who answer all medical calls, and the Area Ambulance Service, which answers them, too, might better cooperate.

As it stands, Cedar Rapids can be a pretty good place to have a heart attack or any other medical emergency that prompts a call for 911 medical services. On most of those calls, the citizen will see firefighters, ambulance personnel and a police officer, all at the ready with defibrillators and more.

This, of course, is an entangled, complicated matter to explore and one that surely will invite debate if not the defense of individual empires.

In part, this is so because skill sets of at the ambulance service and the Fire Department differ; and because money is involved. Private insurance, Medicaid and Medicare pay the non-profit ambulance service – though many of the uninsured don’t — while the city gets nothing for its firefighters.

Former Marion Mayor John Nieland has said that the city of Marion looked at using its own firefighters for ambulance service a few years ago, but decided that firefighters would end up spending too much time in hospital emergency rooms once they got a patient there.

A first hint of the potential for debate came a few months ago when the Area Ambulance Service’s board announced it was conducting a new study, and asked Cedar Rapids City Hall to contribute. City Hall dragged its feet.

Then on Thursday, the ambulance service convened an event for “stakeholders” at the Marriott Hotel on Collins Road NE replete with a speaker and a light dinner.

Keith Rippey, executive director of the ambulance service, said the intent of the program was to provide the community with an update on national trends in emergency medical services.

The speaker, Jerry Overton, director of the Richmond, Va., Ambulance Authority, painted a tough picture of the future. He noted that too many patients either don’t have insurance or they have insurance via Medicaid or Medicare that does not cover the cost of the service.

Overton suggested that the federal government had to pay more, and that ambulance services needed to see if they could figure out which of its customers did not necessarily need to be taken to an expensive emergency room.

An early point in Overton’s 40-minute presentation had to do with turf battles. Providers needed to set aside turf battles and get down to providing service, he said.

He did not, though, say anything about the turf issues that might exist here in Cedar Rapids.

Asked after his speech, he acknowledged that the city of Richmond’s firefighters, too, answer medical calls. But he said their focus is public safety, not medical service.

The person conducting the study for the Area Ambulance Service also was at the service’s Thursday gathering. Among those in attendance were Cedar Rapids Fire Chief Steve Havlik and the city’s finance director, Casey Drew.

Rippey said the report commissioned by ambulance service’s board should be out in May.