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Brouhaha in Oakhill Jackson over weeds and native plants and the power of a City Council member to call in the mowers

Mike Richards and Jerry McGrane are engaged in a spitting match over Poet’s Park.

The dispute – between the president of the Oakhill Jackson Neighborhood Association and his predecessor, now a City Council member — is over a small flower garden that sits with a landmark stone at 12th Avenue and Otis Road SE to tell passers-by that they are in the neighborhood.

The spot, created on city land several years ago by the neighborhood association, is now called Poet’s Park.

On Wednesday afternoon, Richards fired off a press release, saying that McGrane had inappropriately used his standing as a City Council member to call on the city’s Parks and Recreation Department to mow down what Richards says were native Iowa prairie plants at the site.

McGrane fired right back, saying he did nothing of the kind. He said he brought the park up to city staff a few weeks ago in a general discussion about maintaining the smaller parks in the city.

Further, he said “due to Michael Richards’ laziness” as the neighborhood president, the garden at the triangular intersection at 12th Avenue and Otis Road SE had all gone to weeds.

McGrane also disputed that there were many native plants at the site, “unless you want to call weeds native plants,” he said.

Richards fired back: Just because McGrane doesn’t know what native plants look like doesn’t mean they weren’t there, Richards said.

As Richards tells it, all this came to light on Wednesday when a team of AmeriCorps Green Corps members showed up at the park at Richards’ request to clean up and weed the flower garden. The city employee was just finishing up his mowing at the site, Richards said.

Tim Reynolds, one of the Green Corps members, late Wednesday afternoon said the space in question was home to native plantings. Three other areas in the park also have plots of native plantings, and he said the Corps members cleaned those up and put new mulch in them on Wednesday.

Richards thought there the plants had been permanently damaged, though Reynolds said they would grow back.

McGrane said he knows someone willing to donate money to replace what he says was weeds with new plantings.

Solid waste agency prepares to capture methane at Site 2 landfill; plan is one day to convert it into energy

The Cedar Rapids/Linn County Solid Waste Agency is moving ahead to catch methane gas from its Site 2 landfill in a way that one day might turn generators to produce electricity.

The agency’s board on Tuesday said it hold a public hearing on Aug. 21 to discuss a proposal to install a gas collection system at the Site 2 landfill on County Home Road at Highway 13.

The cost of the system is expected to be $1.4 million, and it should be in place by January, consultant Brian Harthun told the board.

For now, the collected gas will be burned off, but the plan is to install engines to generate electricity, Tom Podzimek, Cedar Rapids City Council member and board chairman, noted.

Harthun estimated that the Site 2 landfill now would generate about 30 to 40 percent of the methane currently collected from the Site 1 landfill below Czech Village.

The Site 1 landfill had had been closed, but was reopened and remains open to take in debris from last year’s flood.

The agency board currently is in the middle of litigation over a contract dispute over the purchase of methane from the Site 1 landfill to produce energy. For now, the methane at Site 1 is being burned off.

City focuses anew on New Bohemia brownfields; contaminated soil at former Iowa Steel and Iowa Iron Works sites to be removed to ready for redevelopment

City Hall is taking a fresh step in its decade-long plan to clean up nearly 50 acres of old industrial sites a few blocks from the edge of downtown.

By early August, a contractor will begin excavating “contaminated soil” at the sites of the former Iowa Steel plant and the former Iowa Iron Works plant, which straddle the 400 block of 12th Avenue SE. These sites are just up the street from a Third Street SE commercial strip now considered the heart of the New Bohemia arts and entertainment district.

The city’s work order calls for the first six feet of ground at the former Iowa Steel site at 415 12th Ave. SE to be removed and hauled to the local landfill and for the first three feet of ground at the former Iowa Iron Works site at 400 12th Ave. SE, likewise, to be removed and hauled to the local landfill.

At that point, tests will be conducted to make sure no additional contaminants remain in the soil. Further excavation will take place if there are additional contaminants.

Richard Luther, the city’s development manager, reported on Monday that Rathje Construction Co., Marion, submitted the apparent low bid for the project of about $42,000, nearly $30,000 below the engineer’s estimate for the work, he said.

The city’s bid documents call for the work to be completed by Sept. 30. Once completed, the Iowa Department of Natural Resources will issue a letter stating that no further action is necessary.

Luther said the two brownfield industrial sites can be redeveloped for commercial, office or residential use.

City documents note that the city is basing the scope of the excavations on an October 2005 report prepared by engineering firm Howard R. Green Co. of Cedar Rapids.

Of the two former metal plants, the Iowa Iron Works plant was demolished most recently, in the summer of 2001.

The city owns two other former industrial sites nearby, the empty former Quality Chef Co. building on Third Street SE and the empty former Sinclair meatpacking site at the end of Third Street SE.

Last week, council member Brian Fagan asked for updates on those two properties, both of which took on flood water in 2008. Fagan wondered when they might be demolished.

City announces fifth annual bow hunt of deer

The city will permit a fifth consecutive bow hunt of deer this fall and early winter.

The bow hunt season inside the city limits will run from Sept. 12 through Jan. 31.

To participate, hunters must complete an annual proficiency test and attend a class on the hunt’s rules and regulations. Hunters also must receive permission from private property owners to hunt of their property.

Proponents of the Cedar Rapids bow hunt – several Iowa cities including Coralville and Marion permit bow hunting of deer inside the city limits — say the hunt has reduced deer-vehicle crashes inside the city since its inception four years ago. That’s not to say vocal opponents of the hunt aren’t still out there.

At the conclusion of each of the previous four bow hunts, Fire Chief Steve Havlik, who oversees the bow hunt in Cedar Rapids, has reported that complaints about the hunt have been few and that there have been no injuries to people related to the shooting of arrows.

Bow hunters have killed 298, 333, 349 and, most recently, 314 deer in the four previous annual hunts.

In 2004, figures compiled by the city, the Iowa Department of Natural Resources and the Iowa Department of Transportation put the number of deer-vehicle collisions inside Cedar Rapids at 453. In 2008, the number was 250, the DNR reported.

For information on this year’s hunt, go to www.cedar-rapids.org/fire/urbandeerhunt.asp

City paints bike lanes on a stretch of Boyson Road NE to give the idea a try in city’s quest for bicycle-friendly status

City Hall is still working to try to win bicycle-friendly status for the city.

It will apply to the League of American Bicyclists on July 31 and will submit a second part of the application Aug. 7 if the League gives the go-ahead.

Ron Griffith, a city traffic engineer who is leading the City Hall bicycle effort, showed the City Council a photo of freshly painted white bicycle lanes on a two-lane section of Boyson Road. The lines create a 6-foot-wide bike lane on both edges of the road while reducing the width of the lanes for motor vehicles to 12 feet.

As an aside, council member Chuck Wieneke wondered if city crews ought to get back out to Boyson and paint the yellow center line down the road. He could barely see it in the photo, he said.

Griffith also reported that 85 percent of the city’s buses now have bike racks on them; that the city is developing a comprehensive master trails plan; and the Mayor’s Bike Ride is slated for Sept. 7.

Only Cedar Falls among Iowa cities now holds the certification from the League of American Bicyclists as a bicycle-friendly community. It obtained the status this spring.

Another idea for affordable housing near Ellis Park isn’t going to work; city bought the land with state REAP grant to prevent it from being developed

Another proposal — this one made public just a month ago — to build affordable housing in and around Ellis Park is apparently going to bite the dust quickly.

Johnny Brown of J Brown Development Group of Cedar Rapids had pitched an idea to build two buildings with 30 affordable apartments each on a 6-acre, tree-filled city site between Ellis Lane and the Ellis Park.

Brown was calling his idea Ellis Preserve. Bart Woods, president of Primus Construction, was working with him on some of the planning.

However, Julie Sina, the city’s parks and recreation director, reports that the city purchased the land in question with a state REAP — Resource Enhancement and Protection — grant to prevent to it from being developed.

Sina says the city would need to talk to state officials to see if it is possible and what the ramifications would be if the city now decided to sell the land purchased with REAP dollars.

“The city of Cedar Rapids Parks and Recreation Department has a good relationship with REAP and has received funding over many years for the preservation of land,” Sina says. “… The Parks and Recreation Department does not support the sale of this piece of property.”

Brown says the status of the city property isn’t lessening his concern for people who he says remain displaced by last year’s flood and still need affordable housing.

“There are a lot of families who are suffering,” Brown says. “And we’ve got to do something to help our fellow citizens. That’s who I am.

“We’ve got people who are hurting, and it doesn’t seem to register on anybody’s radar screen. But it’s going to stay on mine.”

An earlier plan by another developer to put affordable housing nearby on the former 6-acre practice chipping area next to Ellis Golf Course fell apart in the face of neighbor opposition.

Round 2 of demos start next week: 58 on the list with paperwork still out on another 12; 70 structures came down in a first round

Next week, the city of Cedar Rapids will begin demolishing 58 more structures damaged in the flood of June 2008.

These are structures, most of which are homes, that the city has concluded pose a public-safety danger and need to come down. The city will seek reimbursement for the costs from the Federal Emergency Managment Agency because of the public-safety risk.

Another 12 properties may be added to the 58 in what is a second round of demolitions.

The city already has taken down 70 structures that were the worst of the worst damaged.

In total, the city plans to buy out some 1,300 properties, and the majority of those are expected to be demolished. Those demolished to date and those in this new round of demolitions are among those 1,300 or so properties.

The city has contracted with DW Zinser Co. of Walford, Iowa, to take care of the new round of demolitions. Work will start at 7 a.m. Tuesday with the structure at 1211 6th St. NW.

Others on the new list:

1312 4TH ST NW
1427 4TH ST NW
1657 8TH ST NW
1817 ELLIS BLVD NW
1832 ELLIS BLVD NW
305 G AVE NW
327 G AVE NW
402 I AVE NW
1206 3RD ST NW
1602 4TH ST NW
1664 1ST ST NW
306 N AVE NW
1007 3RD ST SW
1034 8TH ST NW
1106 2ND ST SE
1108 6TH ST NW
1122 I AVE NW
1217 4TH ST SE
1223 9TH ST NW
1233 10TH ST NW
1234 N ST SW
1306 9TH ST NW
1320 Ellis Blvd NW
1323 K ST SW
1428 2ND ST SW
1450 2ND ST SE
1501 J ST SW
1645 9TH ST NW
1702 2ND ST SW
1712 HAMILTON ST SW
2120 C ST SW
1906 C ST SW
217 7TH AVE SW
2333 ROMPOT ST SE
316 6TH ST SW
321 G AVE NW
411 6TH ST SW
427 G AVE NW
435 G AVE NW
622 5TH AVE SW
717 O AVE NW
72 18TH AVE SW
77 22ND AVE SW
81 18TH AVE SW
81 22ND AVE SW
816 8TH ST NW
825 SHAVER RD NE
826 6TH ST SE
1009 10TH ST NW
52 19TH AVE SW
821 4TH ST NW
814 L ST SW
1332 9th St NW
1211 6th St NW
1227 5th St SE
2207 D St SW
807 5th Ave SW
415 7th Ave SW

City Hall has firmed up what it expects to seek for some 1,300 flood-disaster buyouts: $148 million in CDBG funds to go with an expected $27 million in FEMA money

The Iowa Department of Economic Development is finalizing plans for what it intends to do with the state’s latest disaster-related infusion — $517 million — of federal Community Development Block Grant funds.

In its initial draft, the state agency proposed using $245 million of the CDBG pot to buy out flood-damaged properties in the state.

For now, the $245-million figure is a good working one for the city of Cedar Rapids, which has firmed up what part of the pot it intends to request to help the city buy out about 1,150 flood-damaged properties, reports Jennifer Pratt, the city’s development coordinator.

Pratt says the city will seek a total of $148 million in CDBG for buyouts. Of that total, $66 million will be used to purchase 554 flood-damaged properties in what is expected to be the construction zone needed to build the city’s proposed new flood-protection system. Another $82 million will buy out an estimated 600 additional properties that are defined as “beyond reasonable repair.”

Most of a group of another 192 properties, which are heavily damaged and closest to the Cedar River, will be purchased using $27 million in Federal Emergency Management Agency funds to make way for a “greenway” along the river between the water and a new levee.

The city also is seeking funds from other parts of the $517-million CDBG pot, which will be designated for business recovery, infrastructure repair and housing rehabilitation.

Flood-damaged Grant Wood window at the Veterans Memorial Building is coming out for repairs; entrusted to a Davenport firm owned by a disabled Vietnam War vet

The flood-damaged, Grant Wood-designed window is coming out of the Veterans Memorial Building this week, each of its 58 stained-glass panels to be crated and driven to a studio in Davenport for repair.

The restoration work on the window, put in place in 1929, will take up to 34 weeks to complete at a cost of $147,000.

There may be additional costs to repair or replace the window’s wooden frame and to replace safety glass protecting both sides of the historic window, reports Mike Jager, the city’s veterans memorial director.

Glass Heritage LLC of Davenport bested four other design firms — including ones in Philadephia, Chicago and Kansas City — to win the job of fixing Grant Wood’s window.

John Watts, one of three founding owners of Glass Heritage, is a Vietnam War veteran who in his day has wrestled with the war effects of Agent Orange exposure and post traumatic stress disorder, he reports.

Because he is a veteran, Watts says the Veterans Memorial Building’s window — which features a huge image of a rising angel of peace “welcoming all veterans home” and also depicts soldiers from the nation’s six major wars through World War I — has special meaning to him.

“We are acutely aware that this is a one-of-a-kind piece,” says Watts. “Are we nervous about it? We’re nervous about every piece of glass we touch. If we weren’t, we wouldn’t be good.”

Watts says Grant Wood’s devotion to the land is reflected in the texture of the paint on the stained-glass window.

He says, too, that there is no question that the June 2008 flood damaged the window, causing bowing and some cracking in some of the 1,000 or more pieces of stained glass in the window.

Nonetheless, he says the window overall is in “decent shape” for its 80-year age.

“We’re just going to take it and give it a new life,” Watts says.

In the restoration, the cost of which a city insurance policy will cover, the city’s Jager says there is some thought be given to leaving damage in place in one small section of the window as a reminder of the flood.

Watts, 60, says he is originally from New York City. His life eventually took him to the Quad Cities, where he spent some years as director of operations at The Mark of the Quad Cities. Ten years ago, he decided to spend all his time working on stained glass, and he left The Mark to open his own business and store in Davenport with two other partners. He’s been working in stained glass for 28 years, he says.

Watts calls the work on fixing the Grant Wood window “meticulous.” He calls the window “amazing.”

Chuck Swore launches pioneering move: Can a former incumbent reclaim a seat on the city’s still-new, part-time council?

Chuck Swore wants to return to the City Council.

Swore on Tuesday said he will run for one of the two at-large council seats on the ballot in November, and he said he is running to return a “can-do attitude” to City Hall.

Swore was elected to the west-side District 2 seat on the council in 2005 in the first election for what that year was the city’s new, nine-member, part-time City Council.

Three of the nine seats — the District 2 and District 4 seats and one at-large seat — began with two-year terms so that not all nine seats would change in the same election cycle. And in 2007, Swore lost his council seat to challenger Chuck Wieneke.

This November, six of the nine council seats will be up for grabs — mayor, two at-large seats and the seats in council districts 1, 3 and 5.

Brian Fagan and Pat Shey are the incumbents now in the two at-large seats, and Fagan is expected to run for mayor and Shey to seek reelection to an at-large seat.

On Tuesday, Swore said most on the council back in 2005 came in with a commitment to get things done.

“That attitude kind of went away,” he said.

Swore said he is not opposed to talking about a vision for the city, but he said he wants the City Council to establish a set of time goals to make sure the city is accomplishing and not just planning.

“The City Council wants to take its time. I’d like to have some deadlines,” Swore said.

He said an approach of “ready, fire, aim” sometimes is needed to get things done.

Swore said, too, that the city of Cedar Rapids needs to get back to promoting economic development so it builds its tax base for the future.

“If you look at successful cities, they are developing,” he said.

Too often, Swore said, Cedar Rapids’ city government impedes development and the growth of business with what he said is a “mindset” that prefers to impose and enforce regulations rather than finding ways to facilitate development.

Swore, 66, retired from Acme Electric where he had been vice president and general manager, has spent the 19 months since he left the City Council involved in several endeavors related to small business.

Prior to the June 2008 flood, he ran his own, one-man consulting business, CRS Small Business Services, and he became the spokesman for the Cedar Rapids Developers’ Council.

Since the flood, he also has worked as a flood-recovery case manager on contract representing both small businesses and landlords.

“It’s been a very satisfying position because I’m actually able to help folks,” Swore said of his flood-recovery work.

He also is the representative of small business on City Hall’s Recovery and Reinvestment Coordinating Team, a key source of flood-recovery advice for the City Council.

It is his flood-recovery roles where he said he has seen ways in which city government can improve how it works with businesses and people. If returned to the City Council, he said he will push to have the city review existing ordinances related to development to see which ordinances can be refined.

“Let’s see if some need updated so they are not effectively hurting our community in encouraging business to come to town,” Swore said. “Let’s at least dust them off and see if there’s a better way of doing it.”

Swore has long years of service in Cedar Rapids city government.

He served as chairman of the city’s Five Seasons Facilities Commission for 23 years, a period during which the city built its downtown arena, now called the U.S. Cellular Center. He then spent five years on the City Planning Commission before his successful run for City Council in 2005.

Swore said he does have some experience with the council and city government that he thinks can help now.

“I’ve just watched Cedar Rapids over the past several years lose its standing,” Swore said. “I care very deeply about Cedar Rapids, and I want to offer as much as I can.”

He said the City Council should be a place to discuss and act on ideas, ideas that the city staff is then directed to implement.

“I don’t see it working that way now,” he said.

Swore said he has respect for City Manager Jim Prosser, but he said he wishes that the council back in 2006 — when Prosser became the city’s first city manager — had told him to leave his speed dial back in Illinois where he had come from.

It’s Swore’s way of saying that the city has used too many out-of-state consultants and too few local experts.

Swore is a former union electrician who, at age 29, became the business manager for his local union, IBEW Local 405. Eventually, he jumped to management at Acme Electric.

Swore and wife Carol have four adult children and 16 grandchildren.

He is undergoing surgery for prostate cancer in August, but doesn’t anticipate he will miss a beat.

“I look at challenges as opportunities,” Swore said. “We always ought to be trying to help in the best way we can through our own abilities.”

Day 1 for Eyerly as flood-recovery director; he’s looking ahead, not back; setting goals; wants to work himself out of a job in a year or two

Greg Eyerly never seemed to fuss too much with the suit and tie the last 16 or so months when he was working on the front lines as the city’s utilities operations manager with an office at the Water Pollution Control facility.

Monday, his first full day as the city’s new flood-recovery director, had him dressed every bit the part of executive. His shirt couldn’t have been whiter, his tie nicer, the shine on the shoes shinier.

Eyerly is operating out of what had been a mini-conference room at the temporary City Hall in northeast Cedar Rapids. And right next door is the office of City Manager Jim Prosser, to whom Eyerly reports.

“I have a great working relationship with Jim Prosser,” he said. “I may disagree with him on some things, and I feel comfortable expressing that. I work for the community.”

First thing Monday, Eyerly said he sat down with Prosser and spelled out for him what he had scheduled for the first couple weeks of his new assignment.

Eyerly said he is headed to Des Moines on Tuesday to talk about flood recovery with officials of the Rebuild Iowa Office, the Iowa Department of Economic Development and the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s Iowa office.

He will talk to the City Council on Wednesday evening about the city’s major flood-damaged buildings and about his goal to bring negotiations with the Federal Emergency Management Agency over the scope of the buildings’ damages to a successful conclusion by Oct. 31.

He said the city also is readying to unveil an addition to its Web page, which will allow people to see, step by step, how work on specific flood-related projects is progressing.

Yet this week, too, Eyerly said he hopes to get out into Cedar Rapids’ flood-damaged neighborhoods to take a look around and talk to people.

Eyerly said he can count his top priorities on one hand. He wants to find funding for flood-recovery projects and get it delivered; make sure the city is moving ahead in a timely manner on neighborhood and business recovery, property buyouts and demolitions, and future flood protection.

As for the city’s key flood-damaged buildings, Eyerly said the city and FEMA are in wide disagreement right now on the level of damage on the Veterans Memorial Building and the Central Fire Station, for instance.

One breakthrough, he said, is that FEMA has agreed to set aside its approach to the issue, which Eyerly said is based too much on prior disasters and square footage. The city and its consultants have been asking for a room-by-room analysis of the damages.

Eyerly said his mission is to make the post of flood-recovery director unnecessary in a year or two, he said.

Two factors that will help Cedar Rapids’ flood recovery have nothing to do with who is doing or not doing what, he said.

The city’s flood recovery will be helped if the national economy picks up and if the nation does not experience a major hurricane or other natural disaster this year, he said.

Rest easy Council Street NE homeowners; Jim Sattler has given up idea for a manufactured-home park; he’s got new plans, though

Owners of newer, nicer homes along Council Street NE just south of Robins and north of the proposed Tower Terrace Road extension can breathe a little easier.

Jim Sattler, president of Jim Sattler Inc. Custom Homes, has given up his plan to build a manufactured home park in the neighborhood.

It is a plan neighbors had been fighting for at least three years and against which last September they had amassed more than 800 signatures on petitions in opposition.

Those signatures in that month helped prompt the City Planning Commission to reject Sattler’s latest version of a manufactured home park.

“I think you just get to a point where – we’re on our sixth year (of planning for the site) – you just say, ‘Let’s use the land for something. Let’s move ahead,’” Sattler explained on Thursday about his plans to give up on manufactured homes at the Council Street NE site.

Sattler now expects to appear in front of the City Planning Commission anew in August to seek a change in zone on 60-plus acres of land east along Council Street NE and north of the proposed Tower Terrace Road extension. He will seek an R-3 single-family home designation for much of the site where he would like to build 157 single-family homes. On the southern part of the site, he plans 35 to 45 condominium units.

Sattler said the lots for the single-family homes will be from 60 to 80 feet wide, with larger lots and more expensive homes next to existing homes. The larger-lot homeS might be in the $180,000 to $250,000 price range, while others elsewhere in the development will range from $130,000 to $160,000 or $180,000 on homes with garages.

Sattler said he was aware of the Iowa Department of Economic Development’s recent program to provide down payment assistance for 177 new residences in Cedar Rapids with prices at $180,000 or lower. All of that money has been spoken for, but Sattler said he hopes the state might provide a second round of such funding for some who might purchase a residence in his new development.

Some of those affected by the June 2008 flood likely will buy a home there, he said.

If his latest plans make it thorough the City Hall approval process, Sattler said he expects to start building homes in the spring, and he said it could take two to five years to build the project to completion depending on demand.

“Fortunately, I think Cedar Rapids is in a reasonably good position,” he said. “But I wouldn’t want to be overconfident.”

Sattler said he and property owner Ed Horn control about 130 acres, which is split by Council Street NE.

Development of the western part of the property will await planning for the Tower Terrace Road extension, though Sattler said he envisioned a mixed-use development there along what will be a major thoroughfare.

He called this spot “one of the last open spaces” left to build on in the Rockwell Collins area.

City and state celebrate funding that will help put people into 177 new residences by year’s end

Sometimes a city needs a dog-and-pony show.

At least the case could be made for the one — for the news conference — on Thursday in which state and local officials met in a new housing development in northwest Cedar Rapids to celebrate a significant infusion of federal dollars designed to help build 177 owner-occupied residences here by the end of the year.
Of the 177, 94 will be single-family homes and 83 will be condominiums.

In total, the Iowa Department of Economic Development and the Rebuild Iowa Office are steering about $7.5 million in federal Community Development Block Grant funds into Cedar Rapids for the new construction. Statewide including in Cedar Rapids, a total of $17 million is being spent on the program, which will result in a total of 343 new owner-occupied residences, Mike Tramontina, director of the state economic development agency, noted at Thursday’s news conference.

Lt. Gen. Ron Dardis, who heads up the Rebuild Iowa Office, said the homebuilding is part disaster recovery and part economic stimulus that will fill a need for affordable housing in Cedar Rapids that existed before the June 2008 flood and exists even more now.

Those purchasing the 177 new residents can qualify to receive up to 30 percent of the cost of the home or condominium as down payment assistance on new homes worth $180,000 or less. The new owners must have a household income at or below the average median household income and they must be able to support a mortgage on the new residence.

Dardis said the program’s down payment assistance will open up some of the homes to those who lost residences in the flood, and as a result, will allow some flood victims to regain “a sense of neighborhood.” It’s hard to measure the extra value of that, Dardis said.

Thursday’s news conference on Moose Drive NW in the Wilderness Estates Edition took place almost directly in front of the basement of Rick Davis’ new house.

Davis, an active member of the Northwest Neighbors, lost his house in the Time Check Neighborhood, and he said he Thursday he would not be preparing to move into a new house on the edge of town except for the down payment assistance in the program that was being celebrated on Thursday.

A lover of the Time Check Neighborhood, Davis said he did not want to live there now because he didn’t trust the river.

“I’m out in the country now,” he joked. “I’ve got corn instead of the river.”

Ben Busch spoke at the news conference and said the program was allowing him, wife Jenna and their two young children to move out of apartments and into not just their first house, but a new house.

City Manager Jim Prosser noted that 20 local builders are involved in building the 177 new residences that are part of the down payment assistance program. He called the funding program a “signature” one and he said it has been well-designed to provide needed housing in an efficient way.

Prosser pointed to a January 2009 survey of the city’s flood-recovery housing needs, and he said the 177 new residences plus another 20 new homes being build in the Oakhill Jackson Neighborhood have put the city well on the way to meeting a goal of seeing 300 or so owner-occupied residences built as part of the city’s flood recovery.

Local home builders already have been inquiring about the prospects of a second round of funding for the program, and the state’s Tramontina did not rule out such a prospect. He said it would depend on money and actual housing demand in Cedar Rapids.

Kyle Skogman, president of Skogman Homes, left Tramontina with an idea. Skogman said the state of Iowa should consider similar housing incentives in the years ahead as the city buys out and demolishes flood-damaged houses and has lots, in some instances, on which new homes can be built.

‘Vendo’ world is not Monica Vernon’s idea of an afternoon at the pool; she wants Ellis pool fix to include a concession stand

The City Council pushed ahead Wednesday evening with plans to fix the flood-damaged Ellis Park swimming pool at an estimated cost of $367,000.

Bids on the work will be opened on July 16 with work to proceed after that.

Council member Monica Vernon, though, is still unhappy with one change that is coming for the renovated pool. It’s the change that will replace a concession stand operated by summer employees with “a collection of vending machines for more efficient operations,” according to a city staff report.

At Wednesday evening’s council meeting, Vernon pointed to the council’s vision statement that calls for the city to build “a vibrant urban hometown.” Vending machines at the swimming pool does not fit that bill, Vernon said.

“I’m sure the vendo companies will be mad at me now,” she said.

Council member Justin Shields agreed. Shields said he’d prefer a city employee operating a concession stand to young children fumbling around with change trying to get a vending machine to work.

Vernon and Shields were the only ones to vote against the Ellis renovation as now configured, but Vernon said she’s going to take another run at her council colleagues to keep a concession stand at the pool.

Say it ain’t so: City sees bond rating drop from top Aaa; but these are revenue bonds, not GO bonds

For more than 30 years, the city of Cedar Rapids has secured the top Aaa bond rating as it has sold bonds to raise money to pay for capital improvement projects.

On Wednesday, though, the city reported that Moody’s Investors Service has given the city of Cedar Rapids a lower bond rating — a rating of Aa3 — as the city prepares to sell $7.9 million in sewer revenue bonds and $8.6 million in water revenue bonds.

At last night’s City Council meeting, though, City Manager Jim Prosser emphasized that revenue bonds are different from general obligation bonds, and he was quick to note that the city retains its Aaa bond rating on the latter.

General obligation bonds, which the city uses for most of its capital improvement projects, have behind them the full assets and taxing authority of the city.

On the other hand, revenue bonds, which the city has typically not used, are backed only by the revenue from user fees raised by a particular entity, the city’s Water Department, for instance. Thus, revenue bonds can present a larger risk to investors.

Jon Burmeister, managing director for PFM Group of Des Moines, told the City Council last night that only 11 cities in the nation had better bond ratings on revenue bonds than Cedar Rapids’ new rating of Aa3.

A lower bond rating typically means that a jurisdiction pays higher interest rates and interest cost on the debt it is assuming as it sells bonds.

Nonetheless, Burmeister called Aa3 rating “still an elite category” of bond ratings. The Aa3 rating is three steps below Aaa in Moody’s 20-step rating system which goes from Aaa to Ca.

Moody’s said the Aa3 for the city’s revenue bonds “reflects the essential nature of the services provided, the utilities’ sizable and stable service area which serves as an economic center in Eastern Iowa, satisfactory legal protections, healthy net working capital, and projected adequate coverage rates, balanced against a likely increasing debt ratio and notable customer concentration.”

Ninety-unit Cedar Pond Townhomes development gets $15.3 million in federal tax credits; construction should start by Oct. 15

If all goes as planned, a Minnesota developer will begin construction in mid-October on the 90-unit Cedar Pond Townhomes development on 11.2 acres south of Williams Boulevard and north of Wilson Avenue SW.

The developer, EverGreen Real Estate Development, Prior Lake, Minn., on Wednesday was awarded $15.3 million in federal affordable-housing tax credits by the Iowa Finance Authority to help fund the project.

Greg McClenahan, president of EverGreen, said the firm’s plan was to start construction by Oct. 15 and be complete in a year.

The city’s Replacement Housing Task Force and the City Council, on a 6-2 vote in late March, backed the project over some objections from neighbors.

“It’s been a long process,” McClenahan said Wednesday afternoon. “I feel gratified that the city has been a big supporter of the project.”

Cedar Pond will feature 48 two-bedroom units and 42 three-bedroom ones with one of the units for an on-site manager.

The units are targeted to households who earn 60 percent or less of the area’s median family incomes.

McClenahan has other rental complexes in Iowa. A University of Iowa graduate, he was at the University of Iowa this week going through freshman orientation with his son.

Renovation of the empty, flood-damaged Roosevelt looks like it really will get going now

Minneapolis developer Sherman Associates Inc. is going to start its renovation of The Roosevelt, the former downtown hotel and now an empty, flood-damaged apartment complex, yet.

The start of the renovation has been pending for a few months now as Sherman Associates has worked out the details of its federal tax-credit financing that requires some local City Hall help.

On Wednesday evening, the City Council will alter its previously approved incentive to the project by increasing a temporary loan of $300,000 to $650,000, and by adding $26,000 to a long-term loan, bringing it to $1.632 million. The long-term loan will be paid back over 30 years at 1-percent annual interest.

Meanwhile, on Tuesday, Jackie Nickolaus, a Sherman Associates vice president with an office in Urbandale, Iowa, said the firm is hoping to close on the project’s financing as close to July 15 as possible. Work on the renovation of The Roosevelt will begin the day after the financing closes, she said.

The $10.3-million renovation will convert the 12-story building’s second floor to apartments and do away with the building’s small, efficiency apartments. In the end, there will be 96 units, 90 of which will have rents considerable “affordable” and targeted to those who make less than the median household income. The building’s first floor will remain commercial space.

City Hall moving ahead with idea to buy Pepsi’s two and half blocks just off downtown for a new Intermodal Transit Facility

City Hall is moving ahead with a plan to buy two-and-a-half blocks of property just off the downtown owned by Pepsi Americas Inc., according to a City Hall report to city employees.

The city plans to put its new bus depot, called the Intermodal Transit Facility, on part of the site.

Pepsi operates a warehouse and maintenance operation on the property and has its office there at 400 Sixth Ave. SE.

In early March, the City Council selected the Pepsi Americas Inc. property as the preferred site with the new transit facility.

City staff and Pepsi have been talking since, and Pepsi now is meeting with local contractors to determine the cost to relocate to a new facility. The city is expected an update from Pepsi this month.

The city’s plan is to buy the entire two-and-half blocks and then to sell what it doesn’t need for the Intermodal Transit Facility.

In part, the city picked the Pepsi site with the idea that the Pepsi operation is something of an industrial operation not necessarily suited for a spot close to the downtown.

The city has been trying for years to build the transit facility, and has had $9 million in federal funds in place for the project since 2002.

Initially, the new depot was slated to go up across First Avenue East from the U.S. Cellular Center. Next, the city moved the site to Second Street SE. The current council said the Second Street SE site didn’t make sense because it was so close to the Ground Transportation Center bus depot. The council then decided to close the GTC depot and move its function into the new Intermodal facility at Sixth Street SE and Ninth Avenue SE. That site flooded, though, and the Federal Transit Administration said the city can’t build there. That led the council to the Pepsi site.

In the meantime, the council also has to decide what to do with the GTC depot site, which also flooded in June 2008.

For now, the bus terminal is operating out of temporary buildings in the city’s Park and Ride lot along Second Street SE.

Get ready for more poster boards: City Hall set to launch a public-input process on energy in the midst of one on key, flood-damaged buildings

Put July 23 on your calendar.

City Hall is starting another public participation process — no doubt, with the room filled with poster boards, city staff and a sprinkling of consultants.

The latest push is gain public input on a City Hall energy policy.

This comes even as City Hall is already in the midst of a second public participation process related to the city’s key, flood-damaged buildings, which include the Veterans Memorial Building/City Hall, the downtown library, the bus depot and the old federal courthouse. The next open house related to facilities is Aug. 18.
On the energy front, the city wants the public’s help on three tasks: to devise a city energy management plan; to implement a plan to turn biomass waste like sewage sludge and municipal garbage into energy; and to adopt an approach to incorporate LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) standards into the city’s building practices.

In a presentation to the City Council last week, Pat Ball, the city’s utilities director, says the city has funding from a $1.3-million federal Energy Efficiency and Conservation Block Grant plus $250,000 from the Iowa Power Fund, the latter which requires a $250,000 city match.

The city already has embarked on a waste-to-energy study, which could provide steam to parts of the downtown and/or elsewhere in the city.

Ball said the time is perfect for such study.

The city not only needs to replace its incinerator at the city’s Water Pollution Control facility, but the federal government appears ready to implement a “cap-and-trade” system that will make alternative energy all the more attractive, Ball told the council.

Ball said, too, that Cedar Rapids and Iowa are right in the middle of the area in the country where there is plenty of biomass from agricultural production and other sources to help fuel waste-to-energy projects.

City documents note the city is getting help from three professional engineering firms: HDR, with headquarters in Omaha, Neb., and an office in Hiawatha; Foth, with headquarters in Green Bay, Wis., and an office in Cedar Rapids; and Sebesta Blomberg & Associates, with headquarters in Roseville, Minn., and an office in Cedar Rapids.

New era begins in Cedar Rapids transit: Forget ‘remanufactured;’ city buys four new buses; and, of course, they come with bike racks

The city has added four brand-new buses to its bus fleet, a move that marks the city’s first purchase of new, heavy-duty, non-experimental buses in more than 20 years, reports Brad DeBrower, the city’s transit manager.

The four new buses replace ones built in 1978.

DeBrower’s predecessor was an advocate of “remanufactured” buses, which are used buses that are overhauled before being returned to the streets.

The city did launch a trial in 1996 with nine new experimental electric buses, but the venture never worked. The city unloaded the buses a year ago for salvage.

The four newly arriving buses each cost $322,000, 83 percent of the cost of which is being paid by the Federal Transit Administration.

The new buses will sport bicycle racks as do 85 percent of the city’s bus fleet.

City Hall puts cost of “A Season of Progress” report and mailing at $31,444; mayoral challenger Corbett sees report as incumbents using tax dollars to respond to criticism

Mayoral candidate Ron Corbett says it figures.

It’s just four months from the November city election, and the City Council — six of the nine members’ seats are on the ballot — is out with a spiffy, six-page mailing called “A Season of Progress.”
City Hall puts the cost of the “one-year progress report” on the city’s flood recovery at $31,444. The sum is what it costs to write the report, design it, print it and mail it to 63,000 households, the city reports.

“Any challenger like myself, no matter what the office is, always has to go up against the power of incumbency,” says Corbett, vice president at trucking firm CRST Inc. and a former state legislator.

“When you can use taxpayer dollars to respond to challenges from someone like me and others, it certainly is that built-in advantage of being the incumbent,” Corbett continues. “… It’s a disadvantage that I have.”

Mayor Kay Halloran says Corbett is entitled to his opinion, but she says the mailing to Cedar Rapidians was an appropriate report at the one-year mark of the city’s flood recovery.

“We had certain commemorative activities to mark the one year, and the idea was to show people that we have made a significant amount of progress, and while they are clearly impatient as I am also, we aren’t standing in place,” the mayor says. “We’re marching straight ahead. Not as fast as they would want us to. Not as fast as I would want us to. But as fast the circumstance permits and FEMA money allows.”

Kathy Potts, who is challenging incumbent council member Jerry McGrane for the council’s District 3 seat, says her very first question when she saw the City Hall mailing was this: How much did it cost?

“The wasteful spending that this city continues to do is frustrating,” Potts says.

Beyond that, she says she also thinks, “There they go again, trying to convince us they are doing a wonderful job.”

Corbett says all he can do is pick apart what the six-page progress report trumpets. He singles out two items:

He notes that the report praises all the flood-damaged businesses that have reopened. But he notes that the City Council has decided to add a year to its lease on temporary quarters in a northeast Cedar Rapids office park rather than returning to the downtown. And he notes, too, that the City Hall report celebrates the demolition of 70 flood-damaged properties. With more than 1,200 more demolitions to go, Corbett says 70 homes in a year isn’t much of a victory.

The city’s new fiscal year began July 1, and the City Council’s new budget eliminates the cost of printing and mailing City Hall’s monthly four-page newsletter. Each issue has cost about $18,000 to produce and mail, the city reports.

The city will continue to produce an e-mail version of the monthly newsletter.

Corbett is the only candidate in the mayoral race at this point.

Two possible candidates, council member Monica Vernon and Linda Langston, Linn supervisor, have said they will not seek the mayor’s slot.

Council member Brian Fagan, a local attorney, is expected to run against Corbett while Mayor Halloran is not expected to seek reelection.

Proposed, 81-home Sugar Creek development next to Ellis Golf Course has City Council asking: Will requested incentives really provide affordable housing?

A proposed 81-home development called Sugar Creek across Zika Avenue NW from the Ellis Golf Course was set aside for now by a City Council concerned last night that it was being asked to give big incentives for what really is market-rate housing.

The council has been willing to provide city incentives on projects that address the city’s need for affordable housing, a need exacerbated by all the affordable housing lost in the June 2008 flood.

However, most on the council last night were unclear how the plans of developer Darryl High, president of High Corp. of Cedar Rapids, met the affordability criteria. Only 20 of the 81 homes, which will be “rent-to-own” ones, clearly met the standard, some council members said.

High is seeking $2.5 million in incentives or $31,000 a home. Part of the money will go to him to help install streets and other infrastructure and part of the money goes to the builder to buy down the buyer’s cost of the home.

The council also noted that the city hasn’t identified a funding mechanism to pay for the incentives that High is seeking.

The state of Iowa only recently agreed to fund down-payment assistance for 177 new homes in Cedar Rapids in an amount equal to 30 percent of the cost of the home or up to $60,000.

The city is applying for a second round of that state disaster funding, and High might be able to qualify if it comes through, Marty Hoeger, the city’s real estate development coordinator, reported to the council last night.

Council member Chuck Wieneke said most of the High Corp. proposal seemed to him as if the city was being asked to subsidize a typical, market-rate housing development. He said it would be a terrible precedent to set and might open the City Council up to paying for infrastructure and other help for every new housing development that comes along.

Wieneke informed his council colleagues that the City Planning Commission turned down the Sugar Creek’s site development plan last week on a 4-3 vote because of concerns about water runoff and the density of the proposed development.

City Council moves 2 ways on downtown energy; it readies to hand out money to convert from downtown steam system as it spends half-a-millon on new downtown energy study

City Hall seems to be moving in two directions at the same time on downtown energy.

On the one hand, city officials are helping oversee a program to help businesses convert from the downtown steam system. And on the other hand, the City Council has agreed to spend $487,113 to conduct a study called the “Downtown District Energy Feasibility Study.”

At its meeting Wednesday evening, the City Council is expected to hire Transitions Made Better Inc. of Cedar Rapids to administer the city’s financial-assistance program for those who had used the downtown steam system. The system had depended on Alliant Energy’s Sixth Street Generating Station, which was damaged by the June 2008 flood and won’t be rebuilt.

The city program will divvy up $21 million, $16 million from the Iowa Department of Economic Development and $5 million from the state’s I-JOBS economic stimulus program.

In late May, the City Council voted to use $8 million to help five large users of the steam system – including the Quaker Co. and Cargill plants near downtown – convert to another system; $8 million for a group of some 200 smaller users to help them convert; and $5 million to help offset higher steam costs for all the users.

Two other of the system’s large users, Coe College and St. Luke’s Hospital, have obtained a $6.5 million grant from the U.S. Department of Commerce to help them convert to their own steam system, and another large user, Mercy Medical Center, also has applied for such a grant.

Transitions Made Better Inc. has told the city it will begin to process steam claims on Thursday if the firm wins the city contract on Wednesday evening.

According to a City Hall memo to the City Council, Transitions Made Better Inc. was the only firm to bid on the city’s contract to administer the steam claims. Transitions Made Better Inc. also is administering a city contract to dispense state funds for flooded landlords.

A week ago, the council awarded a contract to Sebesta Blomberg & Associates Inc., Roseville, Minn., for a downtown energy feasibility study.

The study will look at creating a “new downtown district energy system” that may use renewable fuels or fossil fuels.

The council has talked about the prospects of burning sewage sludge and municipal garbage to produce energy.

Funding for the study is coming from the state of Iowa, according to city documents.

City Hall confident on buyout money; but when it arrives, the legal hurdles will take a few to many months to jump, city reminds people

News elsewhere in Iowa of small-sized buyouts of flood-damaged homes does not mean that the first round of buyouts in Cedar Rapids using funds from the Federal Emergency Management Agency is not on track, Jennifer Pratt, the city’s development coordinator says.

Pratt on Wednesday said the city still expects to hear in August from FEMA on funds to buy out 167 properties closest to the Cedar River to make way for a riverside “greenway.”

The city intends to buy out ten times as many properties as the 167 in the greenway — 554 in a construction area needed to build a flood-protection system; and about 600 considered “beyond reasonable repair” that sit outside the greenway and construction area. The city will use federal Community Development Block Grant funds and revenue from the city’s local-option sales tax for those purchases. And every expectation is that there will be sufficient money to do the job, the city has said and Pratt repeated on Wednesday.

“It’s been so nerve-wracking getting to this point,” she said. “We just hope everything works out smoothly.”

Having said that, Pratt made clear a central point that she said those awaiting buyouts have been told and need to remember: No buyout check is going to show up in the mail quickly in any event.

Pratt said every buyout amounts to a “legal land transaction,” which can be slowed down by title problems and other legal issues.

In the best circumstances, she said it will take 60 to 90 days to get any property’s legal documentation in place before the buyout actually takes place once money arrives.

In worst cases, the entire process could take nine months, she said.

Included in the paperwork transaction is the need for each purchase to appear in front of the City Council on two separate occasions, Pratt said.

City Council set to up its Statehouse lobbyist spending from $15,000 a year to $60,000 a year

It’s not every year a City Council brings in some key local Statehouse lawmakers to a City Council meeting to applaud what they have done for City Hall and the city.

The current City Council, though, did just that.

By the council’s count, it had a good run this year at the Iowa Legislature.

The city got special consideration to hold an expedited local-option sales tax referendum for flood-recovery, a vote that succeeded and will bring in $90 million or more into city coffers over five years.

The legislature also gave cities the ability to institute a franchise fee of up to 5 percent of gas and electric bills; gave cities recovering from natural disasters the ability to sell bonds for public buildings without asking voters first; steered $20 million in I-JOBS earmarks to flood-damaged city facilities; and on and on.

Whether in response to what the council considers legislative victories or not, the council on Wednesday evening is prepared to up its spending on lobbying in and around the Statehouse from the just-ending fiscal year’s $15,000 a year to $60,000 a year in the new fiscal year beginning today.

In recent years, the city has contracted with former state Democratic legislator Larry Murphy of L & L Murphy Consulting, Oelwein, to do the city’s lobbying in Des Moines.

In the new fiscal year, the council proposes to keep Murphy and also hire Gary Grant of Grant Consulting LLC of Cedar Rapids. Grant was district director for Republican Congressman Jim Leach from 1993 through 2007.

The total contract for the two firms is for $70,000, which includes an extra $10,000 for lobbying in Washington, D.C., if necessary, Casey Drew, the city’s finance director, noted on Tuesday.

Drew said the expanded contract will provide the city with more help in developing a Statehouse legislative strategy and will provide additional lobbying and increased communication with state elected officials and state agencies.

City Council poised to award city towing contract to lower-scoring firm after top scorer Darrah’s drops out in response to last-minute change in contract terms

City Hall is ready to turn over the city’s towing contract to the lower-scoring of two bidders after a last-minute change in the bid terms prompted the top-scoring firm to drop out.

Carmela Darrah-Chiafos, owner of the top-scoring bidder Darrah’s Towing and Recovery, on Tuesday said City Hall was ready to award a new two-year contract to her firm a week ago. Darrah’s has held the contract for many years.

But at the last minute, she said the city decided to make the length of the contract just six months, instead of the two-year period stated in the city’s bid documents. The contract long has been a two-year one.

“I was stunned,” Darrah-Chiafos said on Tuesday upon learning the city suddenly was changing the terms of the city towing contract.

She was informed of the contract change two hours before last Wednesday’s council meeting when the City Clerk’s office called to say that Police Chief Greg Graham made the change in the length of the towing contract because that’s the way Graham had done it when he worked for the Ocala, Fla., Police Department.

Darrah-Chiafos said it didn’t make sense for her business to invest in equipment to continue to service the city contract if the contract was only guaranteed for six months. Her bid was based on a two-year contract, not a six-month one, and so she withdrew it, she said.

In city documents provided to the City Council and the public, city staff members acknowledge that Darrah’s scored “higher” than a second company, Pro Tow LLC, and that Darrah’s withdrew because of the change in the length of the contract.

The initial bid documents posted on the city’s Web site state that the contract was for two years, not six months.

A three-member City Hall committee — Sandi Fowler, assistant to the city manager; Cory McGarvey, a police sergeant, and Dennis Hogan, the city’s fleet services manager — scored proposals from Darrah’s and Pro Tow on five criteria. Darrah’s received 91.66 points, Pro Tow, 77.49 points.

Darrah’s won on four of five criteria.

The average age of Darrah’s equipment is 6.9 years, Pro Tow’s, 12.9 years, according to the committee.

During site visits by committee members, Pro Tow’s surveillance cameras weren’t working “due to a lightning strike.” Pro Tow did not have two-way radios installed “at this time.”

Conversely, Darrah’s had in good working order a radio and computer-aided dispatch system integrated with surveillance cameras.

The Iowa Secretary of State’s office lists Marilyn Philipp as company representative of Pro Tow at 941 66th Ave. SW.

The City Council is slated to vote on the six-month towing contract at its Wednesday evening meeting. The current contract expired Tuesday night.

Some federal and state money flows, and the number and size of projects salivating in line grows

Let the federal government show up with $182 million for a new federal courthouse here, and most recently, with $517 million for the state of Iowa in the latest round of flood-recovery funds, and you can get to thinking that the government trough is long and deep, the spigot always flowing.

Just today, for instance, the state’s new I-JOBS Board formally approved $45 million in economic-stimulus help to local projects: $5 million each for the Paramount Theatre, Public Works Building, library and downtown steam customers; $10 million for a new human services building; $10-million for the National Czech & Slovak Museum & Library; and $5 million for a new building for Options of Linn County.

There’s another $118.5 million in I-JOBS funds to compete for now, and more than 75 local projects are lining up for a piece of that action. But the list is so long, some of the projects so costly, it’s far from clear where all the money will ever come from. But it isn’t preventing local elected officials from dreaming.

Look at some of these huge projects on the plate:

It will cost an estimated $65-million to upgrade the U.S. Cellular Center and build a new convention center next door.

There are plans for a new $35-million Southside Crossing bridge over the Cedar River connecting C Street SW with Otis Road SE. The project also would elevate C Street SW over the Union Pacific Railroad tracks.

There’s also a $70-million Multigenerational Community Life Center, which would be part senior center, community center and recreation center. And a $20-million downtown parking ramp.

Then there is a new downtown public library, which could cost as much as $45 million or twice the amount the library board estimates it may see in flood-recovery money from the Federal Emergency Management Agency.

The city is talking about building a $35-million Public Safety Training Center and, perhaps, a new City Hall-like Community Services Center, the price tag of which is unknown.

The city also is talking about a need for $1.7 million to purchase property to create a Courthouse Square in front of the new federal courthouse, foundation work of which is about to begin.

There is much more.

Talk to advocates for most of the projects, and they point to possible funding from the federal and state government.

To date, no City Council member has talked about how much local money they’d be willing to commit to do any of it.

One local funding source that often has been mentioned in years past for such construction projects is the local-option sales tax.

The city, though, has put the local tax in place for the next five years for housing issues related to flood recovery.

Earlier this year, the city successfully lobbied the Iowa Legislature to get permission to sell bonds without asking voters first if the money is used in disaster-relief projects. Voters have the ability to amass signatures on a petition equal to 20 percent of those who voted in the city in the last presidential election to force a citizen vote.

Burglars hit mayoral candidate Ron Corbett’s home; calls it unnerving; campaign secrets still safe, he says

Burglars busted into mayoral candidate Ron Corbett’s home during the daytime Wednesday, ransacked the place and made off with jewelry, money, a computer, electronics, a couple bottles of wine and a bottle of champagne.

Corbett, who was in Pennsylvania at the time with four of his five children visiting his 90-year-old grandmother, was still trying Thursday to determine with his wife, Benedicte, all that was stolen.

The 48-year-old former state lawmaker said he didn’t know if the burglary was an isolated incident or if it’s a part of an uptick in crime that’s confronting the city. He said he will ask Police Chief Greg Graham about that.

Never a burglary victim before, Corbett noted that Cedar Rapids historically has been a safe, family-friendly community with a good education system and work ethic.

“That’s really been the bedrock of our community,” he said.

It appears, he said, the burglars spent some time inside his house at 321 30th St. SE because they opened every closet and drawer. He said the burglars used his children’s backpacks to carry stolen items from the house. One backpack, partially filled, was left behind, an indication that the burglars got scared away, he said.

The burglars also threw a stack of some 50 red-colored and blue-colored “Ron Corbett for Mayor” T-shirts around one room, so they know now that they burglarized the home of a possible future mayor. Corbett said the T-shirts are intended for campaign backers to wear in Saturday’s Freedom Festival parade.

“They didn’t take any campaign secrets,” said Corbett in a stab of comic relief regarding what he said was an event that had shaken up his wife and made him and his children uneasy.

“My wife comes home and the house is all torn apart. Certainly a part of her feels violated, coming into your home, seeing things in a shambles. It really is kind of unnerving,” he said.

Corbett said he supports Police Chief Graham’s call for opening a police substation on the city’s east side and Corbett said he likes the idea of opening one on the city’s west side, too.

“Whatever we can do to get police in the neighborhoods will help,” he said.

At the same time, Corbett said he has not liked the delay in getting the proposed police substation open at 1501 First Ave. SE. He noted that the city is now hurrying to open a temporary spot in a commercial building a block away after council member Monica Vernon complained about the delay.

“You squawk a little and the city can make some things move,” he said

For now, Corbett said he needs to take care of family matters.

“I’m a victim like anybody else,” he said. “It doesn’t make me a special victim just because I’m running for office.”

Flood victims in newly purchased homes may not lose their down-payment assistance after all; city looks at using local-option sales tax revenue to help

City Hall is investigating the possibility of providing targeted help to flood victims who received state Jumpstart down-payment assistance on a new home and now have learned that the amount of assistance will be subtracted from any buyout payment on their old home.

The local Jumpstart office two weeks ago said 383 homeowners had received Jumpstart down-payment help to date at a cost of $8.8 million or about $23,000 per home.

Initially, it was unclear if that money would be considered a “duplication of benefits” subject to deduction from a homeowner’s buyout settlement. However, the down-payment assistance is now considered a duplication of benefits.

City Manager Jim Prosser brought up the issue at Wednesday evening’s council meeting as he and the City Council talked about how much money the city will need to buy out some 1,300 flood-damaged homes and other properties.

There seems a growing likelihood that the city will have enough money to do the job.

The Federal Emergency Management Agency will pay to buy out a first group of about 170 flood-damaged properties that sit in a proposed greenway area along the river.

Additionally, the state of Iowa has proposed setting aside $245 million of a latest round of $517 million in federal Community Development Block Grant funds for buyouts statewide. And the city has made a request for $175 million of that amount to pay help for buyouts of another 1,150 or so homes and other properties.

The city also is now collecting a 1-percent local-option sales tax, which could raise $80 million or more over five years for use in buyouts and other housing issues related to flood recovery.

It is from this last batch of money, the local-option sales tax revenue, that Prosser said the city is looking to draw to provide some relief to those who stand to essentially lose their Jumpstart down-payment assistance on a newly purchased home once the city buys out flood-damaged homes.

Prosser said such a use of sales-tax revenue was needed for those who bought a home not unlike the one they lost in the flood only to find that they do not have sufficient income to support mortgage payments on the newly purchased home.

The city has expected FEMA and CDBG money to carry much of the load on buyouts, but Prosser said the city always knew there would be funding “gaps” for which local-option sales tax revenue could be used.

Those who stand to lose their down-payment assistance may be one of those gaps, he said.

On Thursday, Prosser said his staff is still looking into how many properties might be involved and how much the city might be able to steer to help those who had gotten down-payment assistance.

Design work begins on new dog park next to Gardner Golf Course at highways 100 and 13

Julie Sina, the city’s parks and recreation director, reported this week that design work is beginning on the city’s new dog park that is coming to 11 city-owned acres near the Gardner Golf Course at Highway 100 and Highway 13.

Sina said the proposed cost of the new dog park is $125,000, an amount which the City Council included in its budget for the fiscal year beginning July 1.

The city’s existing dog park, in Cheyenne Park out Old River Road SW on the far edge of the city, was damaged as was the city’s nearby animal shelter in the June 2008 flood. Sina said the city has decided not to return a permanent dog park to the site. The city isn’t returning to the animal shelter either.

The proposal for the new dog park did bring an objection from council member Tom Podzimek back in January. Podzimek said the Gardner Golf Course area was too far removed from most of Cedar Rapids. He said it seemed Cedar Rapids taxpayers were creating a dog park that would be more convenient for residents of Marion and Linn County.

Sina this week said Cedar Rapids dog lovers like the new site, and she said dog owners don’t mind driving a little to get to a dog park. Dog owners pay to use the park, she noted.

The plan now is to have the park open by Spring 2010.

A detail spotted in a City Hall handout prompts library board president to launch a press release: Yes, she says, a new library will cost $45 million

The City Council and the Linn County Board of Supervisors are working to prioritize a long list of 80-plus local projects, each of which would like a piece of $118.5 million still remaining in the state’s I-JOBS economic-stimulus pot.

Among the project details that have come to light as part of the I-JOBS competition is the fact that the Cedar Rapids Library Board of Directors has plans to build a new $45-million library to replace the flood-damaged one on First Street SE.

Susan Corrigan, library board president, defended the price tag on Tuesday evening when asked about it by a reporter at the city’s open house to discuss flood-damaged city buildings.

On Wednesday afternoon, Corrigan issued a press release to say the replacement cost for a new library will be $45 million, an amount that will cover a new building, materials, furnishing and parking.

Corrigan said the city expects to receive $22 million of that amount from the Federal Emergency Management Agency to replace the flood-damaged library. She noted that the state I-JOBS fund already has given the library $5 million, and she said the library will be seeking an additional $10 million from the I-JOBS program. Additional funds may come from the Vision Iowa program and from a private capital campaign, she said.

“FEMA will pay to build a new facility, but we owe it to the community to make our new library a smart, long-term investment,” Corrigan said.

The library board does not want to rebuild a new library on the site of the flood-damaged one. It’s preference is to get to higher downtown ground.

The library board envisions a 105,000 sq. ft. library to replace what had been an 85,000 sq. ft. one.

Neighbors prevail again on another developer’s attempt to build replacement housing around Ellis Park and Golf Course

City Hall and the state of Iowa have been more than willing to throw financial incentives at proposals to build housing to replace some of what was lost in the June 2008 flood.

One problem, though, is that most of the ideas are for property around Ellis Park and the Ellis Golf Course, and for now, neighbors living there have succeeded in scuttling the proposed housing ideas.

It happened again Tuesday, when the City Planning Commission, on a 4-3 vote, rejected a development proposal by High Co. to build 81 homes on Zika Avenue NW across Zika Avenue NW from the Ellis Golf Course.

Vern Zakostelecky, the city’s land development coordinator, on Wednesday said the commission majority, in rejecting the High Co. proposal, had concerns about water runoff from the development site and about the proposed number of homes on it.

Back in 2007, a different development proposal for the site won City Council approval on an 8-1 vote.
However, that development, called Somnolent Grove, proposed building 67 cottage-style homes on what had been a 25-acre farm. High Co.’s Sugar Creek proposal calls for 81 homes.

The City Planning Commission decision on Tuesday is just a recommendation not a final verdict. The City Council has the final say on the proposal should Darryl High, president/CEO of High Co., push on to the council despite the Planning Commission decision.

At the council level, High also will need to win council support for financial incentives he says are needed to build the development.

High’s Sugar Creek proposal earlier won backing from the city’s Replacement Housing Task Force, which reviews proposals in need of government financial incentives and which are designed to replace housing lost in the June 2008 flood.

The task force approved two earlier proposals near Ellis Park and the Ellis Golf Course, but neither has come to pass. Both were opposed by neighbors. One developer has given up on his idea for a project on the city’s former golf course chipping area and a second developer has put his project on hold nearby on O Avenue NW.

Yet another proposal – a 60-unit apartment complex called Ellis Preserve – surfaced a week ago. The city’s housing task force told the developer to go talk to neighbors before the task force invests more time in the proposal.

Renovation getting closer for smaller flood-damaged venues; Ellis pool, trails, police locker room, Jones golf clubhouse and Third Avenue parkade

Having just passed the one-year mark of the June 2008 flood, the city is getting closer to beginning work to renovate a few of its smaller flood-damaged facilities.

This week, the City Council will hold a public hearing to discuss renovation plans for the flood-damaged Jones Golf Course/Clubhouse. The estimated cost of the work is $292,000.

Also, the council will hold a public hearing on a $330,000 repair of flood damage to the Cedar River Trail, the Sac and Fox Trail, the Ellis Trail and the A Street levee.

In addition, the council will hold a similar public hearing on July 8 to discuss repair plans for the flood-damaged Ellis Park pool, the cost of which is estimated at $367,000.

A second public hearing on July 8 will address $400,000 in repairs to the flood-damaged locker room area of the Police Department.

Also on that date is a public hearing on repairs for the flood-damaged Third Avenue SE Parkade. Renovation is expected to cost $731,000.

Meanwhile, City Hall on Tuesday is holding the first of three open houses to obtain public input as it decides what to do with the city’s major flood-damaged buildings, including the Veterans Memorial Building/City Hall, the library, the bus depot and Paramount Theatre. Other open houses will follow on Aug. 18 and Oct. 6.

Get set for proof of some federal spending: foundation work on new federal courthouse is about to start

The dignitaries cut the ribbon at the construction site of the new federal courthouse here in late April, and work there stopped shortly thereafter.

But Jim Snedegar, project manager for the U.S. General Services Administration, said in a return e-mail — at 10:05 p.m. Monday — that the start of foundation work on the $140-plus-million-dollar building is “imminent.”

Snedegar said a pause in work at the site is the result of a faster-than-expected finish of site preparation and the need to spend time finalizing construction bids.

“It is a monumental task to facilitate construction of a new courthouse,” he said.

The courthouse project flashed to the fore on Monday when Congressman Dave Loebsack’s office issued a press release saying that the GSA had awarded the Cedar Rapids courthouse project $15 million.

In fact, Congress appropriated money for the project in 2008. Apparently, Congressman and senators are notified of a next round of work on a project and so can issue press releases along the way.

Snedegar said the project is moving forward as planned and has not been waiting on any new announcements from Washington, D.C.

The courthouse is being built between the Cedar River and Second Street SE and Seventh and Eighth avenues SE. It will face toward downtown.

Ryan Cos. US Inc., with a regional office in Cedar Rapids, is the project’s construction manager.

Fast change in City Council agenda can’t conceal the thought that University of Iowa business manager ranks as front-runner for City Hall flood-recovery post

George Hollins, the University of Iowa’s business manager who has worked on the university’s flood fighting and recovery, appears to be the front-runner to fill a new city of Cedar Rapids post, flood-recovery director.

Late Monday afternoon, City Hall released the weekly City Council agenda with agenda item #39 stating, “Resolution approving the appointment of George Hollins as flood recovery director.”

A short time later, City Hall released an amended agenda showing item #39 crossed out.

Conni Huber, the city’s human resources director, said late Monday afternoon that all four finalist candidates remain candidates for the job.

Thirty-one people applied for the new post, and a nine-member selection committee picked six to interview.

Greg Eyerly, the city’s utilities operations manager, Tom Watson, Palo’s flood-recovery manager, Sara Jones, an emergency management planner in New Jersey, and Hollins are the four who remain in the competition.

This City Hall flood-recovery job is unique for Cedar Rapids because of how it will be financed — the private sector will pay some of the cost — and because it was created at the urging of Rockwell Collins, the city’s largest employer.

Hollins was earning $116,400 in salary at the University of Iowa in the 2008 fiscal year.

Davenport firm slated to fix Veterans Memorial Building’s flood-damaged Grant Wood stained-glass window

A Davenport firm has been selected from among five bidders to repair the flood-damaged, Grant Wood stained-glass window at the Veterans Memorial Building on May’s Island.

Winning bidder Glass Heritage LLC of Davenport has told the city that the firm will take between 12 and 15 days to remove the window’s 58 glass panels once they begin in July.

The firm will transport the panels to its studio, and it has told the city it will complete the repairs within 34 weeks.

The City Council is slated to approve a contract with the Glass Heritage LLC on Wednesday evening. The contract will pay the Davenport firm up to $147,000 for the work.

The city had private insurance in place on the window that will cover the repair costs, city officials have said.

The other four firms competing for the work came from Fairfax, Iowa, Evanston, Ill., Philadelphia and Raytown, Mo.

23-year-old middle-school teacher with a school-board election under his belt enters the race for City Council

Nick Duffy, who took a shot at securing a Cedar Rapids school board seat in 2006 as a 20 year old, says he is running for an at-large seat in this year’s City Council election.

Two at-large seats are being contested this year. Those two are currently held by Brian Fagan, a likely mayoral candidate, and Pat Shey.

Duffy, a lifelong Cedar Rapids resident, a 2004 Jefferson High School graduate and a Mount Mercy College graduate as well, teaches language arts at Regis Middle School.

His campaign has a logo, a Web site and news releases.

He cites flood recovery, job creation, public safety and fiscal responsibility as his top campaign issues.

“I will bring to this position a lifelong commitment to Cedar Rapids and a common sense approach to what is best for this community,” Duffy says in a news release. “We must spend taxpayer money wisely and work aggressively for a progressive and community-centered agenda.”

Duffy, of 122 12th St. NW, points to a delay in opening a police substation at 1501 First Ave. SE, calling it “another example of bureaucracy getting in the way of helping people.”

During his unsuccessful school board run in 2006, The Gazette editorial pages said of Duffy: “At just 20 years of age, Duffy is someone this town should hope to hang on to — if not as a school board member, then perhaps as a district teacher someday. The Mount Mercy education student has great passion for teaching and an idealistic approach that likely will be seasoned with the right amount of pragmatism in a few more years.”

In an interview Thursday, Duffy said of his young age that common sense and the ability to lead are the important qualifications for a candidate.

He lives in council District 5, where incumbent Justin Shields is up for reelection, but he has chosen to seek an at-large council seat rather than take on Shields. Duffy said both that he “great respect for the work” that Shields has done and that he likes the idea of seeking a council seat that represents the entire city.

Duffy is engaged to marry in November. He performed in and directed theater productions at Mount Mercy College, and this summer, he will be working with Theatre Cedar Rapids’ summer youth camp.

Duffy is the grandson of Linda Seger, 1629 Eighth St. NW, who has been among the most widely quoted Cedar Rapids flood victims in both the Cedar Rapids media and in media from elsewhere.

Vernon vents; dresses down City Manager Prosser for not getting police substation in storefront at 1501 First Ave. SE open quickly

Council member Monica Vernon, fresh off her decision on Tuesday not to try a run for mayor, took time at Wednesday evening’s council meeting to tear into City Manager Jim Prosser.

Vernon, who for many months has made it clear she thinks the current City Council has acceded too much power to Prosser, was angry that the Police Department had not yet gotten the city’s first police substation open in a vacant storefront at 1501 First Ave. SE.

Police Chief Greg Graham initially had said he wanted to be in the building in June in the wake of an attack on police officer Tim Davis just two blocks away.

It’s not worked out that way, and Vernon isn’t happy about it.

Wednesday evening, looking straight at Prosser, Vernon declared that the city has a crime problem, that crime is at its worst in the summer, and it was important to have gotten the substation open.

She called the matter “a can-do moment” and said Prosser has not had a “can-do attitude” about getting the project done.

Vernon then lit into City Attorney Jim Flitz, suggesting that he worries too much about preventing problems rather than solving them.

“I’m really disgusted about this,” Vernon said.

Council member Tom Podzimek calmly weighed in and suggested that the council take what steps it can to speed matters along. Then Podzimek defended Flitz: “I do think our attorney’s job is to keep us out of jail.”

Flitz said he didn’t have anything to do with the procedural steps required by state law to take bids on a renovation project.

The building needs about $50,000 in renovation work before it can be occupied. Last week, Chief Graham said it would likely be fall before the building is ready.

Prosser explained that he had taken a risk by proposing that the building’s owner do the renovations rather than the city so the job would not require public bidding and could be done faster. The cost of that was too great and couldn’t be done, he explained.

By looking at that approach, though, the project got delayed a bit, he said.

“We tried something and it didn’t work,” he said.

Even so, Prosser assured the council that the Police Department has taken additional steps to beef up their presence in the area even if the substation, which he called “symbolically” important and a good practical asset, is not yet in place.

Council member Jerry McGrane said neighborhood leaders are disappointed that the substation isn’t open yet. He called it “very unsettling.” He suggested Prosser talk to the neighborhoods.

Let the shooting continue: Police Department says the 2008 flood has helped it comply with State Ombudsman’s questions about shooting range

Neighbors next to the Police Department’s regional outdoor shooting range have been trying to get someone to do something to quell some of the range’s racket for years.

The Iowa Citizens’ Aide/Ombudsman spent the last couple years reviewing the matter before, in April, sending City Hall a letter suggesting that the shooting range, at 2727 Old River Rd., SW, violated state law.

In the letter, Bert Dalmer, assistant ombudsman, noted that the particular section of state law in question falls under a section of state law that prohibits hunting near buildings and feedlots.

Nonetheless, Dalmer said the law prohibits discharging a firearm within 200 yards of a building “inhabited” by people without the consent of the owner or tenant.

City Hall now has answered back. In short, the city says the shooting will continue.

In a letter to the state office signed by Police Chief Greg Graham, Graham says he “doesn’t necessarily agree” with the office’s analysis.

Graham hones in on the word “inhabited.”

He notes that the 2008 flood drove residents out of two of three homes within 200 yards of the firing range.

A third resident has rebuilt his house, and in this instance, Graham says the Police Department can close down a section of the range so the remainder of the range is not within the 200-yard distance of this residence’s house.

A fourth structure is a truck repair shop, not a residence, and Graham argues that the word “inhabited” only applies to residences.

Don Sedrel, a retired firefighter who has most persistently complained about long hours of racket and some stray bullets, lives farther than 200 yards from the shooting range.

In a return letter to the city, the state’s Dalmer said his office is reviewing the city’s response.

Of note, the city has proposed building a new Public Safety Training Center, perhaps at Kirkwood Community College, that would include a shooting range. In seeking funding for the center, the city has pointed to the state agency’s probe of the current shooting range as a reason to build the new center.

City Council lets it be known: It’s not hand-outs to everyone who asks

Ask and you shall receive, it seems, can often be what happens with the City Council when a business shows up seeking a little financial consideration for doing something.

The current City Council has put something of an elaborate apparatus in place to try to help it judge whether a request for tax breaks or other incentives makes sense.

At its last council meeting, a council majority decided to use the apparatus and to follow what it was saying.

The upshot: Cedar Valley Heating & Air Conditioning won’t get a property-tax break of an estimated $75,000 over 10 years – about 44 percent of the total bill – if it builds a new 11,640 sq. ft. metal building to house its business at 60th Avenue SW and Fourth Street SW. Cedar Valley also intended to rent space in the building to four other shops.

In return for the tax break, Cedar Valley told the City Council it expected to retain four jobs and create three new ones, all with an average wage of $15 an hour.

Seven of the nine council members said they didn’t need time to think about the deal: They rejected it out of hand.

That was so even though council member Monica Vernon made mention of the issue that often can be the only one that guides such decisions. Aren’t we inviting this business to go to another community if we don’t grant the tax break? Vernon asked.

Other council members pointed to the five-point scorecard that the council established in May 2008 as part of an Economic Development Investment Policy.

The five points: Does the request facilitate significant investment that shows a strong commitment to the community? Does if help retain and create “high-quality” jobs? Does it add diversity to the region’s economy? Does it provide a long-term community benefit? Does it comply with sustainable development principles?

City staff credited Cedar Valley with only one “yes.”

The City Council majority thought that the one positive score — that the proposal created well-paid construction jobs — was a stretch. Council member Chuck Wieneke didn’t think $15-an-hour ranked as good pay for a trade job.

Council member Tom Podzimek put it most bluntly: “We’re not in the business to provide tax incentives to build a metal pole building,” Podzimek said.

Monica passes on mayoral run; has her own business in a tough economy to run and City Council work to carry on, she says

Monica Vernon has pulled the plug on her thought to take on mayoral candidate Ron Corbett and any other comers in this year’s mayoral race.

District 2 council member Vernon, founder and president of Vernon Market Research, on Tuesday afternoon said running for mayor calls for a “huge commitment” at a time when she is heavily committed to her business in a down economy and to her City Council post a year into flood recovery.

“It’s true that a lot of people have asked me to consider running for mayor, and I’ve spent some time exploring that,” Vernon, 51, said. “However, I’ve concluded that I don’t have the time to run my business, provide a high level of service as a council member and run for office.”

Even so, Vernon sounded a little disheartened even as she was setting aside the thought of a mayoral run.

In truth, there has been something of a behind-the-scenes mayoral run going on for many weeks, with formidable prospects like Vernon — business owner, past chair of the Cedar Rapids Area Chamber of Commerce, past president of Junior League and past chairwoman of the City Planning Commission — trying to assess the political winds.

Linn County Supervisor Linda Langston, a Democrat, toyed with the idea of a mayoral run only to set the idea aside in recent days.

Gary Hinzman, one-time Cedar Rapids police chief and longtime head of the Sixth Judicial District Department of Correctional Services, also has been exploring a mayoral run in recent months, but it’s unclear if he will run for the post.

The one candidate expected to take on Corbett now is council member Brian Fagan, a local attorney.

In the course of sorting out if she would or would not run for what is officially a non-partisan job of mayor, Vernon changed her political affiliation from Republican to Democrat.

In the end, Vernon on Tuesday said she concluded she is more interested in governing than in the politics of running for office.

She said, too, that she remains committed to making sure the council “can flex its muscle” and can be as strong “as it needs to be.”

Announced mayoral candidate Ron Corbett — who was president/CEO of the Cedar Rapids Area Chamber of Commerce when Vernon was chairwoman of the Chamber’s board of directors — had only good things to say about Vernon on Tuesday.

“Monica has certainly been a leader on the City Council and that will continue,” said Corbett, vice president at trucking firm CRST Inc. “As a small business person her perspective has been extremely valuable. I hope I have a chance to work with her on the council next year.”

Vernon’s current council term runs through 2011.

She said she hasn’t decided if she will support another candidate for mayor or not.

Salvage company ready to tussle with Board of Adjustment; salvage-yard blues may be returning for KZIA radio

KZIA Z102.9 radio may need to rev up anew.

The local radio station took to the airwaves last December to make the case against a salvage company that wanted to open a salvage operation at 2525 12th St. SW next to the radio station’s studio.

The radio station’s position prevailed. The Cedar Rapids Board of Adjustment turned down the request of A-Line Iron & Metals Inc. of Waterloo, concluding that the salvage company’s plans were incompatible with the neighborhood.

The salvage company went to court, challenging the Board of Adjustment’s ruling, and now a trial is slated for July 30, according to court documents.

The Board of Adjustment is meeting this week, likely in closed session, to discuss the litigation.

Prior to the board’s December decision to deny A-Line Iron’s request for a conditional use permit to site a salvage yard on 12th Street SW, the city’s City Planning Commission, which is a recommending body, had approved the plan.

The board, though, has final say on conditional use permits.

With a plan to secure bicycle-friendly status on its mind, City Hall moves to fix year-old flood damage to city trails

There has some talk here in recent weeks and months about the city’s ambition to win a designation from the League of American Bicyclists as a bicycle-friendly city.

The city intends to submit a formal application to the League in August.

The enthusiasm in trying to secure such a cool-factor designation stands in contrast to the speed in which the city has moved to a repair section of the heavily used, flood-damaged Cedar River Trail below Czech Village.

The pace of the trail repair prompted City Council member Pat Shey some weeks ago to wonder if work couldn’t get moving on the project.

The City Council now has set a public hearing for its June 24 meeting to discuss the plans for repairing flood damage not only to the Cedar River Trail, but also to the Sac and Fox Trail and to the Ellis Trail. The work, estimated to cost $330,000, also will include fixes to the A Street SW levee, reports Rob Davis, the city’s engineering manager.

As now scheduled, bids on the work will be opened July 2. Construction will start Aug. 10 with the priority to be the Cedar River Trail. All construction should be done by September, Davis says.

As sections to the trails are complete they will be formally opened for use.

City Hall: Changing organizational tables at PD and Code Enforcement not rearranging deck chairs on the Titantic

It’s called “flattening” the organization.

Police Chief Greg Graham detailed to the City Council this week how he is shifting the Police Department’s table of organization to have fewer top dogs and, so, a few more dogs to work the streets.

His changes will eliminate two captain slots – now vacant because of retirements – and add five sergeant spots to the department’s table of organization.

This will make for five captain positions instead of seven; 27 sergeant slots, up from 22; while the number of lieutenants will remain at 13, according to a count by the department on Thursday.

In addition, the department will have a civilian manage the city’s animal control operation, which will allow a police sergeant who has been in that slot to return to other department duties.

In the mix, too, Graham is eliminating a vacant detective slot as well as a vacant animal control kennel work job.

Throw all the changes together and the department will still have the same number of swore police officers – about 200. But the police chief says the department will have better “line-level supervision” and less top management.

At the City Council meeting Wednesday evening, council member Justin Shields asked Graham if cutting the number of captains slots might frustrate officers because it limited the number of top posts officers could aspire to fill.

Graham said it might frustrate officers because it does take away a few promotional opportunities. But the chief said he didn’t want to maintain a particular table of organization just so officers can be promoted. Positions need to have “viable functions,” he said.

“We had too many captains,” the chief said.

When all the budgetary math related to the reorganization is done, Graham is saving the city about $83,000, he told the council.

City Manager Jim Prosser also detailed a reorganization of the city’s Code Enforcement office.

The council earlier this year added nine new positions to the Code Enforcement operation to enable the city to more effectively oversee the flood-recovery rebuilding effort in the city.

One of the changes is to a Code Enforcement management position, which will eliminate the housing/zoning manager post and replace it with an assistant code enforcement manager position.

The reorganization will create two positions with the title “nuisance abatement officer.”

Council member Justin Shields told Prosser that he has been urging the city to take care of a couple of particular nuisances for a year. He asked the city manager if the nuisance positions might better get things done.

Code Enforcement now will have the equivalent of 38.5 full-time positions, up from 38.17, Prosser said.

City secures Iowa Power Fund grant to help with its 21st Century Green Energy Project; one day burning sewage sludge and garbage may produce steam here

The city on Wednesday secured a $253,406 Iowa Power Fund grant to help finance the city’s plans for a 21st Century Green Energy Project.

The city must match the grant.

Greg Eyerly, the city’s utility operations manager, on Wednesday said the city also secured a $1.29 million federal Energy Efficiency and Conservation Block Grant award in April to help in the city’s energy planning.

He said the city is studying how it might replace the old incinerator at its Water Pollution Control facility, which has been temporarily brought back to life after last year’s flood, with a system that could burn sewage sludge, other kinds of biomass and municipal garbage and at the same time generate steam energy for the downtown and elsewhere.

“It’s viable,” said Eyerly, who is among five candidates competing for the city’s flood-recovery director post. “St. Paul, Minn., is doing it, and we have better and more-reliable fuel sources than they do. It’s why we are studying it.”

Long-expected renovation of the flood-damaged Roosevelt gets more tax-credit help; work could start by month’s end

The renovation of The Roosevelt, the flood-damaged apartment complex that once was a hotel, may now begin by month’s end, Jackie Nickolaus, vice president of developer Sherman Associates, said Wednesday.

Nickolaus was providing the project update as the Iowa Finance Authority, which met in Cedar Rapids, approved an additional $804,750 in affordable housing tax credits to help fund the renovation project.

Sherman Associates earlier had secured $5.985 million in tax credits from the state authority, but on Wednesday returned to ask for a supplemental grant.

Nickolaus said the additional tax credits were needed to cover additional costs for environmental testing and cleanup, elevator restoration, some demolition and pipe and mechanical system replacement.

The hope, she said, is to move tenants into the 12-story building’s top three floors six months after renovation starts. The project should be complete in a year, Nickolaus said.

The renovation will convert non-residential space on the building’s second floor into apartments, but will retain the first floor as commercial space. “Quite a few” possible commercial tenants have looked at the first floor, Nickolaus said.

In late April, Sherman Associates, of Minneapolis, Minn., put the total cost of the renovation at $10.3 million. The city has given the project a 30-year, $1.6-million loan at 1 percent interest, though the loan will lessen to $1 million if and when the project also secures historic tax credits.

Affordable housing projects dependent on federal tax credits have had difficulty getting started in recent months because of the economy. Nickolaus said Sherman Associates has investors to buy the credits for The Roosevelt project.

With tax credits, investors contribute money to a project upfront in exchange for credit against their taxes over a period of 10 years. Of late, the investors have only been willing to provide about 70 percent in upfront money of the tax-credit value they will receive. In better economic times, projects have received more than 90 percent of the tax-credit value in upfront cash, state officials have said.

Sherman Associates bought The Roosevelt in December for $2.2 million.

City will try once again to sell surplus city property next to Ellis Golf Course; relax, though; no apartments; two $72,500 lots for high-end homes

The city has had the idea of selling excess city property for a couple years now, and last night the City Council agreed to sell some.

In one instance, the council will sell two quarter-acre lots in the 2100 block of 20th Street NW next to the city’s Ellis Park Golf Course.

Rita Rasmussen, the city’s senior real estate officer, said each of the lots is appraised at $72,500, and she said the city anticipates that single-family homes will be built on them. The city will accept sealed bids on the lots.

By the way, the two lots are not part of a 6-acre city parcel that used to be home to the golf course’s practice chipping area. Late last year, a developer gave up on a proposal to build affordable apartments on the chipping-area after neighbors in single-family residents objected.

The council last night also approved the sale of a .45-acre site at 6900 Council St. NE. The city earlier had purchased the property, which at the time had a house and garage on it, for $216,000. The city demolished the buildings, carved off some of the land to widen the intersection at Council Street NE and Boyson Road NE, and now is reselling what is left.

Rasmussen said the city must give the previous owner right of first refusal, and the previous owner wants to buy it. The land now is appraised at $115,000, she said.

Clearing city of hundreds and hundreds of flood-wrecked homes nears reality: HUD changes formula and sends Iowa bigger pot of disaster-relief funds

It was possible to imagine a future Tuesday in which hundreds and hundreds of flood-wrecked Cedar Rapids homes no longer are sitting, empty and ugly.

A much-awaited announcement by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development will be sending a new round of Community Development Block Grant funds into Iowa totally $516.7 million. The state also will be able to compete for a share of another $300 million of new CDBG money, a pleased Rep. Dave Loebsack, D-Mount Vernon, announced Tuesday afternoon.

“I think it’s progress,” Loebsack said. “We’re on the road to recovery and rebuilding.”

Cedar Rapids, with more than 50 percent of the flood damage in Iowa a year ago, will get some sizable share of the new money coming into the state.

Council member Chuck Wieneke, who is the council’s lead voice on buyouts of flood-damaged properties, said Tuesday that the city’s first priority for the new CDBG money will be the buyout of flood-damaged homes. The city has estimated it may need to buy out 1,300 homes at a cost of $175 million.

Wieneke noted that the latest HUD money won’t arrive in the city tomorrow, but he said he hoped the city might see it by latter in the summer.

Jennifer Pratt, the city’s development coordinator, on Tuesday reported that more than 1,000 people have begun the city’s buyout process as the city prepared to purchase some 554 flood-damaged homes in the proposed levee construction area and another 600 or so homes elsewhere beyond reasonable repair. The city has initiated the buyout process so it is poised to buy out properties quickly once CDBG money arrives, Pratt pointed out.

Another group of 167 property owners, which own flood-damaged homes closest to the river, are ready for buyouts using Federal Emergency Management funds. The FEMA money could be here by late August, Pratt said.

City Manager Jim Prosser on Tuesday said the city had hoped, at a minimum, to garner $200 million in the latest allocation of CDBG funds. It remains to be seen if the city gets that much from the state of Iowa’s allocation of $516.7 million, he said.

However, Wieneke and Mayor Kay Halloran both emphasized that Cedar Rapids sustained more than 50 percent of the flood damage in the state a year ago, though both said the city had not managed yet to get that large a share of federal funds coming through the state.

Prosser said the city will use the CDBG money for buyouts, new replacement housing and reconstruction of city infrastructure in flood-damaged neighborhoods.

Key will be rules that accompany the money, the city manager noted.

One HUD spokesman on Tuesday said, for instance, that the new CDBG money could be used to supplement FEMA disaster funds that will come to the city to repair or rebuild flood-damaged public buildings.

Much attention by Iowa’s Congressional delegation and Iowa’s state and local officials has been devoted since late last year to the formula HUD has used to dispense disaster funds among some 30 states that have had disasters in the last year.

HUD apparently changed the formula this time.

In a HUD allocation in November, Iowa received $125 million or 5.8 percent of the $2 billion total. Now, Iowa will receive 13.2 percent of the $3.9 billion total.

In a phone interview Tuesday, Congressman Loebsack said that HUD Secretary Shaun Donovan told him that Iowa fared better in the latest formula because of a factor in the formula addressing “unmet needs.”

“For me the bottom line is I think I made the case for Iowa and certainly for the Second (Congressional) District,” Loebsack said. “My goal is to make sure that the people of Cedar Rapids and the Second District as a whole get their fair share and get what they deserve.”

FEMA pays city the cost to replace the Time Check Rec Center; city intends to use a school modular classroom this summer to serve the neighborhood

Two pieces of news on the flood-damaged Time Check Recreation Center:

At noon Tuesday, the office of Sen. Tom Harkin, D-Iowa, announced that the Federal Emergency Management will pay the city $1,638,155, which is the amount FEMA has determined is the cost to replace the building. Harkin’s office noted that “biohazardous conditions within the facility” at the time of the FEMA inspection convinced the agency that the flood-damaged building could not be renovated.

Also this week, the City Council is expected to approve an agreement with the Cedar Rapids Community Schools, which will let the city use the school district’s existing modular classroom at Harrison Elementary School as a community resource center from June 15 through Aug. 14. The resource center will serve as a temporary neighborhood center to serve some of the functions that the Time Check Recreation Center did.

City Hall eliminates four management positions as it prepares to fill newly created, flood-recovery director post

City Hall is preparing to eliminate four management positions at the same time that it will fill a newly created, top-echelon post of flood-recovery director.

On Wednesday, the City Council will be asked to eliminate two police captain positions, an animal control supervisor slot and a housing and zoning manager position. In addition, the council will be asked to eliminate three non-management posts: a police detective position, an animal control kennel worker position and a code enforcement customer service position.

Two of the seven positions — the animal control supervisor and housing/zoning manager posts — will result in layoffs. The other five positions are eliminations of position, not employees. Police Chief Greg Graham, for instance, had planned to reduce the number of police captains as some captains retired.

This week, too, the council will extend the city’s existing employee severance package program, which it created back in 2007 when the city eliminated the positions of several top managers and directors in a City Hall reorganization.

As for the new flood-recovery director job, the City Council last night held an open house for the six applicants who will interview for the post. The council is expected to approve a choice by the end of the month.

The flood-recovery job is an unusual one in that the costs of the new public employee will be paid, in part, by the private sector.

Linn’s Langston out as mayoral prospect; says she’s flattered she was asked; has plenty of fish to fry with county office and new national posts

Linda Langston, Linn County supervisor, says she won’t run for the job of Cedar Rapids mayor.

A month ago, Langston acknowledged that some had urged her to make a mayoral run, a request she said on Thursday that she found flattering.

However, she said her strong interest in issues distinctively a purview of county government — mental health and development disabilities, for instance — have reminded her why she has pursued and won elective county office and why she wants to stay there.

Langston, a Democrat, said, too, that her party affiliation in a race against Ron Corbett, a former Republican state legislator, had the potential to make the local mayoral race overly partisan at a time when partisan politics should not be what the race, which is officially a non-partisan one, should be.

The city will have three or four good mayoral candidates, she said.

At the same time, just three weeks ago she assumed new national responsibilities as president of the National Democratic County Officials, a position that also places her as one of seven Iowans on the National Democratic Committee.

June 23, Aug. 18 and Oct. 6 are three dates for open houses on flood-damaged city buildings: Should city government return to May’s Island among the great questions

City officials report that they will hold three public open houses over a three-and-half-month period to get the public’s input on what the city should do with its key flood-damaged buildings.

The open houses will be held June 23, Aug. 18 and Oct. 6.

The dates were noted Wednesday during an hour-long discussion between city officials and The Gazette’s editorial board.

In the session, Mayor Kay Halloran and Brian Fagan, council member and mayor pro tem, insisted that the council and city officials have no “preconceived” notion of what the future holds for the city’s public buildings going into the public input process.

At the same time, the city will use a facilities framework, which the council approved earlier this year.
The framework makes a case for the city to consider organizing many of its services into a Community Services Center and a Community Operations Center. The framework also calls for the city to consider opening or building a Public Safety Training Center.

Halloran and Fagan said a Community Services Center – which will be a version of a City Hall — and Community Operations Center – which will be a version of a Public Works Building — do not need to be new buildings. They may be existing buildings, they said.

In response to several questions about the flood-damaged Veterans Memorial Building on May’s Island, which has housed City Hall since the 1920s, neither the mayor and Fagan nor City Manager Jim Prosser and four other city officials at the meeting expressed any sentiment for returning city government to the building. It wasn’t as if they opposed the idea. But no one used the time to promote the idea.

In response to one question, Prosser repeated what he has said in the past: the Veterans Memorial Building, like the flood-damaged Paramount Theatre, has historic standing and must be renovated even if the cost of flood insurance for the buildings could be sizable. Prosser said the city is planning to meet with the state insurance commissioner, who has the power to waive flood insurance requirements on the public buildings.

The city officials spent some time, too, talking about the word sustainability when asked if it is possible to make an existing building as “sustainable” as a new building.

In part, the city’s talk about sustainability centers on the cost to operate a building – heating and cooling it, for instance – over the 50 or 100 years that the building will stand.

Fagan also pointed to what he said was a social component of sustainability, which he seems to tie to a building’s usability by the public. This raises the question, can a seven-story or eight-story building be as socially sustainable as a two-story one. The city’s temporary City Hall is in a two-story building in a northeast Cedar Rapids office park.

Pat Ball, the city’s utilities director, also pointed to the location of a building and the amount of fuel it might take for people to get to it.

Dan Thies, president of OPN Architects Inc., attended the Wednesday session. OPN has been hired by the city, at a cost of $400,000, to conduct the public participation process on facilities.

Thies said he has staff members at his firm “salivating” over the idea of getting into the Veterans Memorial Building and seeing how it might be reconfigured to function in today’s and tomorrow’s world.

Fagan had noted that it’s not easy to get from the First Avenue side of the building to the Second Avenue side of it.

Among other flood-damaged buildings to be reviewed in the public participation process are the downtown library, the existing federal courthouse and a proposed new community center/recreation center.

The library has sustained more than 50 percent damage, a level of damage that will require the building to be razed and rebuilt in place or elsewhere. The library board wants to build it at another downtown site.

Prosser and the mayor said that the plan remains for the city to take over ownership of the existing, flood-damaged federal courthouse, which the federal government is repairing.

The building also has historic standing, and the plan is for the city’s proposed flood-protection system to protect the building, Prosser and the mayor said.

Lone mayoral candidate Corbett, a Republican, gets backing of Cedar Rapids/Iowa City Building Trades Council, AFL-CIO

Ron Corbett is still out there running for mayor all by himself, though word is that council incumbents Monica Vernon and Brian Fagan – if not others – are biding their time, waiting to enter the race.

On Tuesday, Corbett, a former Republican state legislator and former president/CEO of the Cedar Rapids Area Chamber of Commerce, won the endorsement of the Cedar Rapids/Iowa City Building Trades Council, AFL-CIO.

Scott Smith, the council’s president, said Tuesday that the council’s endorsement of Corbett was by a unanimous vote.

The council represents nearly 5,000 workers in the Cedar Rapids and Iowa City areas.

“Ron has a great track record of building coalitions and providing leadership,” Smith said. “We are proud to endorse his candidacy for Cedar Rapids mayor.”

Smith called the trades council’s early endorsement “an unusual step” for the council. But he said the endorsement was intended to send a message that those in the union trades “are looking for a consensus candidate for mayor.” That’s Corbett, he said.

Corbett brought out dozens of union trades workers in mid-March when he spoke outside the city’s flood-damaged and all-but empty Veterans Memorial Building, which is home to City Hall. Corbett castigated the current mayor and City Council on that day, accusing them of embracing a “culture of delay” and failing to get the city’s key, flood-damaged facilities back up and functioning.

Ray Dochterman, business manager for the Plumbers & Pipefitters Local #125, was there that March day, and on Tuesday, he, too, spoke on behalf of the trades council in endorsing Corbett.

“It is time to rebuild this city, and we believe Ron Corbett is the best person to take charge and do that,” Dochterman said.

Corbett, vice president at trucking firm CRST Inc., on Tuesday thanked the trades council for its backing.

“Like this organization, I want to work together with community members and businesses to create jobs and find the best path forward for Cedar Rapids,” Corbett said in a published statement.

City Council keeps its distance from May’s Island; may extend lease for 2 years on temp setup in suburban-style office park; big June 13 ceremony on river’s west side

The City Council isn’t rushing to go near May’s Island, home to the flood-damaged Veterans Memorial Building, which houses City Hall.

On its agenda this week, the council says it will discuss at its next meeting, on June 10, a proposal to extend its lease at City Hall’s temporary location, 3851 River Ridge Dr. NE, for another two years. The city’s lease for the spot in an office-park building owned by AEGON USA is $23,410 a month. The Federal Emergency Management Agency pays the money. The AEGON USA sign is still out front.

The return of city government to May’s Island in the future is among the questions about the city’s flood-damaged buildings that the public will be asked to weigh in on during a series of open houses, the first of which is June 23.

On another front, City Hall revealed this week that it will hold a Flood 2008 Commemoration Ceremony at 10 a.m. Saturday, June 13.

The ceremony, though, will not be on the giant lawn on May’s Island in the middle of the river, but instead, will be held at Sunner Park and Lot 20 on the west side of the river near the police station .

Cassie Willis, the city’s communications liaison, on Tuesday said the parking ramp underneath the May’s Island lawn was flood-damaged, and it’s unclear if it’s safe to congregate on the lawn above it.

Willis noted that she has invited Iowa Sens. Tom Harkin and Chuck Grassley to the event, neither of which can come, she reported. Congressman Dave Loebsack, D-Mount Vernon, will be on hand and will speak, though Gov. Chet Culver’s office has said, to date, that the governor will not attend, said Willis.

Spielman’s Event Services and Rausch Productions Inc. will help put on the event for the city.

About 100 are expected to attend in addition to 45 participants and 35 event volunteers.

Grass-roots group that engineered local-option sales tax triumph donates $24,183 in excess campaign funds to Habitat for Humanity

Vote Yes for Our Neighbors, the Cedar Rapids grass-roots effort that successfully campaigned to secure passage in early March of a 1-percent local-option sales, has donated its leftover campaign funds — $24,183 — to Cedar Valley Habitat for Humanity.

In less than a month, the Vote Yes campaign raised $85,343.46 from what Gary Ficken and Dale Todd, campaign co-chairmen, said Tuesday was a diverse group of donors.

It did not use $24,183 of the funds raised for the campaign.

Ficken said Vote Yes for Our Neighbors and those who donated to it acted with “housing, housing, housing in mind” for flood victims. It only made sense, then, he said, to use what was left of the campaign dollars on housing for flood victims. Habitat has agreed to use the money in that way, he said.

Ficken said the mix of donors supporting the five-year, local-option sales tax for flood-victim housing was tghe most diverse group of donors he’s ever seen in a campaign for anything. He said the support made the campaign “entertaining,” and he added the fact that the campaign lasted just three-and-half weeks didn’t hurt either.

Coe, St. Luke’s first victors in local scrap to land U.S. Commerce Department diaster-related funds

Coe College and St. Luke’s Hospital are the first victors in the local competition to secure disaster-related funds from the U.S. Department of Commerce’s Economic Development Administration (EDA).

Iowa’s senators, Tom Harkin and Chuck Grassley, have announced that the college and hospital will use a $4.65 million EDA grant to build a steam heating plant that the two local institutions will share.

This week’s announcement was little surprise.

Coe College and St. Luke’s Hospital were two of eight large users of cheap steam produced by Alliant Energy’s Sixth Street Generating Plant, which was destroyed in last June’s flood.

Last week, the City Council discussed how it would dispense $21 million in federal and state funds to help about 200 steam users covert (or help pay those who already have converted) from the Alliant system to their own steam systems. The council left out Coe College and St. Luke’s in their calculations on the expectation that EDA money was coming for them.

Harkin and Grassley this week confirmed that it is.

The council also left out another of the Sixth Street plant’s eight large steam users, Mercy Medical Center, and for the same reason that it left out Coe and St. Luke’s. Mercy, too, has applied for EDA money, and that now is apparently the next anticipated announcement from EDA.

Several other local projects are competing for the funds. The City Council has said it most would like the EDA to support a proposal to upgrade the U.S. Cellular Center and to add a convention center to it. The city’s Facilities Commission is seeking a $39-million EDA grant to help finance the $52-million project.

Patrick DePalma, chairman of the Facilities Commission, said he and other community representatives met recently with representatives of the EDA, and he said he came away optimistic that EDA is interested in the project.

On its priority list for EDA funding, the City Council placed a proposed recreation center/community center second behind the U.S. Cellular Center proposal.

The Cedar Rapids Area Chamber of Commerce also is seeking an EDA grant for a new Regional Commerce Center and the community also is seeking money for downtown rail study as a prelude to redirecting freight train switching maneuvers from the downtown.

Watershed management does matter in flood protection: Harkin announces $24.2 million for Iowa to buy flood-prone land and return it to its natural state

Rep. Dave Loebsack and U.S. Army Corps of Engineers officials were on the Cedar River last week to talk about protecting Cedar Rapids and other flood-prone cities against another flood.

Both the Congressman and the Corps said flood-protection systems and watershed management were both necessary ingredients in flood protection.

As proof of the need for watershed management, Sen. Tom Harkin on Tuesday announced that the U.S. Department of Agriculture was sending $24.236 million to Iowa to fund 42 floodplain easement projects.
Harkin’s office said the money will be used to purchase easements from landowners along floodplains to allow land most prone to flooding to be restored to a natural state.

By taking easement land out of farm production, the Emergency Watershed Protection Program will allow flood waters to spread out and slow down, helping to reduce flooding on private property elsewhere in the watershed, Harkin’s office said.

“As we approach the one-year anniversary of the flooding that devastated Iowa, these funds will continue the process of rebuilding our state and will help prevent future flooding,” Harkin said in a news release.

The USDA’s Natural Resources Conservation Service will acquire the property, which can both be private land or certain public land. Landowners will retain several rights to the property, including the right to control public access.

Loebsack and Army Corps of Engineers say they can think of at least two things at once: flood protection and watershed management

Congressman Dave Loebsack and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers say they can think of more than one thing at the same time when it comes to flood control and water management.

Actually, it’s the ability to think of two or more parts of the same issue — in this case, flood protection and watershed management as part of the larger issue of water management — at the same time, Loebsack and Corps officials say.

The issue was the topic of discussion Friday as second-termer Loebsack, D- Mount Vernon, plied the Cedar River in Cedar Rapids in a small boat with Lt. Col. Michael Clarke, district commander of the Army Corps’ Rock Island, Ill., district office, Dennis Hamilton, the Corps; district chief of project management, and Dave Elgin, the city’s public works director and city engineer.

Loebsack and the others were taking a look from the river back toward shore to get a feel for the damage caused by the June 2008 flood and a feel for how a new flood-protection system in the city might change the river and the shoreline.

There were a couple other small boats in the mix, too, so that TV news crews and a newspaper photographer could better get photos and video of Loebsack and the Corps officials and Elgin getting a look around.

Of course, this was something of a dog-and-pony show, but it is one that might help bring the cows home sooner than otherwise would be possible.

Loebsack made a little news just by questions he asked. What would happen if Congress quickly appropriated funding to build a flood-protection system even before the necessary feasibility study was completed? he asked.

In that one question, the Congressman gave the impression it might be possible to secure money within the two years it is supposed to take for a feasibility study. Local officials have been preparing for the fact that it could take eight to 15 years to get a flood-protection system in place.

In the 40-or-so minute river trip, Loebsack and the Corps officials were asked if it might not make sense to set aside plans on a flood-protection system for Cedar Rapids for now and focus on what changes can be made in the vast Cedar River watershed above the city.

Loebsack said it was necessary to establish a watershed management program over time to make sure flood mitigation works.

The Corps’ Hamilton noted that, in fact, the Corps has now begun a watershed study on the Cedar and Iowa rivers as part of the Corps’ Upper Mississippi River Comprehensive Plan.

Such a study won’t result in the call to build a new, giant reservoir upstream someplace, which he said require the flooding of too much land at too great a cost.

Hamilton also said improving the management of the watershed was needed, not just to help with lessening the risk of flood, but to improve water quality, enhance natural habitats and to help better use recreational resources.

Hamilton said improvements in the watershed above the city can only do so much for flood protection.

“It’s not realistic to expect flooding in Cedar Rapids to be preventable solely due to watershed changes,” Hamilton said.

“It’s an important aspect” he said of watershed management. “It can reduce flooding in the future, and we certainly want to make sure that the watershed is properly managed so flooding doesn’t ever get any worse than it is now, and hopefully it gets even a little better.

“But to expect watershed improvements by themselves will prevent flooding in Cedar Rapids, we don’t feel like it is a realistic plan.”

Better watershed management is one piece of the larger approach to flood prevention, which also includes moving people out of flood plains and building levees and floodwalls where it makes sense, Hamilton said.

The Corps’ Cedar Rapids flood-protection feasibility study, as now conceived, will be complete in draft form by the summer of 2010 and in final form by February or March of 2011.

Estimates have been as high as $1 billion to build a system of levees and floodwalls to protect Cedar Rapids against a flood the size of the 2008 one.

City readies to take down 71 more flood-damaged homes, but not before councilman Wieneke questions costly caution over asbestos

Seventy down, the next 71 or so at the ready, 1,150 or so to go.

The City Council this week gave the go-ahead to demolish 71 more flood-damaged properties.

The demolition of a first group of 70 properties, most of which were homes, was completed at the end of April.

This next group of properties is part of a group of homes tagged with red placards in the city’s worst-to-best system of purple, red, yellow and green placards. The purple-placarded homes came down first.

The decision this week to go ahead with 71 or so more homes did not come with some disagreement.

Council member Chuck Wieneke took great exception to the city’s plan to – as it did with the purple-placarded homes – treat the next 71 homes as too unsafe to enter. With that status, the city plan is that the properties can’t be checked for asbestos and the asbestos, if found, can’t be removed before demolition.

As a result, the entire property is considered to be asbestos-containing material, which requires special handling and increased costs during demolition.

Wieneke said he had “real heartburn” with the idea that the city would be paying what he said would be five times the regular demolition cost because of the decision about asbestos. He estimated the cost to demolish each house as it it had asbestos at $35,000 to $37,000.

He noted that many of the red-placarded houses have been entered by the homeowners with the assistance of city staff since the flood, and he didn’t see why city staff couldn’t do the same now to identify and mitigate any asbestos.

Wieneke said he’d be willing to walk into the homes.

City Manager Jim Prosser and Tim Manz, the city’s interim manager of code enforcement, countered, telling Wieneke that the city’s latest round of inspections found these 71 properties to be the worst of what is left standing and too unsafe to enter.

Manz said the structural instability of the 71 properties was similar to the purple-placarded homes that have now been demolished.

He noted that the city has another 140 homes that it has received permission from the Federal Emergency Management Agency to take down, and he said that group of homes likely will allow for asbestos assessment and removal before demolition.

Council member Justin Shields said it was best to err on the side of safety. Manz assured council member Tom Podzimek that the owners were being notified before the demolitions.

Bids for the work must be submitted to the city by 11 a.m. June 11.

The contract calls for an estimated 71 structures to be down by Sept. 25.

The city continues to await additional federal Community Development Block Grant funds, which it plans to use to pay for buyouts and demolitions of most of the 1,300 flood-damaged homes and other structures it expects to buy out.

FEMA has agreed to pay for demolitions of a few hundred of the worst-damaged properties.

A neighborhood leader with a thought on the Ice Arena faces the fact that some things are done deals

Frank, some things at City Hall probably are kind of done deals.

Frank King, president of Northwest Neighbors, has opinions and insights, which he often shares with the City Council at their Wednesday evening meetings.

Thursday afternoon, King couldn’t have been more disappointed.

The evening before, King told the council, during its public comment session, that he had some thoughts about the proposed deal to amend the city’s Ice Arena lease with the RoughRiders junior league hockey team.

The issue of the Ice Arena lease was on the council’s consent agenda, which is the place for items the council considers routine and not in need of discussion.

Members of the council, though, assured King that the agenda item – which changed the ownership name on the RoughRiders lease with the city to reflect a change in the team’s owners – had nothing to do with proposed amendments to the lease terms. King was told that the lease amendment would be addressed by the council at an upcoming meeting, which would be a better time for King to weigh in on matters.

By Thursday, King says he had come to see it was, in reality, all a done deal.

On Thursday morning, the new owners – three couples including team coach Mark Carlson and his wife – held a news conference at the city’s Ice Arena to officially announce the purchase of the team from a Chicago group.

The Thursday news conference was announced via City Hall press release to introduce.

By Thursday evening, TV news was awash with talk of new Jumbotrons and a new era in RoughRiders hockey. The Gazette’s sports section had been talking about it for a few days.

It all started late last week when the city’s Five Seasons Facilities Commission agreed to lease modifications with the team’s new owners, though the commission’s decision must be approved by the council.

The proposed lease changes reduce the team’s rent for the Ice Arena and give the team a 10-percent cut in concession revenue in exchange for the team’s immediate investment in arena improvements. Those include a new scoreboard and media screens.

What with the City Hall news release and the Thursday morning news conference, King says he finds it hard to imagine that the council now will raise any questions about the proposed lease amendments.

So he wishes he would have had his say Wednesday evening.

His wish, too, is that the council wouldn’t have given him the impression that its action Wednesday night was of little consequence and that he should save his thoughts and any thunder for the next time.

King said that, yes, he wouldn’t have minded seeing the new hockey team owners at the Wednesday evening council meeting. They could have introduced themselves to the council before it agreed to put the new owners’ names on the city lease that runs through 2020. King says the new owners also could have used the public meeting to explain to council members and the public what their plans were and why they needed to pay less rent at the arena.

King doesn’t think the deal is good enough for the city.

At the end of the day, the council does depend on the Five Seasons Facilities Commission to do much of the work related to the city’s facilities. The commission, which holds public meetings that few if any citizens attend, has done that with the Ice Arena lease.

Patrick DePalma, the commission’s chairman, said the new owners and the proposed changes in the lease help assure the city keeps a hockey team and keeps the principal tenant of the city’s ice arena. DePalma said lower rent and sharing some concession revenue is a good trade off to get the team to invest now in some arena improvements.

Building new or renovating flood-damaged public buildings? Linn’s Barron weighs in on the S word — sustainability

Advocates for returning city government to the flood-damaged and iconic Veterans Memorial Building/City Hall on May’s Island might want to talk to Lu Barron, chairwoman of the Linn County Board of Supervisors.

On June 23, the city of Cedar Rapids will begin the first of a series of open houses in what surely will be a well-attended public participation process to help the City Council decide the future of the city’s flood-damaged buildings.

Those buildings include the Veterans Memorial Building/City Hall, library, Public Works Building and the existing federal courthouse, which the city is slated to take control of once the new federal courthouse opens in the fall of 2012.

One word that will be tossed around as much as any is “sustainability.” In this context, sustainability is the notion that the city should renovate or build new with an eye to energy efficiency and other considerations that help lower a building’s operating costs over time.

It’s not been uncommon for the city officials and City Council members to toss the word “sustainability” around over the last year in a way that leaves the impression that building new buildings is the best way to achieve sustainability.

Tell that to Linn County’s Lu Barron.

In a talk with The Gazette editorial board this week, Barron defended the county’s decisions to withdrawn from a joint public participation process with the city and to return to the county’s flood-damaged Administrative Office Building on First Street SW across from the Penford Products plant.

Barron said the county needed to move more quickly than the city in making decisions about the county’s flood-damaged buildings, and she said it made fiscal sense to return to the existing building rather than building something new.

Then she mentioned the S word.

“One of the most sustainable things you can do is to use an existing building,” Barron said.

She said planned renovations to the county’s Administrative Office Building, which include adding a floor to the building, will add 30, 40 or more years to the life of the structure at, perhaps, half the cost of building a new building.

“I think taxpayers want that out of us,” she said.

Barron acknowledged that prior supervisors some years ago purchased land along the Cedar River near the current city police station with an eye to constructing a new county building and abandoning the Administrative Office Building. It makes financial sense now to stay put and remodel the existing building, Barron said.

To be sure, the county’s Administrative Office Building, which Barron said sits outside the 500-year floodplain, has less flood damage than the city’s Veterans Memorial Building/City Hall on May’s Island.

The county, though, has returned to the courthouse and jail on the island.

Council changes name on Ice Arena lease to clear way for new RoughRiders owners; proposed lease amendments will be considered later that trade lower rent for arena improvements

In routine fashion, the City Council last night reassigned its Ice Arena rental lease to a new owner of the RoughRiders junior hockey league team.

Newco Riders LLC – a six-member ownership group which consists of three couples including RoughRiders head coach Mark Carlson and his wife – is purchasing the team from Mercantile Capital Partners of Chicago.

The new owners have scheduled a news conference for 11 a.m. today at the Ice Arena to formally announce the purchase of the team.

The RoughRiders have made the city’s Ice Arena home for 10 seasons now.

Last night’s council resolution pointed out that the new owners will continue to be subject to Paragraph 27 of the existing Ice Arena lease, which does not relieve new owners of the existing lease’s obligations. The lease runs through April 2020.

The city’s Five Seasons Facilities Commission has agreed with the new owners to amend the existing lease in a way that reduces annual rent and gives the team 10 percent of the concession revenue in exchange for the owners’ investment in a new scoreboard and media screens and other capital improvements.

Patrick DePalma, chairman of the commission, said Wednesday that the commission has signed a non-binding letter of intent with the new owners to amend the existing lease. The City Council must approve the amendments after a public hearing at a later meeting, he noted.

DePalma said the RoughRiders currently pay about $155,000 a year in rent for use of the arena, but get none of the facility’s concession revenue.

DePalma said the proposed amended lease would reduce the rent to $90,000 a year for five years before it begins to increase. The lease proposal also gives the hockey team 10 percent of the hockey arena concession revenue. DePalma estimated that 10 percent is about $60,000 a year. The city currently receives about $240,000 a year in concession revenue, which is 40 percent of a total of about $600,000. The new owners’ share will come out of the city’s portion.

In exchange, the new owners have agreed to make immediate improvements to the city arena, including installing a new scoreboard and media screens.

DePalma said the immediate infusion of money by the new owners should help increase attendance, which has declined in recent years.

DePalma called the proposed lease amendment “fair and balanced.” It keeps the RoughRiders in the arena until 2020 and brings in new owners who DePalma said have “a passion” for the game and the team.

Steam committee suggests splitting $21 million this way: $8 million for five of eight big users; $8 million for little users; and $5 million to lower bills

The City Council this week will decide how it wants to dispense $21 million in federal and state dollars to help users of the downtown steam system convert to their own replacement systems.

A city review team — which includes city staff members, downtown business representatives, state leaders and large and small steam customers — is proposing a reimbursement program that devotes $8 million of the $21 million in aid for large customers, $8 million for smaller customers and $5 million to help “buy down” the cost of higher steam bills.

Of the $5 million, 70 percent will go to big users, though they represented 86 percent of overall steam usage from Alliant Energy’s flood-wrecked Sixth Street Generating Station, according to a memo to the City Council.

The plant, which had provided cheap steam for eight large customers and about 200 smaller ones, won’t be rebuilt because of cost. One plan to try to find federal and state money to rebuild the plant as it was — as a coal plant — was nixed by the City Council as spending too much public money on an old plant and an old technology.

According to this week’s council memo, the assumption is that a portion of the $8 million designated for the large customers — the Quaker and Cargill plants next to downtown are among the eight — won’t go to customers Coe College and the two hospitals because it is anticipated they will receive federal funds from the U.S. Department of Commerce’s Economic Development Administration.

City hires OPN Architects for $400,000 to help with open houses to determine future of flood-damaged city buildings; county, schools dropped out of process

The much-anticipated series of public open houses will start June 23 to help the city determine the future of flood-damaged city buildings.
And Wednesday evening, the City Council hired OPN Architects Inc. of Cedar Rapids for $400,000 to help lead the several-month process.

OPN not only will help conduct the public open houses, but the firm also will provide design and planning options and an analysis of the costs involved in renovating buildings or building new ones.

OPN’s contract runs from May 28 through Oct. 31 and may be renewed in 60-day increments.

Among the key flood-damaged buildings under discussion will be the library, the Paramount Theatre, the Ground Transportation Center bus depot, the Veterans Memorial Building/City Hall, the Public Works Building and the existing federal courthouse, which the city is scheduled to assume ownership of once the new federal courthouse opens in the fall of 2012.

Sufficient damage was done to the library that it will be rebuilt not renovated, and the city’s library board already has asked the Federal Emergency Management Agency to allow the city to rebuild the library on a different site.

The council also will be interested in hearing about proposals to build a new City Hall, called a community services center, a new Public Safety Training Center and a new community operations center, which would house city departments like fleet maintenance, streets and solid waste.

Only city government is left to participate in the lengthy process to get public input on facilities.

Some months ago, both Linn County government and the Cedar Rapids school district were involved in the facilities process when the idea was that the differing jurisdictions might “co-locate” in a shared facility.
The county dropped out a few months ago, saying they wanted to move faster than the city. The school district dropped out this month.

Flood-recovery milestone reached: All 70 purple-placarded properties now demolished and off to the dump

One flood-recovery landmark has been reached.

All 70 of the worst-damaged properties – the ones with purple placards signifying they were too unsafe to enter – have now all been demolished, City Hall reports.

The last of the properties, most of which were homes, came down at the end of April.

The demolition effort took some months to start after a couple false starts over bidding.

Some of the job was done by winter, when it then had to take a break because water used to control possible asbestos dust from the properties would have frozen. The properties were so unsafe that crews couldn’t enter to assess asbestos materials inside. As a result, all the demolition debris had to be treated as asbestos-containing material.

In recent months, city officials successfully lobbied the Federal Emergency Management Agency to have the agency pay for the demolition of another 200 or 300 or so homes. Those are the ones, also considered too unsafe to enter, with red placards in the city’s best-to-worst system of green, yellow, red and purple placards.

Those demolitions are expected to begin in July once paperwork requirements are satisfied, city officials said this week.

In total, the city estimates it may buy out and demolish 1,300 homes and other properties at a total cost of $175 million.

Much of the buyout money will come from federal Community Development Block Grant funds, and the city is expecting word any time from the U.S. Department of Housing & Urban Development of the next large release of CDBG disaster money.

In the meantime, the city has set up a buyout assessment system and is in the process of interviewing those wanting a buyout whose homes qualify.

Past council candidate Bates back with profanity-tainted yelling; but a criminal charge from an earlier episode in September was dismissed

One of the last times Robert Bates — a City Council candidate in 2005 who is open about his criminal and prison past — showed up at a City Council meeting, he ended up getting arrested.

That was in early September, and the misdemeanor criminal charge of disorderly conduct for disturbing a lawful meeting was the result of Bates’ profanity-laced and yelling-tainted performance during the council’s public comment period.

Turns out, Bates, who runs a traveling concession business, contested the charge and beat it in February.

On Wednesday, he was back at the City Council podium with a new version of public comment that featured profanity, a loud voice, personal attacks and a short refusal to leave the microphone when the council’s 5-minute time limit had been reached.

Council member Brian Fagan, the council’s mayor pro tem, asked Bates to moderate his comments twice, and then Fagan had to insist that Bates leave the microphone.

By then, Police Chief Greg Graham had moved to the side of the room to accompany Bates outside.

Bates asked if he was getting arrested again, to which Graham did not respond.

In his presentation, Bates once again brought up a decade-old dispute with the Linn County Sheriff and the Police Department. Bates also is a flood victim, and he talked, too, about what was not being done for flood victims.

Bates also had a notable outburst in the council chambers in the fall of 2007 when he sought to run for City Council a second time. However, a citizen successfully challenged some signatures on his nominating petitions and, as a result, he did not have enough signatures to qualify to run.

On Thursday, Bates said he and Chief Graham talked for about 15 minutes outside the City Council meeting on Wednesday evening in a discussion that he said did not result in any criminal charge.

He said he is just “standing up for our American rights” of free speech to make the point of how he and other flood victims feel.

He said he is planning a new run for City Council this year.

City Council ’steam team’ leader Vernon says work underway to create an equitable way to dispense $21 million in steam conversion funds

City Council member Monica Vernon, the City Council’s “steam team” chief, reports that the city’s Pat Ball, utilities director, and Mike Sable, a special assistant to the city manager, are helping to work up an approach to dispense $21 million in state funds to help those in the downtown steam network convert to their own systems.

ernon said the effort involves devising an “equitable” way to hand out the funds. She said a proposal may be coming in front of the council as soon as next week.

The money consists of $5 million in state I-JOBS funds and $16 million in money set aside by the Iowa Department of Economic Development.

The City Council brought absolute clarity to the lingering downtown steam issue two weeks ago when the council voted unanimously not to allow public funds to be used to rebuild Alliant Energy’s flood-destroyed Sixth Street Generating Plant as a coal plant.

There had been a push to find federal and state money to rebuild the Alliant plant –which provided low-cost steam power to the key industries Quaker and Cargill, the two hospitals, Coe College and the downtown and near downtown — as a coal plant. Alliant, a private entity, cannot directly receive public money, and so it would have had to be allocated to the City Council for use.

The council, though, concluded that burning coal and environmental issues associated with it represented the past, not the future. Council members said a new era of taxing emissions from coal plants will make mean that coal may not be as much of a bargain as some now think it is.

Council rejects push for special new committee in fight for $118.5-million in I-JOBS money; it says established flood-recovery committee is already there to help

The business community apparently continues to want to create new entities to try to help the City Council.

This time, City Council member Justin Shields told his council colleagues Wednesday evening that a noontime meeting Wednesday of some local business and other leaders led to the suggestion of a special new committee to help the city decide which projects it should get behind in the competition for $118.5 million in state I-JOBS stimulus funds.

Backers of several local projects are interested in a piece of the $118.5 million in state-distributed funds, including, no doubt, those eager for a new community center/recreation center and also those who want to upgrade the U.S. Cellular Center and add a convention center to it.

At the suggestion of new help, the council, though, decided it didn’t need to create something new to decide how best to compete for the state I-JOBS money.

The council will use the City Hall-based Recovery and Reinvestment Coordinating Team, which has been in place and providing advice to the council since the early days of flood recovery.

Shields and council member Chuck Wieneke both noted that the RRCT has representation from a wide sector of community interests, including the Cedar Rapids Area Chamber of Commerce and the Downtown District as well as leaders in housing, arts and culture, non-profit agencies, neighborhoods and government.

Council member Monica Vernon and Shields said it was important that the council pick a couple of quality projects and get them submitted to the state I-JOBS competition quickly.

Forget the “wish lists,” Shields said.

As for getting pushed by outside forces, the council currently is in the process of hiring a flood recovery manager, the majority of whose salary will be paid for by the private sector. This was a private-sector idea pushed by Rockwell Collins.

The council also is contributing some money to a private-sector creation, the Economic Planning and Redevelopment Corp., which came to be, to a degree, from some private-sector frustration with City Hall over the pace of flood recovery.

Shields last night said there is a sense in the community that Cedar Rapids never fares very well in competitions for money that the state hands out. So, he said, it was important to make a good case.

At the same time, the state already has earmarked other I-JOBS money to Cedar Rapids and Linn County in the tune of $45.5 million. Proposals to secure these funds must be submitted by Sept. 1.

Of that money, $5 million goes to each of three flood-damaged city buildings, the library, Public Works Building and Paramount Theatre, with another $5 million to provide steam replacement assistance for those who have been on the flood-wrecked downtown steam system. The National Czech & Slovak Museum and Library is receiving $10 million as are backers of a new human services building. Options of Linn County is getting $5 million the city of Palo’s fire station, $500,000.

Organized group of local spin-doctors and flak-catchers didn’t get NBC News here; hope still alive they’ll land Katie or Charlie Gibson

The local cadre of public relations pros isn’t responsible.

In any event, NBC News’ national operation is in Cedar Rapids to work up a news piece on Cedar Rapids’ flood recovery.

SanDee Skelton, a flood victim still in a FEMA trailer who expects to return to her renovated home at 1125 10th St. NW within a month, reports that she is one of a few slated for an interview.

NBC News’ Dallas-based coordinating producer Al Henkel has set up the interview with her, she says.

Which is perfect.

Henkel, who was in Cedar Rapids on Tuesday, grew up in Cedar Rapids, is a 1977 Jefferson High School, and lived in the Cedar Hills neighborhood, which stayed high and dry in the 2008 flood. He went on to graduate from Iowa State University in 1982, and worked at KGAN-TV in Cedar Rapids from 1982 to 1983. He won an Emmy award for his coverage of the 1993 flood in Des Moines, and he won Emmy, Peabody and Murrow awards for his coverage of Hurricane Katrina.

Skelton says Henkel wants her to talk about the group of retired electricians, plumbers and pipefitters who worked on her house and who were covered in recent local stories.

Henkel, she says, got her name from Liz Mathis, spokeswoman for the Four Oaks family-services agency.
Mathis on Tuesday said that the push in the last 10 days by local public-relations professionals to attract national media to Cedar Rapids to report on the city’s one-year anniversary of flood recovery is not what got NBC News to town.

Mathis says local news coverage by The Gazette and KCRG-TV of local retired electricians and plumbers helping flood victims captured NBC’s attention.

By the way, Mathis, a former long-time TV news anchor, was the one who convinced the local media to cover the story in recent weeks.

Tuesday morning, Henkel said via e-mail he wasn’t sure when the NBC piece might be broadcast.

Linn’s Langston has new national responsibilities; says she’d give up national gig if she runs and wins Cedar Rapids mayor’s post

Linn County Supervisor Linda Langston, a big-time local Democrat, is a big-time national Democrat, too.

Langston has been elected president of the National Democratic County Officials, a position that also gives her membership on the Democratic National Committee.

Only six other Iowans are on the DNC.

Both new positions prompted the question to Langston late Monday afternoon: Will the national positions force her to set aside any thought of running for Cedar Rapids mayor, an idea that she said a few weeks ago she had been asked to entertain?

Langston said the new national responsibilities wouldn’t prevent her from running for mayor. But she said she would give up the national posts if she were elected mayor.

No, she added, she hasn’t decided yet if she will run for mayor or not. She said she’s apt to decide in June.

She said she’d issue a press release when she decides. Asked if she wouldn’t hold a news conference to announce a mayoral run rather than issue a press release, she said, in fact, she would hold a news conference. She said the fact that she said “press release” and not news conference didn’t mean anything.

Langston said she has been vice president of the National Democratic County Officials, and now has been elected president to fill the slot left by previous president, who has taken a job as a deputy director of the Department of Housing & Urban Development.

Mayoral hopeful Corbett fires a new campaign shot: Don’t let city officials use new state-granted power to build a new city hall without a citizen vote

Mayoral candidate Ron Corbett keeps running for office even if no one yet has joined him.

In his latest campaign video on his campaign Website, Corbett is calling into question a change in state law, which applies to Iowa jurisdictions recovering from last year’s natural disasters and allows them to pass big bond issues to pay for public building projects without a citizen vote.

The law change was one Cedar Rapids’ lobbyist at the Iowa Legislature was instructed to pursue by the Cedar Rapids City Council.

The new law — it was approved with great final support by both houses of the legislature — does allow citizens to request a referendum on a bond proposal in a reverse referendum it they can muster signatures on petitions equal to at least 20 percent of the number of people who voted in the last presidential election. In Cedar Rapids, that would mean 13,332 signatures.

“Iowa has a longstanding tradition to allow people to vote on bond issues,” Corbett says in his campaign video.

In the video, Corbett recalls the Cedar Rapids school district’s effort to pass a bond issue some years ago, and Corbett says he, as president/CEO of the Cedar Rapids Area Chamber of Commerce at the time, helped the district scale back its plans to “the basics” in a way that convinced voters to back the bond issue.

Corbett is aware of the upside to the law change that will allow cities like cities like Cedar Rapids, which is trying to recover from a disastrous flood, to push ahead with bond issues without a citizen vote. The city faces tens of millions of dollars in building renovations and building replacements, and, arguably, such work could be delayed for long periods if the city must seek the required 60-percent voter approval on every issue.

For example, take the city’s downtown library, which was damaged in last June’s flood beyond repair. The city’s library board has decided it would prefer to build a new library at a new downtown site farther from the river. Federal dollars will pay for much of the work, but the money from the Federal Emergency Management Agency doesn’t all come in upfront. The thought is the city will need to bond for some projects to get the construction started as the FEMA money comes in. The same could apply to a host of other projects.

What Corbett singles out in his latest video, though, is what he says is the push in some quarters to build a brand new City Hall. And he fears the new change in Iowa law would allow such a thing to happen without a citizen vote.

We’ll see: Building a new city hall won’t be universally endorsed because the city’s existing City Hall, which is in the flood-damaged, now-unoccupied Veterans Memorial Building on May’s Island in the middle of the Cedar River, has a following. It will be renovated and hold something in any event.

What isn’t clear either is just want members of the City Council want to do. Council member Tom Podzimek said recently that the council has no preconceived notions as it begins a public participation process on the future of city government buildings in June. Council member Kris Gulick said he wants to see a financial analysis of retrofitting and retooling existing buildings as that discussion unfolds.

Corbett earlier has said the city doesn’t need to build a new “Taj Mahal” to house city government.

And he repeats that in his latest video: “I don’t think we need a new city hall,” he says. He says the city has plenty of existing buildings. If building a new city hall happens, though, voters should have a chance to vote on it, he says.

Wellington Heights’ president invites council for an awareness walk; castigates suggestion that garbage crews wear bullet-proof vests

Terry Bilsland, longtime president of the Wellington Heights Neighborhood Association, this week invited the City Council on a 20-block-long neighborhood walk the evening of May 21 to help concerned citizens make it clear they aren’t going to put up with criminal activity.

The walkers will travel through parts of both the Wellington Heights Neighborhood and the Mound View Neighborhood, which are split by First Avenue East.

A similar walk a few years ago mobilized council member Brian Fagan and others to push for a new Enhance Our Neighborhoods initiative, an initiative that got set aside a bit after last June’s flood, but is now, City Hall says, back on the front burner.

Evidence of that is the Police Department’s move to open a district police station in June at 1501 First Ave. SE between the two neighborhoods. Code enforcement officers and other city employees will call the district station home, too.

Bilsland, who is known for working with City Hall to try to get things done, had another issue on his own front burner that he let the City Council know about this week. Bilsland referred to a TV news report in which a city solid waste employee apparently said he wanted the city to issue him a bullet-proof vest to pick up garbage in Wellington Heights.

Bilsland, who is not shy about chiding the local media when he says it unfairly characterizes Wellington Heights, said the matter suppossedly centered on a dispute over garbage, and Bilsland wanted to know how often that has happened in the neighborhood and how often it happens elsewhere in the city. He was sure it was a rare event and certainly no more frequent in one place than another.

He told the City Council that he expected solid waste employees to wear the bullet-proof vests citywide if such vests were ever issued, and Bilsland said he’d be out checking to make sure the workers — if the city was going to spend such money — had the vest on even when it was 100 degrees outside and no matter which part of the city they were in.

Jade calls it quits on license tussle with Police Department; she sells her downtown Brick’s Bar & Grill; new owner has license approved

Jade Harper-Hronik, the seemingly battle-weary owner of Bricks Bar & Grill downtown, has thrown in the towel.

In a terse one-sentence note to City Hall, Harper-Hronik has told the Police Department and City Council to forget the fight between the business and the city over the renewal of her liquor license. She has sold the business, she tells the city.

The new owner, Drew Munson, had his application for a liquor license approved by the City Council on Wednesday evening.

Harper-Hronik and the Police Department had been going back and forth for many weeks over the application she submitted for her downtown venue’s annual liquor license renewal.

The department said she had not answered some questions truthfully, while she said she had answered all questions several months ago in an earlier application and that the current application was incomplete.
The City Council asked the department to work with Harper-Hronik, but the department came back with additional questions.

Harper-Hronik indicated in her last correspondence with the city that she had attempted to sell the business in the recent past, and apparently now she has.

Police Chief Greg Graham, who arrived in the city a year ago, has signaled that he is going to take liquor license applications seriously.

The downtown Tycoon nightspot also had a go-round with the Police Department and the tavern currently is operating with a kind-of probationary liquor license.

Mr. $475-an-hour — who became Mr. $225-an-hour — still a vital cog in the city’s drive to get all it can from FEMA

The City Council approved a contract extension last night for John Levy.

The extension takes Levy’s contract through June 30, adds $186,400 to the cost of it and brings the total cost to $786,400. The contract began Oct. 1.

Levy showed up at City Hall even as flood water was receding last June. He came with disaster experience from Hurricane Katrina and a message: Experience makes all the difference for cities if they are to make sure they get all they deserve in flood-disaster relief from the Federal Emergency Management Agency.

Levy was then an executive with an entity called Globe Midwest, and after the city hired him, he achieved a measure of celebrity when it became noted that the city was paying the firm $475 an hour for Levy’s services.

In the first three months after the flood, the city paid Globe Midwest $691,000.

The city had a parallel contract for other flood-recovery duties with a second disaster-services firm, Adjusters International, to which the city had paid $645,000 in the first three months of recovery.
Last September, the city put the contracts up for new bids. Several firms competed, but Adjusters International won one contract, and Levy, who created his own company, Base Tactical Disaster Recovery, won the second contract. The new contract, at least at its inception, called for Levy’s new firm to get paid $225 an hour for his services.

In a memo this week to the City Council, city staff members note that Levy’s current contract extended through Jan. 9, 2009, and had been extended twice, through May 9, at no additional cost.

The city says Levy matters.

At a Veterans Memorial Commission meeting earlier this week, Levy was center stage as commission members challenged City Manager Jim Prosser about why renovations to the city’s flood-damaged Veterans Memorial Building/City Hall on May’s Island hadn’t yet begun. The city has suggested the building has had $25 million in damage.

Prosser called on Levy.

Levy explained the negotiation that cities and FEMA engage in as they come to some agreement on how much damage has occurred to a building. The city has weighed in with its “worksheet” on the damages, while FEMA is still working on its worksheet. FEMA was preparing for a fourth visit to the building, he said. Negotiations then would follow. After that, a second process takes place in which the city presents its plan on how it will mitigate against flood damage to the building in the future, Levy said.

Prosser noted that the city estimates it may have as much as $500 million in damage to its public buildings and facilities. Moving FEMA by a few percentage points on the size of damages is worth millions of dollars to the city, he noted.

Council members weren’t kidding about killing a downtown coal plant; they now put their support for federal bucks behind a better U.S. Cellular Center and a new community/rec facility

The chase continues for federal dollars from the U.S. Department of Commerce that the Cedar Rapids community never really knew much about until it started trying to recover from last June’s flood.

A line of local projects is lined up for a shot at this pot of federal funds, and each of the project sponsors has come to City Hall asking the City Council to provide the required council endorsement of their projects.

A few weeks ago, the council decided to prioritize the requests so the Department of Commerce’s Economic Development Administration might use that information to help it make a decision on what to spend money on in Cedar Rapids.

And a few weeks ago, the council put the concept of some kind of new downtown steam plant at the top of its list.

But that was then. Last week, the council pulled the plug on any plans to rebuild Alliant Energy’s flood-damaged Sixth Street Generating Station using public dollars because the plan called for the plant to burn coal. The council can make such a decision because federal funds have to come through the city. They can’t come to privately owned Alliant.

The council is now ready to pass a new resolution with new priorities for how it would like to see Commerce Department funds spent in the city.

There no longer is any mention of a community steam plant.

At the top of the new list is a plan to upgrade the city’s U.S. Cellular Center and add a new convention center to it. Next in line, is a plan to build a new community center/recreation center to replace the flood-damaged Witwer Senior Center and Time Check Recreation Center and the aged Ambroz Recreation Center and outdated Bender indoor pool.

Both projects are among the fifteen projects in the Fifteen in 5 community planning initiative, which was conceived in 2005.

Below the U.S. Cellular Center and community center/rec center on the priority list: a new Economic Commerce Center; steam systems for Coe College and the two hospitals; planning to remedy freight train traffic in the downtown; and funding for a joint communications network now being built to connect city, county and school facilities.

City is doing what it said it would: setting up a customer-service infrastructure to expedite buyouts; now if the money would get here

The city is taking the steps it said it would take to set up a system to expedite the buyouts of some 1,300 flood-damaged properties once federal money arrives to pay for much of the buyout expense.

This week, the City Council is expected to approve a contract with JCG Land Services Inc., which has an office in Cedar Rapids, for up to $69,736 to provide one-to-one consultations with the owners of buyout properties.

The city has said it intends to buy out about 1,300 properties.

A first group includes 192 properties in the proposed “greenway” that will be created along the river with the construction of a new levee and floodwall system. Most of those property owners have already agreed to buyouts.

A second group of 554 properties sit in area next to the greenway that is expected to be needed as a construction area for new levees and floodwalls and related construction and alteration of existing streets and sewers.

A third group of another 600 properties are outside both areas but have been damaged beyond reasonable repair.

The contract with JCG Land Services Inc., which a City Hall “project evaluation team” chose over three other bidders, will pay the company $60.43 per property. The company said it will devote 11 people to the project, can start immediately and will be able to interview 270 owners a week.

Of note, JCG Land Services was one of the bidders late last month in an inspection contract awarded to Prosource Technologies, Inc., Minneapolis, Minn. The council voted 5-4 on the earlier contract after great debate about passing over two local companies for the Minneapolis one. Prosource also bid for the new contract, which is now expected to go to JCG Land Services Inc.

In a related matter, the City Council is expected to award a contract to Iowa Title Co. (the company has several Iowa offices including a Cedar Rapids one) to provide title and abstract services for the properties the city intends to buy out. The 12-month contract with Iowa Title Co., which a City Hall review team chose over one other bidder, is not to exceed $962,000. The company has the capacity to complete work on 150 to 200 properties a week, a city staff memo to the City Council states.

The city intends to use federal Community Development Block Grant funds to pay for these services. The city’s expectation continues to be that a large infusion of additional CDBG money will be coming to the state of Iowa and the city of Cedar Rapids this summer.

FEMA will pay $5 million more to control climate in six empty, flood-damaged buildings; work readying on one so Montessori can return to GTC space

The Federal Emergency Management Agency will continue to pay to control the temperature and interior climate of six unoccupied, flood-damaged city buildings through at least November 30, 2009.

The cost to continue the climate-control contract from June 1 though Nov. 30 is $5,012,526.

Four companies bid for the contract, with Munters Corp. Moisture Control Services, Amesbury, Mass., submitting the “most responsive” bid, according to city staff memo to the City Council.

Munters Corp.’s bid says the job will require $1.43 million in equipment and staff and another $3.58 million for fuel.

The six city buildings in need of climate control are the Veterans Memorial Building/City Hall; library; Paramount Theatre; the first-floor of the Public Works Building; the Ground Transportation Center bus depot; and the GTC’s Montessori School space.

As for the latter, it appears the school is readying to return to the space.

The City Council is expected to approve a professional contract with Ament Inc. for design and construction administration services as the flood-damaged GTC school space is renovated. The work is expected to start in September and be complete in June 2010. Ament will receive up to $198,424 for its services.

Port ‘O’ Jonnys to populate flood-hit neighborhoods at least through the end of 2009

Call the Port ‘O’ Jonny a testament to the fact that there is much yet to do in the city’s flood-hit neighborhoods.

The city has agreed to extend what it calls its “emergency” contract with the portable toilet company to provide portable toilets in the cities flood-damaged neighborhoods through the end of the year.

The anticipated cost, which will be paid by the Federal Emergency Management Agency, is $320,000.

In a memo to the City Council, city staff notes that that FEMA initially provided portable toilets only to abruptly withdraw them in September 2008, three months after last June’s flood.

Port ‘O’ Jonny, which already had a contract with the city, agreed to step in and replace what FEMA had provided. Currently, the city has 132 units in the flood-affected areas, a number it expects will decline as rebuilding areas continue.

Port ‘O’ Jonny charges $70.17 per month per unit plus a $25 charge each time a unit is serviced.

Vets Commission asks: Why is Linn County back in the May’s Island courthouse and jail while the Veterans Memorial Building/City Hall sits empty?

Three government buildings damaged in last June’s flood sit on May’s Island in the middle of the Cedar River.
Why is it that the Linn County Courthouse and the Linn County Jail are now back in business, while the Veterans Memorial Building that houses City Hall remains empty with no plans for now to reoccupy it?

That is the question that Pat Reinert, a member of the city’s Veterans Memorial Commission and an assistant federal prosecutor in Cedar Rapids, wanted City Manager Jim Prosser to answer at the commission’s meeting Monday evening.

The answer provided by Prosser was this:

The city isn’t Linn County. The city has more than 10 times as much flood damage to its public buildings and facilities than the county. More damage means longer, more complicated negotiations with the Federal Emergency Management Agency over the amount of damages that FEMA will pay to fix the building.

To this, commission member Gary Grant stressed to Prosser that the commission does not care if city government intends to return to the building.

“We think the building has great potential even if the City Council doesn’t come back,” Grant told Prosser.

All the commission wants is to be included in the planning for the building’s future, Grant and Reinert said.

This is one of the central rubs about the Veterans Memorial Building/City Hall that only has become exacerbated as the months have passed.

The City Council has never expressed any enthusiasm for returning to the building.

Prosser on Monday evening reminded the commission members that the City Council is embarking on a several-month public participation process to determine the futures of several of the city’s flood-damaged public buildings. Much of the talk over many months now has been about “co-locating” city, county and school functions in the same buildings. The county, which seemingly had the most potential synergies with the city, dropped out of the process a few months ago, and the City Council has used the word co-locate less if at all recently.

Prosser emphasized last night that he and the City Council go into the public participation process without any idea if city government will return to the Veterans Memorial Building/City Hall or not.

But as he and several council members repeatedly mention, one important factor will be the life-cycle costs of buildings. This often has seemed a euphemism in favor of building a new, “greener,” more efficient building than the existing City Hall.

Last week, though, council member Tom Podzimek said no one was going into the decision-making over buildings with any preconceived notions. At the same time, council member Kris Gulick said he wanted to make sure that the cost to retrofit existing buildings was factored into any analysis.

Monday evening’s commission meeting was eye-opening because it showed just how great a gulf exists between the city’s Veterans Memorial Commission of volunteer appointees and the paid machinery of city government.

Prosser, Casey Drew, the city’s finance director, and John Levy, a city consultant who is helping direct the city’s plans for its flood-damaged buildings, came armed with much information that, surprisingly, eleven months after the flood, was news to the commission. It was as if the Veterans Memorial Building/City Hall, the management of which the commission is responsible for, was a great mystery and Prosser, Drew and Levy were sharing some of the secrets.

Commission members were a bit testy and eager to let Prosser know that it was time to get moving on repairing the building.

In fact, on its own, the commission has been trying to hustle around to establish temporary electrical service to the building just so government –even if FEMA was paying the bill — could stop paying huge bills to run generators.

The city can’t just do nothing and let the building continue to “degrade,” Reinert said at one point.

“Quite frankly, it’s driving me insane,” he said.

The exercise in establishing temporary electrical service at a cost of about $9,000 has proven a bit of a comedy: Prosser and Drew said written bids weren’t used, and Drew explained that two commission-employed maintenance workers had their city-issued purchase cards revoked because they attempted to pay for services before they were provided against city policy. All of this is getting cleaned up.

Commission chairman Pete Welch listed on the commission agenda all the special state grants that the city secured for other local buildings: $5 million for the library; $10 million for a new human services building; $10 million for the National Czech & Slovak Museum & Library; $5 million for Options of Linn County; $5 million for the Paramount Theatre; $5 million for the Public Works Building; $16 million for the downtown steam issue. And zero for the Veterans Memorial Building/City Hall.

Commission member Gary Craig acknowledged that he had seen a city list that had sought $5 million for City Hall, but somewhere along the line that amount failed to make the final list.

Reinert said the building might get more backing if it is called its real name, the Veterans Memorial Building.

The commission noted that $118 million in state IJOBs funds are available for other public projects on a competitive basis. Prosser said the city intended to present plenty of proposals to try to win some of the money.

This is “a really critical city facility,” the city manager said of the Veterans Memorial Building.

Veterans Commission returns to May’s Island icon; frustrated commissioners learn that repairs to flood-damaged building still months away

The Veterans Memorial Commission last night held its first meeting in the Veterans Memorial Building/City Hall on May’s Island since the June 2008 flood.

It was a something of a sobering event.

The commission designed the agenda to try to encourage City Manager Jim Prosser to get work on the building started immediately, only to learn that such work must await a back-and-forth negotiation between the city and the Federal Emergency Management Agency over just how much damage the flood of almost a year ago did to the building.

Trying to rush ahead with work without following the FEMA process would only jeopardize FEMA payments to the city to make the building repairs, Prosser and John Levy, a consultant whose job it is to help the city get all that it feels it deserves from FEMA, told the commission.

Levy, of Base Tactical Disaster Recovery of Birmingham, Mich., told the commission that the city completed its “worksheet” on its assessments of damages to the building, but FEMA has not yet completed its worksheet. FEMA still has not done so, either, for other flood-damaged city buildings, including the Paramount Theatre, the city-owned Sinclair site, the city’s transit garage and former animal control shelter among other buildings, Levy noted.

Once FEMA submits its worksheet of the building’s scope of damages, Levy said the city and FEMA then sit down and debate “scope realignment” to see if FEMA and the city can agree on a final scope of damages. Then the city must submit plans to protect the building and its contents against future floods.

“It’s the process we’re stuck in, and it’s very frustrating,” said Levy, agreeing with commission members.

Levy said FEMA representatives have visited the building four times to date, and now want to return again to examine the building anew. He said it would be summer before there would be any developments.

Commission member Pat Reinert said the commission was eager to get to work on basic infrastructure of the building, what he called its “spine.” He said the commission wants to move electrical and heating air-conditioning systems to a room above the commission’s office on the building’s first floor. He said the commission even has considered using its own funds to start the process.

All of that will need to wait the FEMA process, Prosser and Levy said.

Even one modest attempt at a commission victory met with problems. The commission decided to spend about $9,000 to establish temporary electricity in the building. Reinert said the electricity will let the commission see how much damage is done to building’s air handlers and to make sure they don’t further degrade. But the commission didn’t follow city policy of written bids, a problem which could cause issues with FEMA later, Levy and Casey Drew, the city’s finance director, told the commission. The commission last night agreed to seek written bids so it can then have electricity in the building.

Prosser told the commission that cities that had experienced disasters told Cedar Rapids how much money they failed to obtain from FEMA because they embarked on work outside the FEMA process expecting to be reimbursed anyway. With the city looking at $500 million in damages to public buildings and facilities alone, the city stands to lose millions by not following procedure, Prosser told the commission.

There has been much tension between the commission and city officials and the City Council over the very basics: the commission thinks it owns the building, and the city thinks the city does. FEMA decided its payments will go to the city. Reinert last night said the commission wants to leave such disputes in the past.

Prosser noted that a public participation process begins next month on the future of city buildings. He said some people assume that city government won’t return to the May’s Island building, but he said no one has decided that.

Commission member Gary Grant said the commission doesn’t care if city government comes back or not. The commission’s concern is that the building is restored.

The lack of communication between commission members and city officials was clear last night when both sides learned that they agree that work needs to begin immediately to make improvements to the building’s celebrated Grant Wood-designed stained-glass window.

Commission members said there weren’t sure if the window had been insured prior to the flood, but Levy said it had been and that the city continues to make its case for a claim to be paid.

Both sides agreed to seek proposals to get the window assessed and fixed as quickly as possible. Both sides said they have wanted to remove the window months ago to begin the renovation of it.

District police station at 1501 First Ave. SE may be ready in mid-June; chief says some contractors, suppliers want to donate for storefront renovation

At a budget meeting this week, the City Council learned that it will cost as much as $55,000 to renovate a vacant storefront at 1501 First Ave. SE as the Police Department turns the space into its first district station.

In the last few weeks, Police Chief Greg Graham noted that the building’s owner was providing the building rent-free, though he has noted that, among other items, the city needed to put in a first-floor bathroom as part of the renovation work.

Graham this week told the council that he was meeting with contractors and suppliers yet this week, and he said he still hoped to have the district station open and operating by mid-June.

The cost of the renovation may be less than expected, he noted, because he said some contractors and suppliers want to donate work and supplies.

The chief, who arrived from Ocala, Fla., on June 1, 2009, has wanted to open district police stations, and, in fact, has plans for two others.

But the move to open the one at 1501 First Ave. SE comes about six weeks now after police officer Tim Davis was assaulted and hospitalized while investigating a robbery just two blocks from the site of the new district police station. Three teenagers have been arrested in the matter. Davis returned home from the hospital on Thursday.

New state legislation for disaster areas will let City Council pass big bond issues for public buildings without a mandatory citizen vote

Late last year, the City Council presented its state lobbyist — former state lawmaker Larry Murphy of Oelwein — with a wish list of requests to take to Des Moines when the state legislative session began in January.

At one meeting last fall, Murphy went over the list with the council and singled out one item that he doubted the legislature would ever agree to. He didn’t think there was a chance lawmakers would let cities sell bonds for expensive public building projects without taking the matter to voters.

Well, it turns out Murphy was wrong.

Deep in a recently passed piece of state legislation – Senate File 457 – is wording that will allow jurisdictions in which there have been natural disasters in the last year to approve the sale of bonds for repairs, improvements and replacements of flood-damaged buildings and facilities that today would require a 60-percent approval vote from voters.

Under the legislative change, city councils like Cedar Rapids’ could approve the sale of, say, $20 million to build a new City Hall – which surely will be a controversial matter if it ever should come to that — without prior voter approval.

The new legislation, instead, replaces a required referendum with what is known as a reverse referendum. In a reverse referendumm, citizens must take the initiative and mount a petition campaign to force the measure to a citizen vote. But to do so under the new law, the citizens would need to amass at least a number of signatures equal to 20 percent of the total number of city voters in the last presidential election.

Last November, 66,662 Cedar Rapidians voted in the presidential election. That means a petition drive would need to find 13,332 signatures to force a council decision on a bond matter to a vote.

This piece of a complicated bill, which passed both houses of the legislature unanimously, makes some sense. A city like Cedar Rapids, which faces hundreds of millions of dollars in renovations and, perhaps, the replacement of public buildings isn’t interested in going to voters every time it needs to get such work completed. Some of the bonding will be necessary, for instance, to front the cost of construction until money from the Federal Emergency Management Agency and the state of Iowa arrives once parts of construction projects are complete. Without the law change, a city would be required to have a bond vote on projects that ultimately will be paid off by federal and state dollars.

At last word, Gov. Chet Culver had yet to sign the legislation into law.

Among other legislative victories from the City Council’s priority list:

— Cities that have been declared disaster areas can sale bonds for projects and pay them off over 30 years instead of the current required 20-year period.

— Cities will be able to institute a franchise fee of up to 5 percent on electric and gas bills. The city of Des Moines, for one, had been collecting such a 5-percent franchise fee, a practice for which they now are fighting a court case over. For the first time, the Cedar Rapids council has put a franchise fee in place – a 1 percent fee – in its budget for the fiscal year beginning July 1. The new law will permit the council in future years to raise such a fee to 5 percent.

— Cities that have been declared disaster areas also now will be able to move quickly to take possession of abandoned, flood-damaged homes instead of having to the follow existing state law that has allowed many abandoned, empty homes in Cedar Rapids to stand as vacant eyesores for years.

Possible mayoral candidate Gary Hinzman has a good question, but the answer might best be divined by some good reading

Gary: Two pieces of suggested reading — the city charter and the city’s nepotism policy.

Mayoral prospect Gary Hinzman asked the city’s Board of Ethics a simple question: Do his wife, Linda Hinzman, and daughter, Paula Hinzman Mitchell, as well as a brother-in-law have to quit city employment if he is elected the city’s part-time mayor.

They won’t. But he is not going to get a simple answer like that.

At a meeting at noon Thursday at City Hall, the Board of Ethics concluded that it doesn’t have jurisdiction in the matter because Gary Hinzman is not now a city official and is not a prospective candidate for city office with a business relationship with the city that might create a conflict should he be elected.

The board members suggested that Gary’s relatives confer with the city’s human resources office or their department supervisors if they had any question about the matter.

However, board member Bill Quinby noted that, as he understood it, city employees in the city’s council/manager government report to the city manager and not to elected officials.

City Attorney Jim Flitz, who attended the board meeting, agreed with Quinby, saying city employees report to managers and directors who, in turn, report to the city manager.

Flitz made reference to the city charter which he says spells out what the City Council can and can’t do. He noted that the charter treats police and fire chiefs differently than other city employees.

The city charter gives the council, of which the mayor is one of nine members, the responsibility to hire the city manager, city attorney and city clerk.

The charter also says the city manager hires a police chief and fire chief “with the advice and consent of the city council.”

The city charter goes on to say it is the city manager’s duty to “supervise and direct the administration of city government and the official conduct of employees of the city appointed by the city manager including their employment, training, reclassification, suspension or discharge as the occasion requires, subject to state law.”

In another section, the charter says this of the City Council’s role:

“… (N)either the City Council nor any of its members shall control or demand the appointment or removal of any city administrative officer or employee whom the city manager or any subordinate of the city manager is empowered to appoint, but the council may express its views and fully and freely discuss with the city manager anything pertaining to the appointment and removal of such officers and employees.

“Further, a council member may not interfere with the supervision or direction of any person appointed by or under control of the city manager.”

Flitz also noted to the Board of Ethics that the city has a nepotism policy.

In that policy, it states that “no employee shall be supervised, either directly or indirectly, by a family member.”

Earlier this week, Hinzman said he was seeking an answer to the question about city-employee relatives should he decide to run for mayor. As much as anything, he wanted to be able to have something to lean on should the question come up.

Hinzman, long-time director of the Sixth Judicial District Department of Correctional Services, is a former Cedar Rapids police chief. He is sensitive to issues surrounding relatives in city employment because of questions raised in 1987 when he was police chief and his wife, then a civilian staff member in the Police Department, was positioned to become the department’s accountant. Then-Public Safety Commissioner Floyd Bergen transferred the accounting position to the auditor’s office to resolve the matter.

Deadline for news on huge pot of federal buyout money has passed; City Hall upbeat that good news will arrive soon

It’s been something of the Great Waiting at City Hall.

State officials who have come to Cedar Rapids in recent weeks, and city officials themselves, have said that the federal government would make a crucial disaster-funding announcement by the end of April on how it intended to divvy up a huge, $4-billion pot of national disaster relief.

It’s May 7.

These federal Community Development Block Grant funds are the ones that City Hall intends to use to pay for most of the buyouts of 1,300 flood-damaged Cedar Rapids homes. The city has put the cost at about $175 million.

In a talk yesterday, May 6, council member Justin Shields and Sue Vavroch, the city’s treasury operations manager who doubles as a key legislative point person for the city, both noted that they and others at City Hall were sitting on the edge of their chairs on Friday, May 1, expecting an announcement on the crucial federal funds.

Shields said there were “wild rumors” circulating. But nothing came.

Shields and Vavroch said the expectation now is that the announcement will come within the next couple of weeks.

“We are frustrated that we haven’t heard. But we are very hopeful,” Vavroch said.

Shields said he remains upbeat and confident that the dollars will come in.

A big concern of City Hall’s and of the state of Iowa’s has been the way the U.S. Department of Housing & Urban Development dispensed an earlier allocation of CDBG disaster funds last year. The thought is that Iowa got shortchanged in favor of former President George Bush’s state of Texas, Cedar Rapids and Iowa officials have suggested.

This week, Shields and Vavroch said that it was likely that the federal formula used to divide up the latest $4 billion in CDBG money will be more favorable to Iowa.

City Manager Jim Prosser characterized the arrival of the expected new round of CDBG funds as “huge.”

He noted that the city has been busy putting into place a buyout registration system so that it can begin the process of buyouts as speedily as possible once money arrives.

Vavroch emphasized that the announcement of the new allocation comes first. Actual allocation of funds will take another couple months at least, Prosser said.

Buyouts in the proposed greenway along the Cedar River – there are 192 properties there – will be made with flood-mitigation funds from the Federal Emergency Management Agency. Those funds are expected to arrive in the next few to several months, city officials have said.

Basic flood insurance for city buildings costs considerably less than first feared; but cost of extra insurance needed later apt to still be scary

The city can buy basic flood protection for 46 of the city’s flood-damaged city buildings for $101,129, a sum considerably less than an earlier estimate of $280,000.

The purchase of this basic line of insurance from the National Flood Insurance Program provides $500,000 in coverage for damage to a structure and $500,000 to the structure’s contents.

The cost is considerably less than the estimate, in part, because the city has decided it needs a total of $17.08 million in coverage, and the estimate was based on $25 million of coverage, Mike Shoger, the city’s risk manager, explained on Wednesday.

Shoger said the actual cost for basic flood protection is less, too, because some buildings at the city’s waste water treatment plant are not insurable under the national program; some buildings are a total loss – the Time Check Recreation Center and the Animal Control shelter, for instance – and don’t now need insurance; some original damage estimates are less than earlier thought; and the city isn’t insuring buildings on the city-owned Sinclair packinghouse site.

In total, 46 buildings and structures – from the Veterans Memorial Building/City Hall, library, bus depot, Science Station and Paramount Theatre to the dugouts at the Tait Cummins Softball Complex – will be protected under the insurance.

For most of the city’s flood-damaged buildings, insurance provided by the National Flood Insurance Program is all that will be needed.

However, extra insurance will be needed for major city buildings like the Veterans Memorial Building/City Hall and the Paramount Theatre once the city accepts money from the Federal Emergency Management Agency and begins to make repairs on them.

One estimate put the cost of extra insurance above $3 million a year, an amount that prompted City Council members to ask city staff to request a waiver of insurance from Iowa’s insurance commissioner.

Five companies bid to provide basic National Flood Insurance Program coverage to the city.

The bids were evaluated on cost, coverage and deductibles and experience with handling flood insurance.

The city’s selection team concluded that TrueNorth of Cedar Rapids provided the “most advantageous” bid to the city from five proposals. The City Council is scheduled to vote on the bids at its Wednesday evening council meeting.

TrueNorth’s bid was $101,129; Marcotte Agency of Omaha, Neb., $98,414; Millhiser Smith of Cedar Rapids, $101,247; Stamy Agency of Cedar Rapids, $99,070; and Aon Risk Services of Omaha, Neb., $106,863, according to the city.

Don’t forget mayoral prospect Gary Hinzman; he asks ethics board if a city employee must quit should a relative become mayor or council member

Don’t forget about mayoral prospect Gary Hinzman, long-time director of the Sixth Judicial District Department of Correctional Services and a former Cedar Rapids police chief.

In a talk with Hinzman on Wednesday, it was clear Hinzman isn’t going to let some successful fund-raising by mayoral candidate Ron Corbett, a former Republican speaker of the Iowa House of Representatives, or comments this week about possible mayoral interest from Linn County Supervisor Linda Langston, a Democrat, stop him from considering a mayoral run.

Nor will Tuesday’s news that mayoral prospect and City Council member Monica Vernon has moved from the Republican Party to the Democratic Party.

Hinzman noted that his plan, if he does decide to run for mayor, is to shoot right down the middle and run as an independent and as an agency director who he says knows how to get things done. After all, elective city office is non-partisan, he said.

A call to Hinzman this week was prompted by an announcement that the city’s Board of Ethics – the only such local board in Iowa – will convene at noon Thursday to take up an issue first raised by Hinzman in an e-mail to the ethics board.

Hinzman on Wednesday said he wants to make sure that there would be no conflicts, should he become mayor, with having his wife and daughter working for the city and him serving as part-time mayor.

His wife, Linda, is a financial analyst in the city Finance Department and their daughter, Paula, is a supervisor in the city’s Housing Services office.

Hinzman said the ethics board will consider issuing an advisory opinion on the matter.

He said he just wants to have an answer should he be queried about it in the future, though, he said he suspects that city employees would not need to give up their jobs should relatives get elected to the City Council.

At the same time, Hinzman said he is making sure he can direct a state agency at the same time as he might be mayor. He is fairly sure he can do that, too. He points to Eugene Meyer, now head of the Iowa Department of Public Safety, who served as mayor of West Des Moines while head of the state’s Division of Criminal Investigation.

As for getting in the mayoral race, Hinzman said there is some value for now in sitting on the sidelines. One fear, he said, is that the political parties will commit huge resources to party candidates and make it tough for a non-partisan candidate to compete.

Hinzman said a smart candidate with half as much money as the big spenders can compete. Staying on the sidelines now will lessen the amount of money a campaign will need to raise, he said.

Two weeks ago, Corbett, vice president at trucking firm CRST Inc., reported that he had already raised some $42,000, nearly the amount that each of the candidates spent in the 2005 mayoral race.

Vernon says her jump from Republican to Democrat has nothing to do with a possible mayoral run against Republican Corbett

Council member and mayoral prospect Monica Vernon says her jump from the Republican to Democratic Party on Tuesday has nothing to do with her plans to run or not run for mayor.

She declined to say if she was in or out of the mayoral race.

A Republican since she first registered to vote as a teenager, Vernon, 51, says she has been thinking for “a long time” about changing political parties, “and I just changed.”

At the same time, she says that the Republican Party is different than it once was and so, she says, is she.
“And as a woman, as a person who believes that we must absolutely take action and make progress here (in Cedar Rapids), being a Democrat makes more sense to me,” she says.

She adds, “I want to be true to what I am. … I want to be somewhere that’s closest to where I am. … It’s really a tough one. But I’ve got to be true to myself.”

Vernon, a business owner in her second year of a four-year council term, says she is someone who understands both Republican and Democratic parties well and is someone who has friends in both places.

City Hall elective office is non-partisan; candidates don’t run by political party. But political parties, nonetheless, play a role behind the scenes.

When Vernon was elected in 2007 to the District 2 council seat, she received the backing of both labor and business, which she says is proof that she is a person who has a history of crossing party lines.

The only declared mayoral candidate to date is Ron Corbett, vice president of trucking firm CRST Inc. and a former Republican speaker of the Iowa House of Representatives.

Why did mayoral prospect Monica Vernon change from Republican Party to Democratic Party?

First it was U.S. Sen. Arlen Specter. Now it’s Cedar Rapids council member Monica Vernon.

In recent days, Specter changed his political party affiliation from Republican to Democrat as he readies to try to keep his seat in the U.S. Senate from the state of Pennsylvania. He said he couldn’t win the Republican primary there in a Republican Party that he said had moved to far to the right.

But why is Vernon — a long-time Republican with a husband, Bill, who as recently as 2008 was a member of the party’s state central committee — moving to the Democratic Party?

Vernon, who is the second year of a four-year term as District 2 council member, has been among a group of people considering a run this year for Cedar Rapids mayor, which, like other City Council seats in Iowa, is a non-partisan post.

This year’s mayoral race, though, surely will come with a partisan flavor.

To date, only Ron Corbett, a former Republican speaker of the Iowa House of Representatives, has announced that he is running for mayor.

On Monday, Linn County Supervisor Linda Langston, a prominent Democrat, said Democrats were urging her to take on Corbett. She said she was considering a mayoral race, but was not yet convinced she would run.

Council member Brian Fagan is another person mentioned as a possible mayoral candidate, and Fagan is registered to vote without political party. He changed his registration to Republican so he could compete in the January 2008 presidential caucuses, and he changed it to Democratic so he could vote in the June 2008 primary, the Linn County Auditor’s Office reports.

The county office said it processed Vernon’s change of party from Republican to Democratic just today, Tuesday.

Twenty-two apply for City Hall flood-recovery post that comes with a job description worthy of Superman

The job description for City Hall’s new flood-recovery manager sounded worthy of Superman when it was released a few weeks ago.

However, the job description hasn’t intimidated applicants. Twenty-two people applied for the position before Monday’s “preferred” application deadline, reports Conni Huber, the city’s human resources director.
Others still can submit applications, but those who met the Monday date will be reviewed and considered first.

Huber says some of the applicants are from Cedar Rapids. Like in any pool of applicants, not every applicant meets every qualification, she says. For instance, she says not all have a college graduate degree preferred in an applicant.

A review will select the best applicants and a City Hall selection team will interview those. The plan is to have a flood-recovery manager in place by the first anniversary of the flood in June.

The flood-recovery manager position inside City Hall is an unusual one in that the idea for the position emanated from the private sector and because most of the position’s cost will be paid by the private sector.

The creation of the position provoked a dispute within the City Council when council members Justin Shields, Monica Vernon and Jerry McGrane pushed to have the flood-recovery manager sidestep City Manager Jim Prosser and report directly to the council. The six others on the council said Prosser was the city government’s CEO and the boss of city employees, including any flood-recovery manager.

Rumor mill is right: Linn Supervisor Langston says she is considering suggestions that she run for Cedar Rapids mayor

Linn County Supervisor Linda Langston says she’s been asked to consider running for mayor of Cedar Rapids, “so I’m considering it,” she says.

Langston commented on Monday after she was asked about rumors that she might try a go at the mayor’s race.

She said she would make a decision soon.

“I really like the job I’m doing now, but I’m not ignoring the other,” Langston said. “Someone said, ‘This decision is yours, but you really got to want it.’

“And I’m not entirely sure at this point in time if I really want it. I am happy with the job I am presently doing. But I have not completely written off the consideration that other people have asked me to take seriously.”

Langston, a Democrat, said she is getting much of the push from other Democrats.

What she mostly needs right now, she said, is information. She said she’s developed a sense of what people want in a mayor and where they want the city to go as she has attended community gatherings and neighborhood meetings.

Now she said she is trying to figure out, “Is there any aspect of my alignment and interest that fits with the broader community?” she said.

Langston noted that Cedar Rapids’ form of government is not a strong-mayor form: The mayor is one of nine votes on the council.

“And the challenge is constructing what I would think of as a working consensus,” she said. “And when you don’t know the other players …”

The reference to players is a recognition that six of the nine council seats, including the mayor’s seat, are up for reelection in November.

“I consider myself a good consensus-builder, but it’s still a tough time. It’s a tough time to consider this,” Langston said.

She said she will decide quickly to put an end to the rumor mill that is churning now over her possible mayoral bid.

Ron Corbett, vice president at trucking firm CRST Inc. and former state Republican legislator, previously has announced his candidacy for mayor.

“Clearly, Ron is very committed to this,” Langston said. “Whether I am in or out of this race, I have absolutely every belief that Ron is in it for the long haul.”

Six of nine council seats up for election this year; one seat, Jerry McGrane’s, now has a race

We have a City Hall council race.

Kathy Potts, a self-described homemaker and community activist who ran unsuccessfully last fall as a Republican for a spot in the Iowa Legislature, will compete to unseat incumbent Jerry McGrane for the District 3 seat on the City Council.

Potts, 50, who grew up in Mississippi, came to Cedar Rapids in 1999 with her husband, Tom, and four children when her husband took at job with Rockwell Collins.

If elected, she said she will listen to constituents, work hard to serve them and will see what she can do to see that the city depends more on local experts and less on out-of-state consultants to help on city projects.

She calls the current council “indecisive,” “lacking in leadership” and sometimes focused on matters that aren’t important.

Potts, of 1118 First St. SW, gives the council an average grade on flood recovery.

She and her family had water in their basement following the June 2008 flood, though she notes that they were fortunate compared to others nearby and many others in the city. An adult son and his wife now live with her and her husband because of flood damage to their residence, The Roosevelt apartment building downtown.

Cedar Rapids often is said to have — whether real or imagined — a west side and east side divided by the Cedar River, and the District 3 council district is the only one of the city’s five council districts with precincts on both sides of the river. Potts says both sides of the river are the same to her.

She calls District 3 a diverse district with neighborhoods and areas of differing income levels as well as the downtown.

She says she wants the city to work to keep and create jobs so that her children and their children can stay in the city.

Part of the Wellington Heights Neighborhood is in the District 3 council district, but Potts says she can’t find a bad part of that neighborhood no matter how hard she looks. She says there may be three or four bad houses here and there, but there isn’t a bad neighborhood, she says. She does not want the Police Department to get “heavy-handed” in reaction to a recent flurry of neighborhood crime, she says.

Potts says she is not running against incumbent McGrane, 69, a retiree and former Oak Hill Jackson Neighborhood Association president, but rather running to show voters what she has to offer.

“Jerry’s a nice guy,” she says.

Potts becomes just the third candidate to make it known publicly that she or he is running for a seat on the council. Six of nine council seats are up for a vote in the Nov. 3 election.

In addition to McGrane, Ron Corbett also has announced he is running for a spot on the council. Corbett, 48, vice president of trucking firm CRST Inc., wants to be mayor.

Downtown establishment Brick’s still going round with Police Department on liquor license renewal

Bars aren’t churches, but, nonetheless, City Hall has some new expectations when it comes to the annual renewal of a liquor establishment’s liquor permit.

So the saga of the downtown Brick’s Bar and Grill, 320 Second Ave. SE, continues.

At the start of April, the City Council set aside a request from the Police Department to deny a liquor license renewal to Brick’s because Brick’s application for the license had some problems. The Police Department called omissions untruths, while the bar’s owner, Jade Harper-Hronik, called it an incomplete application.

Back then, the police made note of Harper-Hronik’s arrest for intoxication and felony convictions of two people associated with the downtown club.

In capturing the consensus of the City Council in early April, council member Brian Fagan asked Police Chief Greg Graham if he would be willing to meet with Harper-Hronik to see if he could create a consequence short of license denial for what the Police Department called untruthfulness. Graham, who said consequences are important, said he would be willing to do so.

It seemed like all was well.

Then a week ago, the Brick’s license matter returned to the City Council agenda, again in a way that looked as though the Police Department was seeking to deny the license renewal.

The matter then was pulled from the agenda.

This week, in a letter to the council, Harper-Hronik refutes the latest questions about her business practices in a letter to the City Council.

Harper-Hronik states that unpaid state sales tax payments have been paid. She states that she has satisfied two liens on the property. She states that her husband, Richard, did not threaten a prospective buyer of the business over the potential buyer’s decision not to make the purchase. She states that inspections of the premises are in the process of being completed.

In early April, Harper-Hronik won sympathy from some council members because she purchased and renovated the downtown Brick’s after the June flood.

She continues to argue that she had correctly filled out paperwork in September on the bar and for another drinking establishment in the city even if there were some questions raised about the latest application.

In any event, should the council ultimately deny a license to Brick’s, the bar can stay open as it appeals to the state’s Alcohol Beverages Division. Appeals can take up to a year to resolve.

And it’s not just Brick’s.

The Police Department in recent weeks convinced the City Council to block the renewal of a liquor license for The Tycoon, which is just down the block from Brick’s. The Tycoon, which did not move to renew its license in timely fashion, now has a probationary license and has agreed to better police its bar customers in an agreement with the Police Department.

After years of neighbor complaints about racket and stray bullets, state ombudsman descends on Police Department shooting range

The pleas from property owners next to the Police Department’s regional outdoor shooting range out on Old River Road SW reach back to at least 2004.

Those neighbors, led by retired Cedar Rapids firefighter Don Sedrel, made their way to the state office of Citizens’ Aide/Ombudsman, which asked the neighbors to try to reach a compromise with City Hall and the Police Department. In March 2007, the neighbors said the problem – the volume and frequency of noise and potential safety hazards from stray and ricocheting bullets – had changed little.

That’s when Bert Dalmer, assistant citizens’ aide/ombudsman, began looking into what state law might say about the police firing range so close to neighbors, Dalmer now tells City Hall in a letter.

In that letter that arrived at City Hall this week, Dalmer concludes that the outdoor range, at 2727 Old River Rd. SW, may violate state law.

He makes note that the particular section of state law in question falls under a section of state law that prohibits hunting near buildings and feedlots.

Nonetheless, Dalmer argues that the law prohibits discharging a firearm within 200 yards of a building occupied by people without the consent of the owner or tenant.

He says four buildings are within 200 yards of the police firing range: Tracy and Cheryl Sedrel’s home at 2901 Old River Rd. SW; the home of Pat Freilinger at 2949 Old River Rd. SW; the home of Chris Simonsen at 2849 Old River Rd. SW; and a business operated by Mike McMurrin at 2665 Old River Rd. SW. Don Sedrel’s place at 3261 Old River Rd. SW is a little farther away, though on Thursday he said he now owns 2901 Old River Rd. SW, too.

Dalmer says the specific section of state law allows exceptions for target shooting ranges that are open to the public and have been used prior to the erection of a building occupied by the public after May 14, 2004.

However, the police range is not open to the public and does not meet the second part of the exception. The range opened in the late 1960s, and two of the occupied buildings nearby were build many years before that.

Dalmer says city officials have noted in the past that the city has taken steps to better supervise the shooting range and to limit the times when shooting occurs.

But he says, “Regardless, I question whether these mitigating actions are adequate to address the prohibitions (in state law).” Neighbors have continued to complain that too little has changed, he adds.

Neither Police Chief Greg Graham nor City Attorney Jim Flitz returned calls on Thursday.

Out at Freilinger’s home and shop on Old River Road SW on Thursday afternoon, he and Don Sedrel said little had changed to make living next to the shooting range tolerable. Law enforcement officers were shooting at the range Thursday morning, they said, and shooting practice had taken place every day this week, Sedrel noted.

Sedrel said what has started out 50 years ago as a pistol gallery for city police officers has become a regional range with city, county, state and federal agencies using it. There are days when neighbors might have to listen to 8,000 rounds of shooting go on, he said.

“There’s absolutely no excuse that anyone should have to live with that kind of noise,” Sedrel added.

Neither he nor Freilinger have heard anything from city officials about the range for what Sedrel thought might be two years.

Both wondered if the city could take its shooting practice to the Matsell Bridge Natural Area near Viola where there is a public shooting range and where the Linn County Sheriff’s Department is establishing a range.

Both said they would not consent to the status quo, but Freilinger said he might be open to working with the Police Department if there is no option in the short run and if closing the range prevented the department from performing its job.

One thing that has changed is that the Linn County Sheriff’s Office has decided to leave the city’s shooting range and open its own in rural Linn County. Meanwhile, the Iowa City Police Department, which also has used the Cedar Rapids range, has been looking for its own place to practice.

Most interestingly, in January 2009, Cedar Rapids Police Chief Greg Graham and other city officials proposed building a $35-million Regional Public Safety Training Center with an indoor shooting range. One of the arguments cited for the need to build a new center was the problems associated with the city’s existing shooting range.

“The State Ombudsman is investigating the possibility of closing the police shooting range because of noise pollution and its proximity to houses and businesses in the area,” the city’s written request for federal funds for the new training center states.

The request went on to say that “the current situation dictates drastic changes and soon.”

In his letter to City Hall in late April, the state’s Dalmer asks city officials to respond within 30 days if it believes his arguments are in error or if the state law does not apply to the city’s police shooting range. After a review of the city’s response, he will decide if formal recommendations to the city are warranted, he says.

Red-light and speed-enforcement cameras a step closer as city seek proposals for “bullet-resistant” cameras that provide “indisputable” proof

City Hall and the Police Department weren’t kidding.

The two have now moved ahead and are seeking proposals, due May 18, from contractors who will install and maintain red-light enforcement cameras at up to 10 intersections as well as a mobile speed-enforcement camera and a fixed speed-enforcement camera.

For the contractor who wins the city’s business, cameras are expected to be in place at four intersections within 90 days after the award of a contract and in place at six others within six months. The mobile speed-enforcement camera should be ready by Sept. 1 and the fixed speed-enforcement camera by Oct. 1.

For violators, warning tickets with snapshots of a violation will arrive in the mail for the first month the system is in operation.

The city is seeking an automated, digital traffic-camera enforcement program that is a “total turn-key operation with no program expenditures to be incurred by the city.”

Just how much an actual ticket will cost a violator to cover the contractor’s needs and the city’s needs will be part of each contractor’s proposal to the city.

The contractor pays for cameras, computer hardware, computer software, poles, wiring, installation, maintenance, training, reporting, community education and awareness on issues related to red-light violations.

Some intersections may have cameras at more than one approach to the intersection, and the city also wants a system that can expand to more intersections.

In its request for proposal, the city says it would prefer a camera system that provides both still photos and video of sufficient resolution to ensure “indisputable” proof of violations.

The cameras will capture an image of a vehicle’s rear license plate as well as a view of the specific intersection in which the violation is alleged to have occurred. The cameras must have a capability of flashing to take pictures at night and the cameras must be tamper-resistant and “bullet-resistant.”

The city’s request for proposals notes, too, that the red-light and speeding infractions will be city offenses and so will not be reported to insurance companies or the state motor vehicle office. Cedar Rapids police officers will review all photos and determine if an offense has occurred. Appeals of infractions will be made to the court system.

The contract is for three years.

The city’s proposal requires the contractor to remove the system at no cost to the city if the state of Iowa or the courts in the future decide that the cameras no longer are permitted. (To date, state courts have allowed the cameras). At each one-year point in the contract, the city also can ask that the system be removed if the city determines it is not effective.

The city is asking each of the companies submitting proposals to provide a fee structure, which details how much revenue goes to the company and how much to the city.

The city will pick a contractor based on 10 criteria, including qualifications and experience, references, total scope of services being offered and fee structure.

In the city budget for the fiscal year beginning July, the city anticipates it can raise $750,000 for the city from the enforcement cameras.

Tickets go to the owners of vehicles, whether they were driving or not. The city has said the owner has the responsibility to get the ticket to the driver or pay the ticket.

The flood of 2008 eroded riverbank in crucial spots; without $800,000 in repairs, water and waste water infrastructure remains at risk

The flood of 2008 also loused up and eroded the banks of the Cedar River in places.

Sufficiently so as the 2008 flood damage, that the city, in concert with the federal Emergency Watershed Protection program, is spending up to $815,065 to stabilize the riverbank in six crucial spots. Without the repairs, certain water lines, water wells and sewer lines along the river will be at risk of being damaged, Pat Ball, the city’s utilities director states in a memo to the City Council.

The city is responsible for 25 percent of the cost of the improvements, and much of that share of the project expense will go to hire Foth Infrastructure and Environment LLC, for the engineering part of the riverbank stabilization project.

In his memo, Ball said the city is likely to do additional riverbank stabilization work at its own cost to make sure its water and waste water infrastructure is protected.

Costs to city climb for its sewage sludge while providing area farmers with free fertilizer

The city’s nearly unending supply of sewage sludge keeps costing even as it keeps farmers in a steady supply of fertilizer with no expense to them.

The city’s travails with biosolid sludge, which is the byproduct left over after the waste water treatment process at the city’s huge Water Pollution Control plant, are just another result of the June 2008 flood.

The flood, among other things, damaged the WPC facility, which is located on Bertram Road SE near Highway 13. And among the flood damage at the plant was damage to the plant’s incinerator, which is used to burn the sludge left over after the treatment plant. With the incinerator out of commission, the city has had to do something else with the sludge.

For a few months after the flood, the city was forced to transport the sludge to a private Illinois landfill at high cost because the local solid waste agency did not want to take up any of its limited landfill space with the sludge.

In recent years, periodically some of WPC plant’s sludge has gone to area farmers for fertilizer at times when the plant’s incinerator has been down for maintenance. But with the incinerator out of commission, a much larger amount of sludge has gone to more farmers to use on more fields. In fact, in recent months, the city has had to stockpile the sludge in certain places in the country until farmers could get back into fields to apply the material.

Last week, the City Council approved additional spending on sludge because the WPC’s incinerator has taken more time to repair than had been thought, Pat Ball, the city’s utilities director, reported in a memo to the City Council.

Last October, the council had authorized spending $800,000 from WPC revenues, which are paid by user fees, to hire contractor Wulfekuhle Injection and Pumping to haul and apply sludge to farm fields.

Last week, the council added another $800,000 to the contract.

Long term, the city council and the solid waste agency board still hold out hopes that one day the sludge might be burned, perhaps along with municipal garbage, to make energy from waste.

Indian Creek Nature Center bestows a Czech name that means ‘perpetual’ on newly acquired woods

The Indian Creek Nature Center has named 28 newly acquired acres of woods at the corner of 44th Street and Otis Road SE the Vecny Woods. That’s pronounced VEE-etch-nee.

It means “perpetual” in Czech. The nature center’s board of directors chose the name to honor Czech immigrants who settled in the Cedar Rapids area, Julie Sina, the city’s parks and recreation director, explained in a memo to the City Council last week.

The City Council also approved the new name because the city actually owns the land, which it acquired on behalf of the center with a grant from the state of Iowa’s REAP program – Resource Enhancement and Protection. For a nominal fee, the city leases the land to the nature center, which has established an endowment fund to pay to care for the land.

The center is engraving the name Vecny Woods on a rock so it is ready for a dedication ceremony for the site on May 3, Sina said in her council memo last week.

Council wrestles over hiring local firm vs. hiring “more responsive” one and sides, 5-4, with the Minneapolis outfit

Do you hire a professional firm because it’s a local one with a less expensive proposal even if a City Hall review team has concluded another firm from out of state has a better proposal and brings more horses to the task?

That was the central question this week that provoked a spirited debate among City Council members, who, in a rare 5-4 vote, awarded the contract to ProSource Technologies Inc., Minneapolis, Minn.

The city will pay ProSource an estimated $516,400 over six months for the firm to provide data required by the Federal Emergency Management Agency on the estimated 1,300 flood-damaged homes and other flood-damaged properties that the city hopes to buy out.

The contractor will obtain right of entry to properties, verify ownership, document the property’s legal description, check an owner’s insurance coverage at the time of the flood and notify lien holders of the intent to demolish a property.

ProSource’s proposal charges the city $380 per property while a bid by AllTrans Inc. of Cedar Rapids would have charged $350 per property for the work.

The City Hall’s review team concluded that ProSource and a third contractor, JCG Land Services of Cedar Rapids, were the top two of four proposals based on of the four contractors’ overall proposals, experience, method of approach to the project and cost.

Council members Tom Podzimek, Monica Vernon, Jerry McGrane and Pat Shey voted to award the contract to AllTrans Inc., while Mayor Kay Halloran and council members Brian Fagan, Kris Gulick, Justin Shields and Chuck Wieneke supported the city staff recommendation to award the contract to ProSource.

Podzimek argued that the council has spent some time over many months discussing what steps it might take to purchase more products and services from local companies. It didn’t make any sense to talk about buying locally if the city wasn’t, too, going to look at hiring locally as well, he said.

Podzimek said this contract related to property acquisitions was a chance to use a local employer with local employees and a chance to give a young, local firm the opportunity to build skills that the firm then could use to bid on other jobs. The city would be using its disaster recovery, he said, to help beef up the resume of a local firm for other disaster recovery projects.

The inference was that the Cedar Rapids firm then could become the out-of-state consultant – the council here as gotten some criticism for hiring out-of-state consultants – that other cities in other states might hire.

On the other side of the debate, council member Shields used the example of a boiler and said he didn’t want anyone building a boiler under the theory that, let’s give this person the job, “You got to learn sometime.” Cedar Rapids needed to hire “the very best,” he said.

Disagreeing with Shields, council member Vernon – she and Shields have been a one-two punch in recent weeks in trying, unsuccessfully, to arrange to have a new flood-recovery chief sidestep City Manager Jim Prosser – said the contract to assess properties for buyouts was a “great opportunity” to buy local and award the contract to the low-cost bidder. She said the contract involved “basic things” for which previous like experience might not be as important as other work the city needs to be completed.

Both Rita Rasmussen, the city’s senior real estate officer, and Prosser emphasized that the local firm did not provide a “detailed scope” of plans of how they would deliver the service.

Rasmussen told the council that the city’s proposal review team had concerns about whether AllTrans had the capacity to do the work in a timely manner. AllTrans did not address “capacity issues,” she said.

Council member Kris Gulick asked, specifically, about “adequate staffing,” and he wondered how many staff members AllTrans would bring to the job and how many ProSource would. Rasmussen said AllTrans listed four employees while ProSource said it would bring many more than that to the job.

The 5-4 council vote backed a resolution awarding the contract to the Minneapolis firm ProSource because it had submitted the “most responsive and responsible” proposal.

In hiring professional firms, cost is only one of several variables that jurisdictions look at in a competition for a city contract.

In matters involving price bids — street contracts, for instance — jurisdictions must pick the lowest responsible bidder.

Corbett not bashful about letting would-be mayoral-race foes know that he’s beating bushes for bucks for the coming match

This year’s mayoral race looks like it will be richer than the 2005 race in which Kay Halloran, a retired attorney and former state lawmaker, defeated Scott Olson, a commercial Realtor and architect, in a close contest.

That conclusion comes after mayoral candidate Ron Corbett’s fund raiser downtown Thursday evening in the Armstrong Centre, an event that 135 people attended, he reports.

In brief remarks at the gathering, Corbett pushed for a greater emphasis on economic development and for what he said is the need to “repair” Cedar Rapids’ “image” as a progressive city on the move.

Corbett also announced that, to date, his campaign has raised $42,325.

It’s not May yet, it’s still six months from the Nov. 3 election, and no one else has entered the race against Corbett, vice president of trucking firm CRST Inc. and a former state legislator and former president/CEO of the Cedar Rapids Area Chamber of Commerce.

But Corbett already is closing in on raising as much money as Halloran did and Olson did in 2005, which was the first election in the city’s new council/manager government, a government with part-time elected officials.

In 2005, Olson took in $54,701 in campaign contributions and Halloran, $53,302, $20,050 of which included her own money.

Asked at the time what races for the part-time mayoral slot should cost in Cedar Rapids, Halloran said, “I’m glad it wasn’t any more than that, that’s for sure.”

The job is a four-year one with a salary of about $30,000.

Keep in mind, the 2005 campaign spending amounted to chicken feed compared to spending in the 2001 mayoral race here in which Paul Pate — a former state senator, former Iowa secretary of state and former gubernatorial candidate — defeated three-term incumbent Lee Clancey, the city’s first female mayor.
In that race, the two candidates together raised $226,811. The mayor’s job then was a full-time one and paid about $80,000 a year.

In the Halloran-Olson race in 2005, Olson said the $54,000 he raised was “probably the right range” for a competition for part-time Cedar Rapids mayor.

He raised $4,750 from three political action committees — Realtors, builders and building trades — and the rest from 240 individual contributors.

Halloran had about 100 individual contributors and raised about $11,000 from labor political action groups.
To date, Corbett says he has had more than 240 contributors.

Four people are considering taking Corbett on: council members Brian Fagan and Monica Vernon, Gary Hinzman, long-time director of the Sixth Judicial District Department of Correctional Services and a one-time police chief here, and 2005 candidate Olson. Incumbent Halloran has not announced her intentions.

Asked in passing this week about Corbett’s fund raising, Fagan said the 2009 mayoral race won’t be about raising money.

One campaign novelty to date — a pioneering one for a local Cedar Rapids race — is Corbett TV, which is Corbett’s own video enterprise that he runs at his campaign Web site, roncorbett.com.

Solution to downtown steam troubles now focusing on public dollars to rebuild Alliant’s Sixth Street plant as it was — as a coal plant

Federal, state and city officials all are looking hard to see if an infusion of public dollars could rebuild Alliant Energy’s flood-damaged Sixth Street Generating Station to what it was.

That is, a coal-fired plant delivering relatively low-cost steam for heat and other uses for the downtown and the near downtown, vital industries nearby, including Quaker and Cargill, the hospitals and Coe College.

Tom Aller, president of Alliant subsidiary Interstate Power & Light Co., emphasized in comments to The Gazette’s editorial board on Thursday afternoon that Alliant as a private utility cannot and is not seeking public financial support to rebuild the Sixth Street plant as a coal-fired plant.

At the same time, Aller said that Lt. Gen Ron Dardis, head of the Rebuild Iowa Office, City Council member Monica Vernon, who is heading up a council “steam team,” and others have talked to Alliant Energy recently about what options the utility had given customers if the Sixth Street station was rebuilt as a coal-fired plant.

Aller said he suggested soon after the June 2008 flood that public officials ought to consider the issue of rebuilding the Sixth Street plant through the prism of economic development for the city. He said public officials are now doing just that.

The city’s Vernon on Friday afternoon acknowledged that there is now a flurry of discussion on the federal, state and city level over rebuilding the Sixth Street power plant as a coal plant to provide steam.

“There are more alligators in this thing,” Vernon said. “It’s potentially doable.”

She said the Iowa Department of Economic Development may be looking to contribute $16 million to such a plan and, additionally, that U.S. Commerce Department’s Economic Development Administration could be a funding source. Some city dollars would be involved, too.

In early 2009, the Sixth Street Generating Station’s eight largest customers, which have used most of the plant’s steam, rejected Alliant’s proposals to rebuild the plant as a coal plant because the proposed future steam rates, which would have had to cover the capital costs of rebuilding, were too high.

Aller said an infusion of public dollars to pay to rebuild the plant or to pay much of the cost of rebuilding it would allow Alliant to provide steam rates lower than had been proposed and lower than the current sky-high rates, which this winter were part of a temporary steam system using natural gas. With public dollars used for rebuilding, steam rates, though, would be higher than they had been before the flood, he said.

Dee Brown, Alliant’s regional director of customer operations, was much more direct that Aller when she said, unequivocally, that rebuilding the Sixth Street Generating Station as a coal plant is the only real long-term solution for the customer group — Quaker, Cargill, the hospitals, Coe College, the downtown and others — that has depended for many years on the steam plant and the steam pipeline system running from it.

Alliant could rebuild the coal-fired plant in a year, Brown said, while other long-terms solutions — one idea is to build a $250-million waste-to-energy plant — would take five or more years.

The biggest customers like Quaker and Cargill, upon which holding the group of steam users together depends, aren’t going to wait five or more years for a long-term solution, Brown said.

Aller said Alliant believes it can rebuild the coal-fired plant with new, reconfigured equipment with a natural-gas backup that will allow the plant to meet federal emission standards into the future.

Such a coal-fired plant would provide a reliable energy source with stable steam rates, which come with burning coal, and the plant also would provide a redundant natural-gas backup system, Aller said.

In recent months, much of the discussion in and around City Hall has centered on figuring out a short-term solution — perhaps subsidizing current high steam rates associated with Alliant’s interim, natural-gas system for five years — while an effort was made to come up with a long-term solution.

Aller said it has been clear to him that no one will spend money on a short-term solution unless there is a clear, long-term solution in place. He said state officials seem to agree with him on that now.

The city’s Vernon said the city is still working to begin a long-term study on a “green,” waste-to-energy power plant. But she said such a system might be appropriate elsewhere even if public money is available to help rebuild Alliant’s coal-fired Sixth Street plant as a coal plant.

City Hall 30-year loan for downtown’s flood-damaged Roosevelt clears way for $10.3-million renovation to begin

The renovation of the flood-damaged Roosevelt building downtown is set to begin.

The City Council last night approved a 30-year, 1-percent loan of $1.6 million to help in the $10.3-million affordable housing project.

Much of the funding secured by developer Sherman Associates Inc., Minneapolis, Minn., consists of federal low-income housing tax credits. The city’s loan likely will lessen to a $1-million one once the renovation of the historic building secures historic tax-credit financing.

The city earlier provided other short-term funding for the project, which will be paid back once the renovation is complete.

The renovated Roosevelt, which was converted to apartments from a hotel some years ago, will consist of 96 housing units, 90 of which will be affordable ones.

Jackie Nickolaus, Sherman vice president, told the council last night that the top three floors of the Roosevelt, which had been renovated in recent years by the prior owner, might be ready to occupy within six months once the building’s mechanical systems are installed.

Sherman Associates bought the building in December for $2.2 million.

Vernon and Shields say plan to upgrade U.S. Cellular Center and add convention center has best chance among local projects for securing U.S. Commerce Department grant

The City Council last night endorsed a previously-announced decision by the city’s Five Seasons Facilities Commission to seek $39.2 million from the U.S. Department of Commerce to upgrade the U.S. Cellular Center and add a convention center to it.

The total cost of the U.S. Cellular Center improvements is estimated to be $52.25 million, and the Five Seasons Facilities Commission envisions securing $13 million in additional funds from the state of Iowa.

The U.S. Cellular Center is one of several local projects seeking disaster relief from the Commerce Department’s Economic Development Administration. The council has endorsed all of them.

Last night, though, council members Monica Vernon and Justin Shields suggested that the city’s U.S. Cellular Center project may stand the best chance among local projects to win an Economic Development Administration grant because it meets the federal agency’s requirement that a project promote economic development.

Having a convention center that can attract conventions will help spur development in the downtown, Shields said.

Recently, the council prioritized the local projects seeking grant money and, in doing so, it said the top priority was a proposal to support the flood-damaged steam system that serves the downtown, industries nearby, the hospitals and Coe College.

Last night, council member Kris Gulick suggested that the council revisit how it prioritized projects.

Flood-hit National Czech & Slovak Museum & Library seeks Vision Iowa funds; collections will never return to existing building

The National Czech & Slovak Museum & Library will seek some millions of dollars over a few years from the state’s Vision Iowa Board to help with its flood recovery, Gail Naughton, president/CEO of the facility, told the City Council last night.

Naughton won City Council support to pursue Vision Iowa funds from the state’s Riverfront Enhancement Community Attraction and Tourism program and/or from its Community Attraction and Tourism program.

During her presentation to the council, Naughton reported that the museum/library now has purchased the former Music Loft space in Czech Village to house its office and some exhibition space so it can get back close to its flood-damaged museum/library building.

Naughton also told the council that the existing building never again will house museum collections and exhibitions. She said that curators in the Czech Republic who provide collections for the Cedar Rapids would not allow their items displayed in a venue that has been flooded.

“It’s just been marked,” Naughton said of the flood-damaged building.

She said the thinking now is the existing building would become an education and cultural center while the museum/library’s collections and exhibits would be housed at a proposed new $17.75-million exhibition center and research library that would house collections and exhibits.

The non-profit organization’s recovery plan includes $25 million in improvements, including the addition of the exhibition center and research library.

Earlier Wednesday, Naughton said the museum/library sustained more than $10 million in flood damage.

Naughton said the organization continues to work with the Federal Emergency Management Agency on a final damage assessment and how to proceed with the museum/library’s existing building. The building, she explained, sits one foot above the city’s 100-year floodplain.

The city’s plan for permanent flood protection calls for removable flood walls to protect Czech Village as well as both sides of the Cedar River in the downtown.

Naughton said one concept for the removable flood walls is that they would run on the edge of the museum/library’s terrace between the river and the museum/library, which is perched near the river.

But the final details of such protection won’t be decided for a few years yet, she noted.

Much, she added, is still up in the air. “We’d like to reuse it,” she said of the existing museum/library building, one of the city’s chief tourism attractions.

Little tidbit of the past shows up for forward-looking library; past director Barkema wins jobless claim on top of $65,170 in severance benefits

Much of the news about the city’s flood-damaged main library is forward-looking. The library board is now hoping for a spectacular new library at a new site to replace the empty, flood-damaged one on First Street SE.

The library board and the City Council last week said they will ask the Federal Emergency Management Agency to approve their request to allow the city to build a new central library at a new location. FEMA can permit the building of a new facility at a new location if the existing building has sustained more than 50 percent damage. FEMA has concluded that the main library did in the 2008 flood.

The City Council will approve the letter to FEMA this week.

Another tinier tidbit of library information has surfaced this week, too. It is backward-looking.

The city has decided not to appeal an unemployment claim filed by former library director Lori Barkema.

Barkema resigned a year ago, leaving with $65,170 in severance benefits. The total included about $15,000 in unpaid leave and four months of salary and benefits, the city said then.

Barkema subsequently filed for jobless benefits. Initially, a state of Iowa claims representative denied her jobless claim, saying that she resigned voluntarily.

However, Barkema appealed the decision to a state administrative law judge. That judge, Steven Wise, ruled in Barkema’s favor in December. The city could have appealed the decision to the state Employment Appeal Board, but has chosen not to, Conni Huber, the city’s human resources director, noted on Tuesday.

In the administrative law judge’s decision, he concludes that Barkema did not really have a choice but to leave. The library board offered to let her resign in the face of what seemed likely termination, so she didn’t leave of her own choice, the judge says.

“To voluntarily quit means a claimant exercises a voluntary choice between remaining employed or discontinuing the employment relationship and chooses to leave employment,” Wise states in his December ruling. “The unemployment insurance rules provide a claimant has not voluntarily left employment if the claimant was compelled to resign when given the choice of resigning or being discharged.”

The ruling also provides a look into the process that led to Barkema’s departure from the library in April 2008.
The ruling says:

In January and February of 2008, the library board created an ad hoc committee to look at “concerns regarding” Barkema’s job performance. Barkema addressed the concerns with an action plan, a plan that the board found “inadequate.” The board then hired a consultant, John Langhorne, to evaluate matters.

Langhorne interviewed Barkema, library staff members and board members. He determined that a “significant lack of trust” between Barkema and the board and that the trust was “damaged beyond repair,” according to the administrative law judge’s ruling.

Langhorne and Joe Lock, a library board member on the board’s ad hoc personnel committee, then both met with Barkema. According to the judge’s ruling, Langhorne told Barkema she needed to resign or the board was going to terminate her. Lock knew that Barkema’s mother had recently died, and he suggested to her that “this would be a good reason to give the public for her resigning,” the judge’s ruling states.

The judge states Barkema “reasonably believed” that she had been given a choice, and she chose resignation over termination because she did not want to be discharged.

In an e-mail to Barkema’s attorney on April 23, 2008, the city’s attorney’s office stated that, “Lori was not asked to resign, but allowing her to resign and accepting it is very much part of the consideration here.”

She resigned and the library board accepted the resignation later that day, the ruling states.

An employer may be justified in discharging an employee, but the city presented no evidence of any misconduct by Barkema that would justify the denial of jobless benefits, the judge notes.

Corbett TV out with latest; calls for economic development; but are all i’s dotted, t’s crossed in video episode’s property-tax math?

Corbett TV is back with its latest video installment.

This time, mayoral candidate Ron Corbett – www.roncorbett.com –  is making the point that the city needs to do a better job of attracting new companies to town to expand the city’s tax base. A bigger tax base, with more taxpaying industries, businesses and people participating, will mean less pressure to raise taxes on current taxpayers.

We need a bigger pie, Corbett says.

We need a return to a time not so many years ago when new industries — he cities Cedar River Paper, PMX Industries, Genencor — seemed to show up in the city regularly.

Of course, you can’t have Corbett TV without a video, and it always helps to employ a backdrop to make the current point.

To date, Corbett has stood in front of the abandoned, flood-damaged Swiss Valley Farms plant near the Cedar River to lament the loss of local industry. He’s been outside of the empty, flood-damaged Veterans Memorial Building/City Hall indicting current city leaders for what Corbett calls “a culture of delay.” And there was the closed, flood-damaged Ellis Park swimming pool in another video. Why couldn’t city leaders get the pool open this season? Corbett wondered.

In the latest Corbett TV video, he’s standing down at the construction site of the new $140-million-plus federal courthouse going up now between the river and Second Street SE and Seventh and Eighth avenues SE.

He points out that MidAmerican Energy used to sit on the site, and when the utility was there, it paid property taxes to the city. Now, the site is in government hands and no longer will generate property taxes.
In this little example, the property-tax burden will fall harder on the rest of the residents if something isn’t done to expand the local tax base to make up for what is being lost at the courthouse site, Corbett suggests.

Corbett TV’s latest didn’t come with a blackboard to do all the higher math. The Corbett TV video was trying to make the point that economic development is important.

The blackboard, though, might have been useful to do the adding and subtracting of property taxes, taking into account MidAmerican’s move to different digs in Cedar Rapids, to a property that had been vacated in northwest Cedar Rapids by Highway Equipment Co. Highway Equipment had built a new home on the city’s southwest side and moved there.

Actually, too, private utilities are treated differently than other private entities in terms of property taxes. The taxes they pay to local jurisdictions are called franchise fees, not property taxes, Casey Drew, the city of Cedar Rapids’ finance director, explains.

Gov. Culver calls out the TV cameras on Tuesday to sign bill that forgives Jumpstart housing loans in five years, instead of the current 10

Gov. Chet Culver is making a big deal about it.

His office on Monday announced that Culver would hold a public ceremony on Tuesday in Iowa City to sign a new law that benefit flood victims who have gotten Jumpstart housing assistance.

Until now, those receiving the assistance got it in the form of forgivable loans that took 10 years to forgive. The change in the law will make the loans forgivable in five years.

“Thousands of Iowans have benefitted from the state’s Jumpstart Iowa Housing Program since it was created last fall,” Culver said in a press release on Monday. “With this legislation, we are giving a little more help to these who have already suffered so much.”

Culver will sign the new legislation – passed unanimously by both the Iowa Senate and Iowa House – at Old Capitol in Iowa City on Tuesday afternoon. Culver will be using Old Capitol as his office for the day.

Last Friday, Sen. Rob Hogg, D-Cedar Rapids, announced that the Jumpstart housing matter had passed the legislature and was on the way to the governor’s office. Hogg was one of the bill’s proponents.

Two months ago, at a nighttime neighborhood meeting in the Time Check Neighborhood, flood victims spoke to city officials and Iowa lawmakers. On that night, shortening the period of the Jumpstart forgivable loans to five years was one of the requests. Neighbors noted that Jumpstart business loans were for five years, why couldn’t the housing loans be? they asked.

That night, City Manager Jim Prosser said City Hall would see what it could do. Hogg was on hand that night, too.

City Hall’s lobbyist, Larry Murphy, was among lobbyists pushing lawmakers in Des Moines to make the Jumpstart change.

City Hall readies to review flood-insurance proposals; Linn supervisors are as eager to get huge costs waived by state insurance commissioner

Local government is going to turn to the Iowa Insurance Division for help in confronting giant insurance costs that are required in exchange for accepting giant payments from the Federal Emergency Management Agency to fix flood-damaged city, county and school buildings.

Linn County Risk Manager Steve Estenson on Monday morning revealed potential annual insurance costs facing Linn County once it repairs and returns to the its courthouse and jail on May’s Island and to a few other county buildings flooded last June.

He put the first estimate of costs at about $600,000 a year, but a final total is not known other than it is not apt to be that high. That is, in part, because the county may not return to the Witwer Building downtown and it intends to move the flood-destroyed Options Building elsewhere. Even so, it will need to pay some flood insurance on the Options Building.

What the Linn supervisors were most interested in, though, was Estenson’s comment that the city, school district and county all are now planning to ask the state insurance commission for a waiver of some of the insurance costs. FEMA regulations permit such waivers, although they are not common.

The Cedar Rapids City Council said two weeks ago it was interested in exploring such a waiver.

The council is a step ahead of the supervisors. It already made a formal request for brokers to handle the city’s flood-insurance matters.

The council will be able to forgo much of the huge insurance costs this year because it will not be returning this year to City Hall, the library and Paramount Theatre, three city buildings flood-damaged in June 2008.

At private-sector’s push, City Council launches quest for flood-recovery manager with a job description fit for Superman

More than five weeks have passed now since council member Tom Podzimek suggested that an unsuccessful move by three council members related to a flood-recovery CEO was tantamount to a coup d’état.

Council members Justin Shields, Monica Vernon and Jerry McGrane all wanted this flood-recovery chief to bypass City Manager Jim Prosser and report directly to them and the other six on the City Council. But the other six dismissed the notion out of hand. The city charter calls for one CEO who reports to the council, not two, the six said.

With all the pizzazz of government overthrow now put aside, the council still is in the process of filling the position that Shields and Vernon, in particular, had agitated for.

All of the council members have gotten in line behind the position — the job is now called flood-recovery manager and the person filling it will report to Prosser — and it comes with an unusual twist. The city’s largest employer, Rockwell Collins, has pushed for the City Hall position, and Rockwell Collins is joining other private-sector contributors to pay most of the cost of the public-sector flood-recovery manager.

Conni Huber, the city’s human resources director, last week noted that the council resolution creating the position anticipates that 80 percent of the cost will be paid by private-sector corporations and/or people.

Huber last week also reported to the City Council that a multi-stepped process is underway to try to fill the flood-recovery manager position. There have been two sessions in which the public offered suggestions about the qualifications and experience that the new flood-recovery manager should possess. Council members have weighed in on the matter, too, and others have filled out surveys via the city’s Web page, Huber said.

It wasn’t clear if there was anyone in America who could fill the role after Huber had told the council what kind of person that the public and council members said they were looking for.

The new manager will need to be a top-notch coordinator, a person who can make connections, someone who is a great communicator, who can become the “face of Cedar Rapids flood recovery and reinvestment,” Huber said. The new manager must be expert in finding funding and someone who can quantify how much he or she is accomplishing. The new manager must be a leader, a consensus-builder, articulate, an effective advocate for Cedar Rapids, experienced in disaster recovery and have an advanced degree in public administration, management or some other relevant field.

After Huber finished, Mayor Kay Halloran asked, “Do you feel you can find people (to meet the qualifications)?”

“I always have to be optimistic,” Huber said. “People are out there,” she assured. The task, she added, was to connect with them.

The city now has begun to advertise the new job and hopes to have a list of applicants by May 4.

Interviews will be held June 1 and 2 with council members and others with the hope that the job will be filled by the June 12/13 anniversary of the 2008 flood.

The private-sector push by Rockwell Collins to have a private-sector-backed presence inside City Hall came even as a different local private-sector initiative here created something called the Economic Planning & Redevelopment Corp. The City Council has contributed $50,000 to the EPRC and Linn County about half that amount, but it’s a little murky what the mission of the EPRC’s director, Doug Neumann, will be once the private sector has a flood-recovery manager inside City Hall.

Council member Chuck Wieneke has suggested that the City Council take back its $50,000 from the EPRC now that the city is creating a new position at City Hall.

State lawmakers from Cedar Rapids deliver again: Jumpstart housing loans now forgivable in 5 years, not 10, once governor signs the bill

It has gnawed at flood victims who have received Jumpstart housing funds for months: That the money has come in the form of forgivable loans, which take 10 years to forgive, while Jumpstart funds for businesses are forgiven in five years.

This week, though, the Iowa Legislature passed a new law and sent it to Gov. Chet Culver that will make the term of the Jumpstart housing loans now in place and to come five years instead of ten years, Sen. Rob Hogg, D-Cedar Rapids, confirmed Friday.

Hogg, who credited Sen. Wally Horn, D-Cedar Rapids, with managing the bill through the state senate, said the measure was somewhat controversial simply because of the work required to change the terms of a large number of loans. But he said the Iowa Department of Economic Development has said it was committed to taking the work on.

Hogg noted that some Jumpstart housing awards were made with state dollars and some with federal Community Development Block Grant funds, and he said the state will have to amend its CDBG arrangement with the federal government so that both sources of forgivable loans are treated consistently.

Jon Galvin, a flood victim and Jumpstart recipient as well as vice president of the Northwest Neighbors Association, on Friday said shortening the time period on the forgivable loan from 10 years to five years puts the homeowner on the same level as the business owner.

Galvin, a retiree, says who knows how long he and his wife might live.

“At our age, our kids would be or could be still paying off these liens at the 10-year rate,” he said. Now, he said he might get out of debt again “before I leave this world.”

Seven at library laid off; flood that closed main library finally has caught up with them

The city has laid off seven library employees, two full timers and five part-time employees. In total, it is the equivalent of four full-time employees, Conni Huber, the city’s human resources director, said on Friday.

One of the positions was eliminated as part of the city’s new budget, and the others who have lost jobs consisted of a supervisor and five employees who shelve books part time, Huber noted.

With the main library closed because of last June’s flood and not to be rebuilt for a couple years, the main library is operating in a much smaller, temporary setup at Westdale Mall.

“Since the volume of materials is greatly reduced, there is not enough work to keep them all busy,” Huber said.

In the aftermath of the June flood, Huber noted that some library personnel helped in a variety of other city departments, mostly in code enforcement. In addition, she said some library staff members have worked at the Marion and Hiawatha libraries to handle increased traffic from Cedar Rapids residents. And some library staff helped, too, in converting the former Osco’s space at Westdale Mall into the temporary library space.

“We now do not have those needs and so had to take this action,” Huber said.

Joe calls Linda; wants local read on getting federal dollars to the front lines

Vice President Joe Biden called Linda Langston, Linn County supervisor, this week to include her in a conference call with five other local officials from around the nation.

Biden wanted to know how the federal government’s new stimulus package — the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 — is working at the local level.

Langston says she asked Biden if there was a way for more of the federal money to be driven down to the metropolitan areas so that it doesn’t all have to go through states, or if it must all go to states, if there was a way to expedite how it gets to localities from there.

Langston says she also talked to Biden about how money gets to local communities to fund public health programs like those related to the prevention of chronic diseases.

Part of the conversation focused on transit funds and how to order and buy hybrid buses, and beyond that, how to make federal funding available for a wider assortment of fuel-efficient cars and trucks from squad cars to garbage trucks.

Langston figures she and another county official were included in the Biden call because Biden has a fondness for county officials. That’s where he got his start in public life, Langston says.

Langston says Biden is getting a follow-up letter from her about funding for public health and for matters related to flood recovery in Cedar Rapids and Linn County.

Also on the call were Carl Dean, mayor of Nashville, Tenn.; R.T. Rybak, mayor of Minneapolis; John Robert Smith, mayor of Meridian, Miss.; Barbara Fiala, county executive, Broom County, New York; and Darwin Hyman, mayor of Columbia, Mo.

State lawmakers from Cedar Rapids see to it that owners of abandoned flood-damaged homes don’t louse up a return to life for neighbors

A common lament in flood-hit neighborhoods here comes from those fixing up their homes while neighbors next door or down the block have abandoned theirs.

On Thursday, the Iowa Legislature did something about that.

State lawmakers passed a bill and sent it to Gov. Chet Culver that will permit Cedar Rapids and other cities to go to court and in expedited fashion take title to disaster-affected abandoned properties if a concerted effort to find the owner has failed.

Sen. Rob Hogg, D-Cedar Rapids, managed the bill through the Iowa Senate and on Thursday said that the city of Cedar Rapids has told him that it thinks the owners of 150 to 200 flood-damaged properties have simply walked away from them and can’t be found.

“The biggest thing is it gives the city clear title to this property that has been abandoned so the city can then do something productive to the property,” Hogg said.

Hogg said Rep. Todd Taylor, D-Cedar Rapids, managed the bill in the Iowa House.

The legislation, he said, is “very much in favor” of people who are trying to repair their homes or the business people who are trying to bring their businesses back in the flooded zones.

“One of the things that is so challenging right now is you might have an owner here and an owner here who are bringing their properties back, but these other properties, their owners have just walked away from them,” Hogg said. “And they’re in as dilapidated a condition as they were last June when the flood waters receded.

“And so it’s unfair to the people who are trying to bring their properties back to have neighboring properties that have just been totally walked away from. And hopefully this procedure will allow the city to do something very quickly about that.”

Hogg said the bill includes a provision that brings the legal action to a halt if the owner shows up within the period of the action. The city must work to find an owner of a disaster-affected property at least 30 days before going to court. At least 60 days then must pass before a court hearing on the matter.

If the court agrees the property has been abandoned, the court awards clear title of the property to the city at the property’s existing market value. The city pays that amount to the court, and if unclaimed, the money reverts to the city after two years.

Hogg said the bill, which addresses property damaged by a disaster between May 1 and Sept. 1, 2008, is designed to remedy “truly abandoned property.”

Cedar Rapids City Council member Brian Fagan on Thursday said the city had pushed for the legislation because abandoned properties, which had been a problem for the city prior to the flood, are especially a problem since the flood.

“Certainly we want to be respectful of property rights, but the huge, overriding concern is the health, welfare and safety of our residents,” Fagan said.

Crucial City Planning Commission hit with two resignations

Two of the nine members of the important City Planning Commission have resigned.

In a letter to Mayor Kay Halloran and the City Council, long-time commission member Carole Schmidt cites health and conflicts with her job as the reasons for her stepping down. Of note, Schmidt tells the city’s elected officials that she is now required to take vacation leave to attend commission meetings.

Also announcing her resignation from the commission is newer member Lisa-Marie Garlich, a community development planner.

In her resignation letter, Garlich says she has taken a job with the city of Marshalltown.

Those who would like to compete to replace Schmidt and Garlich can inquire at the mayor’s office, 286-5051.

Two new gauges now in Cedar River above Cedar Rapids to help track times when river turns surly

Two new gauges are now in place in the Cedar River above Cedar Rapids to help monitor rising river water in the future, Ken DeKeyser, the city’s storm water management engineer, reports.

One gauge is in the river at Blairs Ferry Road (E-36) at Palo and a second in the river at Vinton. A third gauge, which has been in place, is above the Eighth Avenue bridge in downtown Cedar Rapids.

DeKeyser reports that the cost of installation and maintenance of the gauge at Vinton is being handled by the U.S. Geological Survey, while the jurisdictions of Cedar Rapids, Linn County and Palo are sharing equally in the $12,800 installation cost of the gauge at Palo. The annual cost to operate the gauge at Palo is $14,500, 40 percent of which is covered by USGS. Cedar Rapids, Linn County and Palo each will pay $2,900 a year to operate and maintain the gauge at Palo.

The annual operating and maintenance cost for the Cedar Rapids gauge is split between the city and USGS, with the city paying 40 percent and USGS 60 percent.

Residents can see readings from the gauges at http://waterdata.usgs.gov/ia/nwis/rt

(On Wednesday, readings were available on the USGS Web site for all three gauges. On Thursday, the two new gauges had been removed from the Web site’s map, but will return.)

The two new river gauges and a renovated Cedar Rapids gauge are seen by public officials as crucial in better forecasting what the Cedar River is up to.

The Cedar Rapids gauge failed as the river’s flood crest approached Cedar Rapids last June. And there were no gauges in place immediately upstream to help read the river.

Library Board and City Council will ask FEMA to let the city replace its flood-damaged library with a new downtown library at a new downtown site

The city’s library board wants to replace its flood-damaged main library with a new library at a different downtown site. And at the board’s request, the City Council last night signaled it will formally ask the Federal Emergency Management Agency to support the idea, most of the cost of which FEMA disaster-relief funds would pay.

FEMA’s determination that the library sustained more than 50 percent damage in the 2008 flood — a crucial conclusion reached after much negotiation with the city — allows the city to ask that FEMA provide disaster-relief funding to build a new library elsewhere. A damage assessment under 50 percent would have forced the city to repair the library where it is at if it used FEMA funds. FEMA now also could back building a new library where the current one is.

FEMA would pay 90 percent of the cost and the state of Iowa 10 percent, though costs over and above a similar-kind of library could fall on the local community, Doug Elliott, library board vice president, told the council last night. Elliott said it wasn’t a “foregone conclusion” that the library site would move even if that is what the library board wants to do.

Earlier Wednesday, Susan Corrigan, the president of the city’s library board, said the library board’s intent, as it waits to hear from FEMA, is to quickly begin a public participation exercise. The library board will want to know where a new library might go, what should be in it and what it should look like.

Corrigan said the library board has adopted “guiding principles” for a new library at a new site, three of which are key: That it be somewhere that won’t flood. That it be centrally located in or near downtown. And that it has plenty of parking.

Corrigan noted that the definition of downtown is different for different people, but she said the board is looking on the east side of the Cedar River where future flooding may be less of an issue than on the west side of the river.

In recent months, the City Council, with the help of the city’s Community Development Department, has taken a look at possible downtown parcels on which the city can build a new Intermodal Transit Facility and other possible public buildings.

The council has picked a two-block area now occupied by a Pepsi warehouse and maintenance operation between Fifth and Sixth avenues SE as its first choice to build with the second choice being the site of TrueNorth, which is on Fourth Avenue SE across from Greene Square Park.

Corrigan said the library board was aware of sites that the City Council had been looking at and is “open” to those and others.

One estimate, she noted, is that a new library might cost $24 million, while repairing the existing library was estimated to cost perhaps $17 million. But she said the latter number was “irrelevant” now because the library is not going to simply be repaired as it had been.

She said the library board is looking for “a fresh start.”

“Whatever we’re going to do, we’re going to do the right, long-term thing,” she said.

Corrigan said she would like to see the new library completed or well on its way to being completed by 2011.

Perhaps, another entity might be located at a downtown library, she said, but she added that the library board would want to make sure the library is the dominant partner in any sharing arrangement.

“When you walk in, you know it’s a library,” she said.

“I would like it to be spectacular looking with parking,” Corrigan emphasized. “We have to solve the parking issue.”

She said the library needed at least 200 parking slots, but said a parking ramp might be one way to get them.

The library board’s Elliott told the council last night that the board understood that the council was set to being its own public participation process to look at the future of other flood-damaged city buildings like City Hall and the existing federal courthouse which the city will take ownership of in 2012 when the new courthouse is in place.

Elliott, though, said the library board is interested in pursuing a more “aggressive” timeline in its public input process. The council has talked about a six- to nin-month process.

Petite woman from Nevada shows sturdy public works crews how simple it is to set up Tiger Dam temporary flood protection

Last year’s disastrous flood could not have seemed farther away: The spring sky on Wednesday was blue, the sun warm, the nearby Cedar River lazily gliding by.

Yet a burly force of city Public Works Department employees were preparing for the worst.

They unfurled several 50-foot sections of orange bladders in a parking lot at Ellis Park, guided the bladders into place — two next to one another and a third on top — and filled them with water from a nearby fire hydrant.

This system of water-filled bladders, trademarked Tiger Dams, will be the principal piece of additional, new, temporary flood protection for the Time Check Neighborhood should the Cedar River threaten once again to spill into the neighborhood.

After Wednesday’s trial run, Mike Kuntz, the city’s sewer superintendent, said he was confident city crews could set up a line of Tiger Dams without difficulty for the 1,900-foot stretch in which they will be used at this spot in the city. The city will use a system of metal baskets filled with dirt elsewhere to temporarily protect the downtown and Czech Village.

“I was skeptical if we would be able to do it as rapidly as necessary,” Kuntz said of setting up the Tiger Dams. “But I’m pleased how well this has gone. I have no doubt we will be able to do it and do it well.”

As if to intentionally make the point, the maker of the Tiger Dams, U.S. Flood Control Corp., Carson City, Nev., sent Cheryl Witmer, company business developer and product trainer, to Cedar Rapids to train Cedar Rapids’ city crews in the use of the system.

Witmer is sufficiently petite that she was hard to spot amid the 30 or so sturdy city crew members.

“Don’t pull it by the edges,” Witmer instructed the crew members. “If you pull it by the edges you’re just going to make it ugly and wrinkly.”

Her central point, the city’s Kuntz said, was that the bladder that sits on top of two others needs to be positioned correctly as it starts to fill with water.

But Witmer said having her lead the demonstration helps to drive home the message that installing the flood barriers is so simple “a girl can do it.”

“That’s the beauty of it. It’s light, it’s easy and you don’t need any heavy equipment,” Witmer said.

Each 50-foot section of bladder weighs 65 pounds, but when each is unfolded and filled with water, they weigh 6,300 pounds. “That’s a great deal of weight and a great deal of security,” Witmer said.

The city has purchased 282 of these 50-foot sections, at a cost of $375,000. They will provide 1,900 feet of protection from the existing earthen levee at Ellis Lane NW down Ellis Boulevard NW to Penn Ave. NW. At that point, the Tiger Dams will tie into the existing levee along First Street NW in a way that should protect this part of the city to a river height of 24 feet.

That is four feet higher than the city’s previous record flood, but still seven feet below the historic flood of 2008. Providing temporary protection to the 2008 flood level is far too costly. A proposed permanent flood protection system, which could cost $1 billion, is the long-term solution for the city’s flood-protection needs.

Witmer said the Tiger Dams have been used in hurricane country in Louisiana, Florida and Texas as well for flash flooding in Nevada and river flooding in several states and Canada. Private corporations also use them. She said Walmart used the product to protect a store in Ames, Iowa.

Once set up, the Tiger Dams can remain in place for a couple months and can be reused. They also can be filled with a saline solution so the water in them freezes at a lower temperature than 32 degrees, though Cedar Rapids’ flood season usually comes later.

In purchasing the Tiger Dams and the second system, called Hesco Concertainers, the city acknowledged that it might never have to use them between now and the day, perhaps eight to 10 years from now, when a permanent system is in place.

“That’s the hope,” the city’s Kuntz said. “We hope we never have to use them.”

City wants to find its champion trees and is launching a contest to find them

City arborist Daniel Gibbins and Trees Forever of Marion want to find the biggest trees of different tree species in Cedar Rapids.

And they are holding a “champion-tree” contest to help in the task.

Both the owner of each of the biggest trees and the person who nominates the tree if other than the owner will receive a champion certificate.

Gibbins, who started on the job with the city of Cedar Rapids in January, also will check with the National Big Tree Registry, which is sponsored by the American Forestry Association, to see if any local champion trees qualify as national champions.

Nominations are due on May 15 with winners announced at a special event on June 19 at the city’s Ushers Ferry Historic Village.

Contestants can fill out a nomination form at http://www.treesforever.org/Survey/8/Cedar-Rapids-Champion-Tree-Nomination.aspx.

Send questions to Ashley Green at Trees Forever, 373-0650 extension 25.

Flood victim McGrane first council incumbent to enter this year’s City Hall race

District 3 council member Jerry McGrane announced Tuesday announced that he is seeking reelection to the city’s only council district that includes both east-side and west-side precincts.

McGrane, 69, lost his home at 1018 Second St. SE to the June 2008 flood, and he says he wants to stay on the council because he personally understands what other flood victims still wrestle with as they work to recover from the flood.

“I’m still the voice of the City Council when it comes to flooded people,” McGrane says.

At the same time, McGrane, who parlayed his past work as president of the Oakhill Jackson Neighborhood Association into an election victory in 2005, says he also wants to retain his seat on the council so he can be a lead voice on neighborhood revitalization efforts.

“We still have a lot to accomplish with the Enhance Our Neighborhoods effort, and there’s a lot of housing problems and the beginning of a lot of crime problems,” he said.

McGrane and his wife, Judy, currently reside in one of the manufactured houses provided to flood victims by the Federal Emergency Management Agency, though he will return in June to the Oakhill neighborhood in a house now under construction at 1105 Eighth St. SE.

Of note of late, McGrane joined forces with council members Justin Shields and Monica Vernon in an unsuccessful effort to wrestle some control away from City Manager Jim Prosser. The three-member minority on the nine-member council tried to create a flood recovery CEO that would sidestep Prosser and answer to the council. But the council majority nixed the idea, saying the city’s charter allows only one chief executive.

McGrane, though, said his campaign for reelection has nothing to do with trying to replace Prosser, the city’s first city manager in the city’s three-year-old council/manager government.

“I’m running because I’ve done a good job. I’ve helped a lot of people,” McGrane said.

District 3 comprises both the flood-damaged Oakhill Jackson/New Bohemia areas on the east side of the Cedar River and the flood-damaged Czech Village area on the west side of the river.

McGrane said he is aware of reports brought back from Grand Forks, N.D., where some Cedar Rapids city leaders went after the June flood to see how the North Dakota city had dealt with its own flood disaster in 1997. Apparently, the entire City Council up for reelection in Grand Forks was defeated following the flood.

McGrane said it would be a mistake for Cedar Rapids voters to fill all six seats up for election in 2009 with new faces. Much has been invested in the city’s flood recovery to date, and some continuity is important to see the recovery through, he said.

McGrane characterized himself as a council member who listens more than talks, and he noted that he is the only current council without a college degree.

“What you see is what you get,” he said. “No thrills. No frills. Here I am. If you don’t want to know the answer, don’t ask me.”

His council district also stretches into higher-end neighborhoods on the city’s southeast quadrant, and McGrane noted that he sided with neighbors to make sure the East Post Road bridge over Indian Creek remained a two-lane bridge and to block a plan to connect two sections of Bever Avenue SE that neighbors feared would turn the street into a thoroughfare.

Big steam bills, lost Paramount revenue prompt request for $200,000 more in hotel/motel money for U.S. Cellular Center

High steam costs and lost revenue because of the 2008 flood are prompting the manager of the U.S. Cellular Center and Paramount Theatre to ask City Hall for $200,000 in leftover hotel/motel tax revenue to help pay the bills.

In a memo to the City Council, Scott Schoenike, executive director for VenuWorks of Cedar Rapids, reports that steam costs for the U.S. Cellular Center operation have more than tripled during the winter despite his efforts to keep temperatures down in the arena when it was not in use.

For the month of February alone, the center’s steam bill was $52,593, up from $14,000 from the February before, Schoenike reports.

There are many similar refrains from customers small and big – including the Quaker Oats and Cargill plants near downtown – that had depended in years past on cheap steam from Alliant Energy’s now-flood-wrecked Sixth Street Generating Plant.

In addition, Schoenike tells the City Council that his operation is facing budget pressures because the Paramount Theatre is out of commission and not bringing in revenue because of the flood.

Schoenike reports that he has cut staff by 25 percent and made other cuts that in total have axed $600,000 in costs from the operating budget. Even so, the operation needs the $200,000 in extra hotel/motel revenue, he says.

The City Council is expected to approve the request on Wednesday evening.

Community center/recreation center called a ‘Multigenerational Community Life Center’ in the hunt for $5.75 million for planning/design

Throw it into the mix.

The city’s Parks & Recreation Department has gotten the paperwork together and is now joining a crowd of local entities in the competition to try to pry loose some post-flood money from the U.S. Department of Commerce’s Economic Development Administration.

The city department effort is focused on garnering a $5.75-million EDA grant for what project backers are now calling a “Multigenerational Community Life Center.”

The life center project is one of the 15 in the community’s four-year-old, Fifteen in 5 initiative — 15 projects in five years. It often has been referred to as part community center and part recreation center.

In a memo to the City Council, Julie Sina, the city’s parks and recreation director, says the $5.75 million will pay for planning and architectural and engineering fees, but not the cost of construction.

Sina says the new structure could be a new home for what now is the flood-damaged Witwer Senior Center building, the flood-damaged Time Check Recreation Center and the worn-out Ambroz Recreation Center and Bender Pool.

As a Fifteen in 5 project, the community center-recreation center has had an active, dedicated committee studying the concept and promoting it. However, the project got pushed a little to the side as the city and community has worked to deal with the aftermath of the June 2008 flood.

The prospect of a federal EDA grant now has brought the project to the forefront again.

Three weeks ago, the City Council was asked to prioritize which projects it thought were most deserving of limited EDA money.

The council settled on a ranking that placed projects in this order: downtown steam system, first; a public fiber-optic system, second; the community center-recreation center, third, tied with a steam system for Mercy Medical Center; a steam system for Coe College and St. Luke’s Hospital, fourth; improvements to the U.S. Cellular Center and the construction of a new convention center next door, fifth; and a Regional Commerce Center, downtown freight rail planning and parking system upgrades, tied for sixth.

At the time, one local community leader noted that the city of Coralville already had secured an $8-million EDA grant.

On Tuesday, Ellen Habel, assistant city administrator in Coralville, said the city had not yet been awarded an EDA grant. She did say, though, that the city submitted its $7.16-millon grant last fall, has had a site visit from EDA and is now awaiting a decision.

The Coralville project would elevate the rail corridor along Highway 6 and incorporate permanent and removable flood protection into it to protect against a flood one foot above the 2008 one, Habel explained.

Colorful former mayor, Robert M.L. Johnson, passes away at 88

Former Mayor Robert M.L. Johnson died Monday. The funeral home’s death notice says he died of a sudden illness. He was 88.

Johnson held the mayor’s post from 1962 through 1967 at a time when the city turned its attention to urban renewal in the downtown and to building an Interstate through the city.

“He was the strongest mayor we ever had,” Don Salyer, who served as the city’s director of planning and redevelopment for 37 years until the mid 1990s, said Monday.

“He laid out policies and programs and followed through on them,” Salyer remembered. “He took charge. He was a man of action so to speak. … There was nothing wishy-washy about him, let’s put it that way.”

Johnson was first elected to city office as public safety commissioner, but Jerry Elsea, a beat reporter for The Gazette at the time who went on to be the newspaper’s editorial page editor for some years, remembered that Johnson lost the backing of voters after he touted such ideas as one-way streets in the downtown. Johnson, though, reemerged quickly and was elected mayor.

Elsea remembered Johnson’s time in office as an era of strong leadership at City Hall. The city leaders at the time — they included two future mayors, Frank Bosh and Don Canney, in addition to Johnson — was sufficiently strong, Elsea said, that it allowed Cedar Rapids to put off the idea of changing its commission-style government with full-time mayor and commissioners for years. In 2006, the city did change to a part-time council and full-time city manager, a move, by the way, that Johnson supported then and in 1996 when voters rejected the idea.

Elsea said Johnson was at the epicenter of this group of City Hall leaders back in the 1960s who he said made some “wise and far-seeing decisions,” decisions that featured the kind of contentious public hearings that come with matters like urban renewal.

“It was a pretty colorful time for a reporter, because Johnson was not shy about giving his opinions,” Elsea remembered. “He was a colorful character and it was a colorful era for the town.”

Johnson first came to public life in Cedar Rapids as a local radio and television newscaster.

While mayor, he ran unsuccessfully for U.S. Congress in 1966 as a Republican against incumbent John Culver. Later, he served in the Iowa House of Representatives. In 1971 and 1972, he served as city manager of the city of Marion.

Johnson, who resided at Cottage Grove Place, 2115 First Ave. SE, was a tireless writer of letters to The Gazette’s editorial pages over the years and had frequent contact with reporters and others in his retirement.

Former Mayor Don Canney, who was the city’s public improvements commissioner during part of Johnson’s time as mayor and then became mayor in 1969, on Monday called Johnson “a good friend.”

“We disagreed on a lot of things, but as gentlemen,” Canney said. “I really admired him, and he did a darn good job as mayor.”

Canney said he and Johnson talked on the phone just a month ago. “We talked about how we both we’re getting along,” Canney said.

Two months ago, Johnson took time with a reporter, too, tickled, he said, to see that local artist Fred Easker was painting a landscape for the interior of the new federal courthouse now going up downtown.

Johnson wanted to point out that Easker was a Jefferson High School student back in the mid-1960s when Johnson was mayor and decided the city needed a city flag. Easker came up with the winning design.

Johnson said he was also proud that he initiated the charcoal portraits of the city’s mayors that now hang outside the council chambers in what is now the empty, flood-damaged City Hall. He also held a contest for a city song.

He said the city band always used to play the song at the end of their concerts, but then he said that gave way over the years.

Johnson said he asked the band why it stopped playing the song, and he said he was told, “The minute we start to play it people start to leave.”

For the most part, your property’s value is staying put if you live outside the flood area

Property owners fit in two categories: Those who feel wealthier when their principal asset, their home, increases in value. And those who focus on the increase in property taxes such an increase in value nearly always means.

This year those inclined to think about property taxes first will be pleased with the news.

On Monday, assessors in Cedar Rapids, Iowa City and Linn County reported that the values will not change for the vast majority of homes, commercial properties and industrial properties in their jurisdictions in calendar year 2009 unless improvements have been made to the properties. The same is true with homes in Johnson County, though apartments and mobile home courts will see small valuation increases while office buildings and small retail shops will see small valuation decreases in Johnson County outside Iowa City, Bill Greazel, Johnson County assessor, said.

The big exception to the general trend is with the significant number of properties in the flood-impacted parts of Cedar Rapids.

Cedar Rapids City Assessor Scott Labus said he expected to send out assessment notices to about 7,400 property owners among the owners of the 54,000 parcels of property in the city. Many of those receiving assessment notices – some will be for improvements on properties outside the flood areas — will be those whose property was damaged by the flood. In the worst cases, the only value to the property is now the lot on which a flood-damaged house sits, and the value of that lot, too, may now be less than its value had been, the assessor said.

Overall, Labus estimates the city’s residential property has lost $138 million to flood damage, and the city’s industrial value another $11 million.

Labus said he continues to work on valuations for flood-damaged commercial property. Those commercial properties on the west side of the Cedar River might see valuations at 35 percent of what they had been prior to the flood. Meanwhile, those in the downtown core will see property-valuation declines depending on how close they are to the river and how many stories there are in a building. The more stories, the less the property’s decrease in value, Labus said.

Outside of the flood-impacted areas of the city, Labus said his office’s analysis of property sales has indicated that the current valuations of properties in the city have been within 98.9 percent of prices for which properties have sold.

State law requires assessors to keep valuations in line with sale prices, and Labus said the city is so close to that mark now that his office does not need to make valuation changes to most properties.

Julie Kester, Linn County assessor, noted that the Iowa Department of Revenue expects valuation changes if the value of a jurisdiction’s property is off by more than five percent from the sales prices. Kester said her office’s valuation of Linn County’s residential property is 95.1 percent of sales figures in 2008 and so does not require any changes.

Dennis Baldridge, Iowa City’s assessor, said Iowa City’s current residential valuations were at 95 or 96 percent of the sales prices in the city in 2007 and 2008, and so they, too, did not need to be changed. Johnson County’s Greazel put Johnson County’s residential valuations at about 99 percent of the sales prices.
New decisions about property valuations occur in each odd-numbered year, which are the years in which the Iowa Department of Revenue issues equalization orders in an attempt to make sure that local jurisdictions’ valuations are in line with sales prices.

Labus said the state department works with local assessors to signal where local jurisdictions’ valuations are so that the state does not have to issue an equalization order in the fall.

Labus on Monday said he intends to change his office’s practice and will begin making valuation adjustments each year and not just in odd-numbered ones. He said property owners are apt to mind a small valuation increase in each of two years less than a bigger increase every other year.

Labus and his predecessor, Rick Ellars, have divided Cedar Rapids into 173 mini-neighborhoods, each of which can be analyzed to see what sales of property have been in each mini-neighborhood.

In 2007, such a process saw some homes in one mini-neighborhood climb 23 percent in value while mini-neighborhoods saw values drop 10 percent.

As for this year, Labus said his review of sales figures and his discussions with the Cedar Rapids Area Association of Realtors indicates that the housing market in Cedar Rapids is in a period of what he called “stability,” hence the reason for keeping valuations the same this calendar year, he said.

The Cedar Rapids housing market never saw a big price “bubble” like other markets across the country and so it is not seeing a price “burst” now, Labus said.

He said his sense is that homes valued between $85,000 and $125,000 in Cedar Rapids have probably seen valuation increases because of the demand for that part of the housing market from flood victims in search replacement homes.

“I have a feeling that market is a little artificial because of the flood. But I don’t have the facts to back me up on that,” Labus said.

Two new neighborhood development corps. aren’t quite dueling; one has money; one is focused on Oakhill Jackson/New Bohemia

The city of Cedar Rapids had no non-profit neighborhood development corporations a month ago. It has two now. They aren’t quite dueling development outfits, but almost.

One of the new non-profit corporations is called the Neighborhood Development Corp. of Cedar Rapids is the one with deep pockets. The City Council has endorsed it, and as importantly, the council has steered $1.5 million in state Community Disaster Grant Program.

Carol Bower, the new director of NDC of Cedar Rapids, has run a similar operation in the city of Des Moines.
She reports that her new Cedar Rapids organization now has four of its nine board members in place. They are attorney Bill Prowell, developer/builder Bart Woods, architect/developer/downtown property owner Steve Emerson, and banker Bruce Anderson. One of the nine board members will be a City Council member.

Bower expects to announce the location of the NDC of Cedar Rapids’ new office at the board’s April 22 meeting.

She has found three spaces that are ready to occupy: two of them are in the downtown and one is in Czech Village, she says. She also has looked at available spaces in Wellington Heights, Oakhill Jackson and Time Check.

Eventually, Bower says she envisions the NDC of Cedar Rapids purchasing a building in a flood-damaged neighborhood and having the organization’s office on the ground flood and affordable housing above it.
One of the focuses of the NDC of Cedar Rapids will be to buy neighborhood commercial property and redevelop it.

Bower has now moved to Cedar Rapids.

If she had her druthers, she wishes that the other new neighborhood development corporation, the Oakhill Jackson New Bohemia Neighborhood Development Corp., would have used a name other than “neighborhood development corporation.”

It’s like having two Gazette newspapers in the same city, she says.

Last week, the OJNBNDC got some attention here after it created itself and elected officers. Dale Todd, former council member, is president; Scott Jamieson, CEO of Horizons helping services agency, is vice president; Michael Richards, president of the Oakhill Jackson Neighborhood Association is secretary; and Fred Timko, president/CEO of Point Builders Inc. and developer of BottleWorks Loft Condos, is treasurer.

Jamieson said the purpose of OJNBNDC is to get moving on issues in the neighborhood without having to depend on City Hall to take some action. By creating the non-profit structure, the group hopes to position itself for disaster-relief funding.

The group intends to work with other efforts and is not opposed to taking help from City Hall, from the NDC of Cedar Rapids or anyone else, Jamieson said.

An idea and an idea guy — disliked in some quarters for some time — have proven right in the end

Scott Olson’s idea worked beautifully.

Today, some two years after Olson broached it, the idea has three vital helping services entities — Green Square Meals, the Ecumenical Community Center and the Witwer Senior Center Meals Program – in a new home in what had been a hard-to-lease space at 601-605 Second Ave. SE.

For Olson’s idea and initiative, the three groups now have invented an award to thank him. The three groups call it the Pillar of the Community Achievement Award.

The idea was not easy to turn into reality.

Firstly, it was hated by many associated with the meals program. Olson was even disliked for the idea in some quarters.

It was hated because it was such a good idea. It was so good that it allowed a majority of the City Council to conclude two years ago that the council could insist that the beloved Green Square Meals program move from the city’s dilapidated building in the downtown Greene Square Park. The building was used for nothing for the couple hours on weekdays for the meals program, it had fallen into disrepair and the city wanted to demolish it.

Even so, the council – it was a 5-4 vote for the meals program to move – easily could have voted for the meals program to stay but for Olson’s idea.

He proposed that the meals program move nearby to the 601-605 Second Ave. SE space where it could still easily serve a homeless and low-income population in the downtown. And the deal was similar to what it had enjoyed in the city. A $1-a-year lease.

In truth, it took another year for Green Square Meals – a devoted band of volunteers who had been a hot, evening meal from the park building for years – to settle on the fact that the Second Avenue site would be the program’s new home.

In March 2008, Olson announced that renovation of the building was readying to begin.

In June, though, the flood came and set all the plans aside. Olson’s own Skogman Realty office on the first floor of the downtown Higley Building was swamped with water.

It took until this January for the project to get moving again. By this time, the project had a bigger scope. The Witwer Senior Center, which was flooded out of its downtown home, would be moving its noontime meals program into the Second Avenue site. The kitchen would be bigger and Witwer would contribute to some of cost of outfitting the bigger, nicer kitchen.

It’s all been up and running now for a little more than a month. Myrt Bowers last week said her program – its long-range plan is still to relocate in a few to several years in a proposed, new community center – and Green Square Meals now ’ program now are serving meals to the same number of people who have been coming to the programs prior to the flood.

Olson last week provided a tour of the new digs, both the 605 Second Ave. SE space where the meals programs operate to the 601 Second Ave. SE space, which is connected by an interior hallway. The latter address is where the Ecumenical Community Center has its lineup of offices – from the Helping Hands Ministry to Churches United to Narcotics Anonymous to the Foman Infant Nutrition Unit.

Olson acknowledged that there were at least two reasons that his idea for merging helping-services entities in the same place had met with some skepticism.

The first was that Green Square Meals understandably wanted to stay in the city’s park building, which had become the program’s home.

“It was very emotional,” Olson says. “Green Square Meals looked at their options.”

Secondly, though, was the complication that Olson’s role as Ecumenical Center board member, Realtor and property owner brought into the mix.

As he explained last week, Olson and a group of nine other partners have invested in a group of buildings in the city in recent years with an idea of renovating them into a different use. The WaterTower Place condominiums is one such example.

This group of 10 investors, he said, owned 50 percent of the 601/605 Second Ave. SE building, which had had mixed success at finding tenants.

At the same time, Olson was a board member of the non-profit Ecumenical Community Center Foundation, which had a building at 1035 Third Ave. SE, a building that Cardiologists P.C. next door was interested in purchasing.

Cardiologists PC purchased the Third Avenue building, and the Ecumenical group used the money to purchase the Second Avenue building for its new home and the new home of Green Square Meals.

Olson last week said he collected no Realtor fees on the sale of the Second Avenue building, and he said he contributed far more in cash and time into the project than the $2,500 or so he might have made on the building’s sale and his 5 percent interest in it.

Olson said he can’t do anything more than that about the property transactions that when into the stew that allowed his idea, first hatched more than two years ago, to go to reality.

“I know people are pleased that the idea worked,” he says.

He notes that each of the three entities retain their individual identities but are sharing a space, sharing electric bills and sharing maintenance of the building.

“You never give up,” Olson continues. “You put people together, and you just keep working at it.”

The total renovation cost to make the Second Avenue building into a new home for three groups is $1.2 million, most of which Olson raised from private donors. The donations range from $5 to $100,000, he says, with much more in the way of cabinets to floor coverings to furniture donated from local companies.

Olson, who has been a mainstay on community boards for the Four Oaks family services agency and Geneva Towers for years, says his involvement is no different than the involvement of all who donated to the Second Avenue project and to all the volunteers who daily join in community efforts like Green Square Meals.

“You participate. It’s part of living in a town,” he says.

A visit with the police chief makes it easy to see how red-light and speed enforcement cameras will bring in some money

Police Chief Greg Graham was talking this week about red-light enforcement cameras plus a mobile camera or two to catch speeders.

The cameras, ten or so, will be in place in Cedar Rapids by early summer.

The chief can go on about how he’s bringing the enforcement cameras to the city to reduce the number of crashes here.

He cites studies that show cities that use enforcement cameras can cut crashes by 20 percent. In 2008, he said the Cedar Rapids Police Department worked 5,000 crashes, taking up countless hours of police work. The number of hours worked on accidents far exceeds the number of hours the department is now devoting to patrolling neighborhoods, he said. And then there is all the gnarled metal; the motorist hospitalizations; the insurance claims.

Graham dismisses any suggestion that the cameras are all about revenue. Even so, the cameras are projected to bring $750,000 a year in ticket revenue into the department’s coffers. And that is just the department’s share. A private company will own the cameras, install them and maintain them and even collect the revenue.

It’s hard to imagine the cameras can generate that kind of revenue until Graham keeps talking.

Firstly, the chief, who came to Cedar Rapids from Ocala, Fla., last June, says people run a lot of red lights in Cedar Rapids. In fact, Graham, who always wears his police uniform, has handed out red-light tickets to people himself.

Secondly, Graham hinted that an individual ticket might cost some money because the vendor’s fee may be added to the ticket amount not included in it.

And thirdly, he suggested that a mobile camera designed to catch speeders might work spots on Interstate 380, including the curves through the downtown. It sounded like a revenue gold mine.

Graham challenged residents to prove him wrong so the Police Department gets no revenue from the cameras.

“How great would that be?” he said.

Police Chief Graham says Cedar Rapids has too few black police officers; recruiting officers of any race difficult these days, he says

Police Chief Greg Graham says the 200-officer Cedar Rapids Police Department should have more than three black police officers.

The matter came up Thursday afternoon as Graham took an hour’s worth of questions on a wide range of subjects from the editorial staff and from reporters at The Gazette.

The question about black police officers was posed in the wake of an assault on a Cedar Rapids police officer by three black youth, an assault that has left the officer in the hospital in guarded condition and has increased the city’s police presence in neighborhoods with larger black populations.

At 6 p.m. Tuesday, too, the city’s Civil Rights Commission is sponsoring a forum at St. Paul’s United Methodist Church in the Wellington Heights Neighborhood to discuss criminal violence and neighborhood police presence.

The diversity of a city’s police force, the chief said Thursday, should “mirror” the diversity of the city, and three black officers, he said, is too few for a city like Cedar Rapids. The shortage of black officers is something he noticed early on after assuming the chief’s job in June 2008, he said.

The U.S. Census in 2000 put the city’s black population at 3.7 percent, and a census estimate in 2006 put that figure at 4.9 percent. For the Police Department’s makeup to match the city’s racial makeup, the department should have 9 or 10 black officers.

Prior to coming to Cedar Rapids, Graham had been deputy chief in Ocala, Fla., where he worked for a black police chief. But when asked if he had any network of contacts that might help in the recruitment of black officers, he said he wasn’t sure he did.

“The lack of minority officers is something we’re trying to address,” Graham offered.

But, in fact, he said it was difficult to recruit police officers, period, no matter what the race. At the same time, the current economic downturn might make public-sector law enforcement look more attractive to potential recruits, he said.

Graham said the department will be hiring a new recruit class in the months ahead, with training for that class set for summer. He said he would be willing to take questions about the racial makeup of the class at that time.

Oakhill Jackson/New Bohemia creates its own neighborhood redevelopment corp. despite City Hall-endorsed one with $1.5 million in public money

City Hall two weeks ago orchestrated the creation of a non-profit Neighborhood Development Corp. and, it turns out, a neighborhood can create one of those corporations, too.

That is just what has happened.

Eight people sat in a conference room at Horizons family-services agency, 819 Fifth St. SE, on Thursday morning and created the Oakhill Jackson New Bohemia Neighborhood Development Corp.

In the creation, the eight elected officers: Dale Todd, president; Scott Jamieson, vice president; Michael Richards, secretary; Fred Timko, treasurer.

Board members also in attendance were Chuck Hammond, Peggy Whitworth, Mel Andringa and Ed Young Jr.

Todd is a former City Council member, past president of the Wellington Heights Neighborhood Association, and currently an associate of Des Moines developer Jack Hatch, who has plans to build the Oakhill Jackson Brickstone Apartments along Sixth Street SE.

E. Scott Jamieson is the CEO of the Horizons family services agency; Richards is president of the Oakhill Jackson Neighborhood Association; and Timko is president/CEO of Point Builders Inc. and developer of BottleWorks Loft Condos, 905 Third St. SE.

Hammond is CEO at Raining Rose Inc.; Whitworth, retired former director of Brucemore; Andringa is co-founder of Legion Arts; and Young is enterprise manager at the African American Museum of Iowa.

The new non-profit entity has come to be because its board members say they want to get redevelopment moving in the flood-damaged Oakhill Jackson Neighborhood — it contains the New Bohemia arts and cultural district. City Hall hasn’t gotten such redevelopment moving, the board says.

The new board of the new corporation — the name is so long it’s tempting to settle for OJNBNDC — is well aware of the other neighborhood development corporation, the City Hall-endorsed Neighborhood Development Corp., which the City Council created on March 25.

And the new group is well aware, too, that the council has funneled $1.5 million in state funds to the corporation it has endorsed. It is money that will be used to pay a director, Carol Bower of Des Moines, to set up an office here and begin to look at buying up property for redevelopment with a focus on commercial redevelopment.

But so what, the new neighborhood corporation’s members say.

After its meeting Thursday morning, Jamieson said the neighborhood’s own development corporation can work in concert with whatever or whoever is working to help the city recover from the 2008 flood.

But he said the neighborhood’s own upstart corporation can bring “clarity” to the job at hand and get the work started without waiting on City Hall. The corporation can benefit the City Council and is willing to take the council’s help, but it doesn’t need to depend on it, Jamieson said.

Raining Rose’s CEO Chuck Hammond said the new group believes “we’ve got to do something else.” “There are significant needs unmet,” he said.

Jamieson’s helping-services agency employs 90 people in the neighborhood and Hammond’s company employs 65 there.

On Thursday, the board said it wanted to position itself to qualify for federal and state funding as a local nonprofit group.

The board also took steps to make improvements at what has been known as New Bo Park, which sits to the south of the BottleWorks Loft Condos and the WaterTower Place condominiums next door.

The board will assume ownership of the park for now while BottleWorks will make improvements to it and maintain it. BottleWorks’ Timko said the development budget for the loft condos includes money to fix up the park.

The OJNBNRC also committed to a neighborhood cleanup of stray glass and nails, and will call on local AmeriCorps members to help out.

Council passes new budget, but not without anti-Prosser theatrics by three of nine council members

It is easy to be caught by surprise when the City Council finally gets around to voting on the annual city budget.

The final vote always comes after much discussion and many long, nighttime meetings over three or so months with the final pre-vote meeting seeming to bring some consensus of what the council has tossed into the mix.

But once again on Wednesday evening, three of the nine City Council members – Justin Shields, Monica Vernon and Jerry McGrane — opted to use the council budget vote as theater and as symbolism which they knew would have no bearing on the majority’s vote to approve the budget.

It was the threesome’s chance to lodge a protest vote against City Manager Jim Prosser.

The new budget, approved on a 6-3 vote, adds 26 new employees, increasing the city’s total number of employees to 1,422.

The new budget is huge by Cedar Rapids city budget standards. The regular piece of the budget amounts to $392 million, but the flood fund portion of the budget adds another $359.5 million to the budget, raising the total size of the thing to $752 million for the fiscal year beginning July 1.

However, Shields, Vernon and McGrane rejected the budget over raises totaling $23,358 to two of the city’s top department heads,