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.”

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.

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.”

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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, Conni Huber, human resources director, and Christine Butterfield, community development director.

The raises came outside the council’s budget deliberations as City Manager Jim Prosser has explained that he was bringing the department heads’ salaries in line with the other six department directors that report to Prosser and in line with salaries of such positions in 23 other cities in the Midwest.

On Wednesday evening, Prosser noted that the move to establish pay equity for the city’s department directors began two years ago, but got pushed aside by last summer’s flood and by the focus on flood recovery. That’s why the two raises came now.

Shields, Vernon and McGrane said they didn’t think Huber and Butterfield should have been singled out for special consideration — Huber’s raise was 15.8 percent and Butterfield’s, 10.2 percent — when the 400 or so other city employees not represented by bargaining units were getting just 2 percent raises and another 800-plus bargaining-unit employees were getting raises in the 3-percent range.

Shields wondered if Prosser had spent any time looking at other classes of city employees to see if their wages were in line with other cities.

Prosser said, in fact, the city does that on an ongoing basis.

Vernon, a business owner, said her employees aren’t given the luxury of a review of 23 other cities to justify where their salaries should be.

Council member Tom Podzimek said the issue was about “fair compensation” based on a review of many other cities. Podzimek wondered if the city really wanted to lose its top directors or if the city wanted to become a “second class city.”

In a moment unusual for him, Prosser got exercised. He said it was his decision to raise the salaries of two of his directors and if Shields or the council had a problem with it they could address it during his performance review. He said he had no difficulty defending the raises so that the salaries were in line with the city’s other department directors and other cities’ directors.

“If you don’t think I did it right, take it out of my salary,” Prosser said.

Shields came right back at Prosser: “Those comments don’t change my mind,” Shields said. “I don’t agree with singling out two employees.”

Shields and Vernon have been at public odds with the city manager.

In recent weeks, the two made a much-publicized attempt to hire a flood CEO that would sidestep Prosser and report directly to the council. McGrane agreed with them.

The council majority, though, dismissed the move out of hand, arguing that the city’s still-new council/manager government is designed with one top dog, the city manager, to report to the council. The council has agreed to hire a flood manager, but that manager will report to Prosser.

It is a City Hall election year.

Six of nine seats are up for a vote, including Shields’ District 5 seat and McGrane’s District 3 seat. Vernon, the District 2 council member, has been thinking of running for mayor.

It’s not lonely being the only person in mayoral race: Corbett pioneers new City Hall campaign tactic, You Tube video he calls ‘Corbett TV’

For now — still seven months from the Nov. 3 election — Ron Corbett has the mayoral race all to himself.
And he’s working to make the best of it.

On Tuesday, Corbett unveiled what seems to be a first for a Cedar Rapids City Hall election: It’s his own You Tube video that he calls “Corbett TV.”

Watching Corbett TV, it’s hard to imagine You Tube videos aren’t going to become part of other local election campaigns in the months ahead as candidates try to see if they get some traction and visibility for free.

Corbett says he’d like to have a string of videos on his campaign Website, roncorbett.com, for voters to take a look when they sit down to make a decision on whom to vote for next fall.

In two videos released on Tuesday, Corbett continues his assault on what he calls “the culture of delay” at City Hall.

This time, the 48-year-old vice president at trucking firm CRST Inc. is standing in front of the flood-damaged Ellis Park swimming pool and lamenting that it will not open this summer after all. In a second video, he stands in front of the damaged Tree of Five Seasons and says too little is being done to put the city back together again.

In regard to the Ellis pool, the City Council in recent months had urged city staff to hustle with repairs to the pool so it could open this summer. The council thought opening the pool would have a symbolic benefit and would show that the city is getting back on its feet. A week ago, though, the council learned that repairs could not be made in time for this season.

In his video, Corbett says:

“This pool will be closed for 2009 because of the indecision and the culture of delay that is within or City Council. They have let the homeowners down of this community, they have let the businesses down of this community, they have let the veterans down in this community, and now they’re letting down the children of this community.”

Corbett said he will get the pool open in 2010 if he’s elected mayor.

Do you know any of these people? Are any worth electing to the City Council?

Nine residents, all men, have taken out nomination papers to run for City Council in the Nov. 3 general election.

Taking out papers and getting citizen signatures on them and turning them in are two different things. But getting papers shows interest. After all, you’ve gone to the trouble to go to the City Clerk’s Office or the Linn County Auditor’s Office to pick the papers up.

The only name of the nine on the list to date that is easily recognized is Jerry McGrane’s. McGrane is the incumbent District 3 council member who has said he intends to seek reelection.

Andrew Murrow, 800 15th St. SE, noted that he, too, was interested in running for the District 3 seat.

Three people said they were interested in running for mayor: Nick Olinger, 1620 Fourth Ave. SE; Steve Almond, 5641 Kirkwood Blvd. SW, #8; and Jeff Allard, 1439 Wolf Dr. NW.

Others taking out papers but not identifying which council seat they might seek are: Mel Hayes, 2210 C St. SW; Robert Bates, Cedar Rapids; Calvin Busch, 1334 C St. SW, #3; and Daniel Schloss, 1500 Bever Ave. SE.

To date, only one candidate has announced publicly that he is running for city office. That is Ron Corbett, a vice president at trucking firm CRST Inc. and a former state legislator and former president/CEO of the Cedar Rapids Area Chamber of Commerce. Corbett is running for mayor.

Six of the council’s nine seats are on this year’s ballot. The incumbents in those seats are Mayor Kay Halloran, District 1 council member Kris Gulick, District 3’s McGrane, District 5’s Justin Shields and at-large council members Brian Fagan and Pat Shey.

Halloran has said she will announce her intentions after the end of the Iowa Legislature’s session this spring.

Back in 2005 — the first election in the city’s then-new government with a part-time council and a city manager — nearly 40 people ran for the nine seats.

Three of the seats were open in 2007 to create a stagger so not all nine seats would be up for election the same year. In 2007, two incumbents, District 2’s Sarah Henderson and District 4’s Chuck Swore, were defeated by Monica Vernon and Chuck Wieneke. At-large council member Tom Podzimek won reelection in 2007.

Mayoral prospect Hinzman nudges toward a decision to take on Corbett and, perhaps, others

Gary Hinzman, the director of the Sixth Judicial District Department of Correctional Services and a former Cedar Rapids police chief, first surfaced publicly as a possible mayoral candidate, thanks to Ron Corbett, who now has announced his candidacy for the job.

In January, Corbett or Corbett backers conducted a phone survey to see which possible candidates might best him in a run for mayor. The five names in the survey were those of Corbett, Scott Olson, a local Realtor who ran unsuccessfully for mayor in 2005, council members Brian Fagan and Monica Vernon, and Hinzman.

Last week, Hinzman took a step closer to showing his cards when his new Web site appeared — “Gary Hinzman for Mayor, A Voice for All People, A Force for Positive Change.” He said the Web site is “under construction.”

By week’s end, Hinzman had issued a statement on “ethics” to his 250 employees, alerting them to his possible mayoral run and to his commitment, should he run, to following state rules required of a public employee running for public elective office.

In short, such a run for mayor, he tells his employees, will require him to separate any political activities from the official business of correctional services department.

The rule, he tells them, is “simple:” “Government time, resources or equipment cannot be used for political purposes. This includes our e-mail system.”

He adds that no employee is expected to do anything in the way of offering support or mouthing political comments to him.

And he notes that he has not made any final decision to run for mayor.

“This is becoming more likely,” he says of a run for mayor. “But I have not yet made an announcement and I am still considering some key factors.”

Incumbent Mayor Kay Halloran has said she will make a decision about seeking reelection later this spring.

Corbett lambasts ‘culture of delay’; calls for fix of City Hall; labor, vets turn out; Councilman Shey there, too; calls Corbett ’status quo’

Mayoral candidate Ron Corbett on Thursday morning stood outside the empty, flood-damaged Veterans Memorial Building/City Hall and called on city government to repair the building and return to it.

In so doing, Corbett said the city would honor the veterans for whom the building stands as a memorial and it would put local workers back to work.

Nearly 100 labor union members and veterans stood to listen to Corbett speak, but surprisingly, no one from the local electronic media was on hand to record the event.

Turns out, the Linn County Board of Supervisors had summoned the media to the flood-damaged federal courthouse just down the street, a building that the supervisors have their eyes on for the possible future location of the county’s juvenile court operation.

In any event, Corbett had props, TV cameras or no TV cameras.

He held up one of the familiar “We’re Back” signs that have gone outside many buildings that were damaged by the June 2008 flood and are now open and back to life. Only Corbett’s sign had a circle with a line through it, signifying that the Veterans Memorial Building is not back on its feet. He then ripped the circle off so the sign said, “We’re Back.”

“This is why we need a new game plan for Cedar Rapids, a game plan that shows leadership and says, “We’re back.”

Just 10 days ago, Corbett –- vice president at trucking firm CRST and former president/CEO of the Cedar Rapids Area Chamber of Commerce and former speak of the Iowa House of Representatives -– attracted every media outlet when he formally kicked off his campaign for mayor.

He spoke without nearly all of them on Thursday.

In his remarks, Corbett took exception with the City Council’s plans for a six-to-nine month study focused on the prospect of building a new government building to house city government and perhaps “co-locate” other jurisdiction’s offices in the new building or at the same site.

“Does the city really want to build a new Taj Mahal dedicated to government?” Corbett asked. “The least expensive plan is to rebuild and move many of the functions of city government back into the Veterans Memorial Building.”

Of course, what most know as City Hall is the Veterans Memorial Building, which was built in the 1920s to honor veterans even as it became home to City Hall.

Corbett said placing City Hall on an island in the middle of the Cedar River made perfect sense in the 1920s and keeping it there makes sense today.

“Many years ago this site was chosen for city government because it was a neutral site between the communities of Cedar Rapids and Kingston,” he said. “That decision brought people together and still does today. This memorial and home to city government has served us well. It is time to reach back to that same unifying spirit.”

Corbett said the current City Hall administration has been given the approval to spend $24 million in Federal Emergency Management Agency disaster relief money to bring the Veterans Memorial Building back to life. Instead, he said, city leaders have set the matter aside to spend many, many more months exploring the idea of building a new facility somewhere else.

At the end of the day, the city must restore the Veterans Memorial Building in any event, he said, and he said the city should do it out of respect for veterans and to get people in down economy back to work.

“The culture of delay is hurting everyone,” Corbett said. “It is time to get on with our lives.

“We have 7,900 people in this county unemployed. We have laborers in the construction trades that stand ready to work. Unfortunately, we have a City Council stuck in a culture of delay. … We are losing an entire construction season. The delays have to stop.”

Ray Dochterman, business manager of the Plumbers and Pipefitters Local 125, said his appearance at Corbett’s event on Thursday was not yet an official endorsement of Corbett for mayor. But he said he invited 50 members of his union to come out and listen to Corbett, and 50 members showed up.
Dochterman liked that Corbett was talking about turning federal dollars into jobs.

“You know we’re a little short of jobs right now,” he said.

Scott Smith, president of the Cedar Rapids/Iowa City Building and Construction Trades Council, was on hand Thursday, too, to hear Corbett.

“He’s got some good ideas, and I think he’s looking to take charge and get work going here that needs to be done,” Smith said. “It’s been nine months since the flood, and there’s not a whole lot of progress.”

George Hammond, a long-time member of the city’s Veterans Memorial Commission, said veterans just want the city to use the federal money to bring the building back to life whether city government returns to it or not.

“All we want is the building back,” Hammond said.

Standing on the edge of the crowd was City Council member Pat Shey.

Later, after the Corbett speech, Shey said he was “disappointed” with Corbett what Corbett had to say. He called it advocacy for the “status quo.”

Shey said the council is still negotiating with FEMA over the amount of damage to the building even as the city begins a public participation process to help figure out what is the best future use for City Hall.

“I cannot recall any discussion about building a Taj Mahal,” Shey said. In fact, he said no one has advocated building a “new” structure for city hall.

Mayoral race has one announced candidate, but Gary Hinzman joins Ron Corbett with his own mayoral Web site

Cedar Rapids may have just Ron Corbett so far when it comes to candidates who have formally announced a campaign for mayor.

However, Gary Hinzman, director of the Sixth Judicial District Department of Correctional Services and a one-time Cedar Rapids police chief, is front and center with his own Web site, “Gary Hinzman for Mayor, A Voice for All People, A Force for Positive Change.”

Hinzman, who has not run for elective office before, has been on Corbett’s mind for a few months now as Corbett, a former state representative and, in that role, a former speaker of the Iowa House of Representatives, has readied to make his own run for mayor.

Early in the year, Corbett or Corbett backers conducted a phone survey in the city to see just which names might have some traction in this year’s mayoral race. In addition to the Corbett name, the list included Scott Olson, a commercial Realtor who was narrowly defeated in the 2005 mayoral race; council members Brian Fagan and Monica Vernon; and Hinzman.

In recent weeks, Hinzman joined the other four names on that list in saying that he supported the local-option sales tax for flood relief and property-tax relief, a tax that voters easily passed on March 3.

Once Corbett jumped out and formally announced his mayoral campaign on March 9, Hinzman said recently that he would wait for a time before announcing his intentions.

Hinzman is a national leader in the field of community corrections as exemplified by his position as president of the American Parole and Probation Association.

He has been head of the six-county community corrections operation since 1989, and in that time, he has overseen the creation of a sprawling campus of correctional buildings off Sixth Street SW.

Hinzman came to the agency at a time when it needed to expand and it was facing resistance from neighbors who didn’t want correctional services in the neighborhoods. Hinzman took the center of the operation to an out-of-the-way industrial area of the city, and more recently, has returned some staff members to neighborhood centers in the city.

Hinzman’s Web site says he oversees an $18-million-plus annual budget and 250 employees.

As for Web site, candidate Corbett has one, too: Ron Corbett, “Leadership for Cedar Rapids.”

On the Corbett site, you can buy a T-shirt, coffee mug or dog shirt, sign up to get text messages or e-mails from the campaign and watch a video of Corbett’s campaign announcement speech.

Corbett is vice president for human resources at trucking firm CRST and is former president/CEO of the Cedar Rapids Area Chamber of Commerce.

Mayor Kay Halloran has said she will wait until after the state legislative session this spring before announcing her City Hall plans.

The election is Nov. 3.

Candidate Corbett says city doesn’t need a full-time mayor or a flood CEO

Some critics of City Hall in the business community can begin to long for an earlier time when the city had a full-time mayor, not the current part-time one, to run the show.

Ron Corbett, who announced his candidacy for mayor this week, dismissed such a suggestion in a talk with The Gazette’s editorial board.

Critics who might be thinking about mobilizing the community to change the city’s form of government shouldn’t waste their time, Corbett implied.

“I think you can have strong leadership in any form of government,” Corbett said.

It was only in 2005 that Cedar Rapids residents overwhelming voted to replace its century-old commission form of government with the current professional city manager and a part-time council and part-time mayor.

The commission government had five full-time council members who doubled as department administrators.

But as Corbett pointed out this week, the commission government really was not a strong-mayor form of government. The mayor in that set-up had one of five votes, just like the current part-time mayor is one of nine votes on the council.

What those romanticizing about the past recall, he said, is the city’s long-time, legendary mayor, Don Canney. He said people remember Canney as a strong mayor, but he added it was not because of the form of government.

“It was because he stepped up as an individual,” Corbett said of Canney. “I believe individuals can step in and make a difference.”

Back in 2004, Corbett, then president/CEO of the Cedar Rapids Area Chamber of Commerce, led a petition drive that amassed a required 10,000 signatures that prompted the convening of a Home Rule Charter Commission. (The City Council at the time could have convened the commission, but it wanted to see the signatures).

Over many months, the Charter Commission studied government and opted to give voters the option of council/manager government with a part-time mayor and part-time council. It rejected the option for a full-time mayor.

One of the central arguments in that discussion, which also applied to the commission form of government, was that full-time elected positions prevented talented people from running for City Hall office because they didn’t want to give up careers to do so.

Corbett this week said that was the right decision.

He then talked about the news conference he held at 10 a.m. Monday to announce his run for mayor.

Fifteen minutes after the event, he said he was back at his desk at trucking firm CRST International Inc. on the city’s west side working on the employees’ health-care package.

Holding city office while having a job outside of city government “grounds” a person in real life, Corbett said. He said he wouldn’t want to give that up as mayor.

On a second front, the City Council this evening is going to discuss hiring a new executive to focus on flood recovery, what council member Monica Vernon — and possible mayoral candidate — has called a flood CEO.

The council discussion will be interesting, in part, to see where such a new employee might fit in the City Hall scheme in relation to City Manager Jim Prosser.

Corbett said the city doesnt’ need a flood CEO. He said the city needs a stronger mayor.

The city manager can deliver what a flood CEO might with “the right direction from the mayor and City Council,” he said.

Can Corbett get to City Hall from halfback, ice-cream trucks, House speaker, Chamber chief and trucking firm v.p.?

In his time as president/CEO of the Cedar Rapids Area Chamber of Commerce from mid-1999 to mid-2005, Ron Corbett was in the news nearly as much as the mayor and other members of the City Council.

Back then, he tried to convince city and county government to merge governments, without success. He successfully helped push a school bond vote. He helped hustle state Vision Iowa money. He even helped get $10.5 million for the RiverRun redevelopment project, money that came to nothing when residents declined to pass a local-option sales tax to support the project.

Perhaps most importantly, Corbett led the community petition drive to in 2004, which forced the creation of a Home Rule Charter Commission. The commission then picked a new form of government for the city – one with a professional city manager and part-time council – and put it to a vote June 14, 2005. Residents approved the change by a 69-31 percent vote.

The next day, victory in hand, Corbett announced his departure from the Chamber, and he headed to Cedar Rapids trucking firm CRST International Inc., where is a vice president.

After 13 years in the Iowa House of Representatives – including five years as speaker of the House – and six at the Chamber, he all but vanished from the public stage.

“I wanted to focus on my business career,” he says now.

Even then, it figured he’d reemerge. And now he has.

“I guess the old pilot light never went out,” says Corbett, 48, of 321 30th St. SE. “And after the flood, and seeing the struggles that the community was facing, I started thinking about running for mayor. And as I met with people over the last three months, I decided I should.”

He’s scheduled a news conference for 10 a.m. Monday to formally announce his candidacy for mayor.

He’ll be standing outside the closed-down Swiss Valley Farms dairy plant, 133 F Ave. NW, the owners of which left town after the June flood damaged the building.

Corbett says he’ll bring a reinvigorated focus on economic development.

The times call for it, he says. With the sour economy, the credit crunch, the energy crisis and the city’s flood recovery, the city, he says, needs a new economic development “game plan.”

This theme sends Corbett hurdling back to his earlier life, when, after setting school football rushing records that still stand today, he graduated from Cornell College and headed out into the job market. It was 1983 and he says the jobless rate then was as grim as it is today.

Corbett started out selling insurance, and a few years later, he and two partners started a small business selling ice cream from trucks in the neighborhoods of Cedar Rapids and Waterloo. The outfit was called Peppy’s Ice Cream, named for one of two miniature schnauzers he and his roommate had in college. The choice of name was easy. The other dog’s name was Buckwheat, and Corbett says he didn’t think Buckwheat’s Ice Cream would get much traction.

Corbett says the mid-1980s in Cedar Rapids were not particularly pleasant times as some of the well-established manufacturing plants, including the packing plant, closed or left town. But back then, local leaders put together a plan of attack that over the years has reestablished the city’s employment base. It’s time to focus on that again, he says.

“It’s one thing to say you’re open for business,” Corbett says. “But if you don’t follow up with action, it’s just hollow words. So as mayor, I’ll put a full-court press on, bringing more jobs to this town and rebuilding our commercial and industrial tax base.”

“… Dubuque got IBM and we didn’t,” he adds, noting a recent economic-development success for Dubuque.

Corbett was only 25 when he decided that he would run for a spot in the Iowa Legislature. That year he defeated Paul Pate, who later became a state senator, Iowa secretary of state and Cedar Rapids mayor, in the Republican primary and won the legislative seat a month after he turned 26. Six years later, he defeated then Rep. Kay Halloran, now the city’s mayor, and at age 34, he became the youngest speaker of the Iowa House in history.

In 1999, he left state politics to run the Cedar Rapids Chamber of Commerce, and he left there six years later for a slot as vice president at trucking firm CRST International Inc.

In other words, he hasn’t run for elective office in 11 years.

He says he is entering the mayoral race first because he has to rebuild the campaign contacts he had all those years ago. And he’s not talking about a casual campaign.

After all, it was Corbett backers who launched the campaign season two months ago when they conducted a phone survey of Cedar Rapidians to see which possible candidates, including Corbett, had name recognition enough to make a run for mayor.

Also on the list were Gary Hinzman, director of the Sixth Judicial District Department of Correctional Services and former Cedar Rapids police chief; Scott Olson, a commercial Realtor who nearly won the mayor’s seat in 2005; and council members Brian Fagan and Monica Vernon. The survey didn’t include Mayor Halloran, who has said she will announce later this spring her mayoral intentions.

Today, as he announces his campaign, Corbett won’t try to miss a beat. There’s the 10 a.m. news conference outside the closed plant in a flood-hit neighborhood on the city’s west side. Look for him on the lunch-time news. He talks to the Gazette editorial board early in the afternoon. There’s the Bob Bruce Radio Experience a few hours later. And, no doubt, he’ll be on the evening news.

“There seems to be a lot of indecisiveness and a lot of delays,” Corbett says. “And the citizens of Cedar Rapids are frustrated, and it isn’t just the people affected by the flood. It’s everybody.

“I share that same frustration. That’s why I’m running. To put together a new game plan for Cedar Rapids.”

Corbett reads the news.

He still recalls a cartoon that was in the Des Moines Register some years ago in which a Rip Van Winkle-type of fellow is sleeping under a tree and a young athlete is running past him. The guy sleeping is labeled Des Moines, and the runner is Cedar Rapids.

“Cedar Rapids was on the move then,” Corbett says. “I can’t put my finger on it when it happened, but I think people just kind of sense that we’re not hitting out stride any longer.”

Corbett also has a news story from January, in which council members Justin Shields and Jerry McGrane had returned with a less-than-pretty picture from a lobbying trip to the Statehouse in Des Moines. Shields said lawmakers and policymakers there were calling the Cedar Rapids city government “dysfunctional,” and McGrane said people gave the impression that the city’s government was full of “nincompoops.”

“I’m extremely bothered by that,” Corbett says. “I, like many other Cedar Rapidians, have pride in our town. So one of the first orders of business under a new game plan is to repair our image.

“Why is improving our image so important? It isn’t because of arrogance or ego. We have to repair our image because if you have no confidence in the CEO and board of directors of a company, you’re not going to invest in that company. That’s why image is important.”

Corbett files campaign organization document with state board

Ron Corbett looks like he’s really in.

Corbett, the former president of the Cedar Rapids Area Chamber of Commerce and past speaker of the Iowa House of Representatives, has created a Corbett for Mayor campaign organization.

Corbett also has filed the first necessary campaign document, a DR-1 Statement of Organization, with the Iowa Ethics and Campaign Disclosure Board in Des Moines.

The organizational statement must be filed within 10 days of a campaign committee’s accepting contributions or spending or taking on debt in excess of $750, according to the state board.

In truth, the public wouldn’t yet be thinking too much about this year’s mayoral race but for backers of Corbett, vice president, human resources, at trucking firm CRST International Inc.

Those backers financed a phone survey earlier this year to check on whom voters might like as a mayoral candidate. The survey asked those contacted to pick between Corbett, council members Brian Fagan and Monica Vernon, Scott Olson, a commercial Realtor who was defeated in a close mayor run in 2005, and Gary Hinzman, executive director of the Sixth Judicial District Department of Correctional Services and a former Cedar Rapids police chief.

Corbett, 48, has talked about the need to help flood victims and the need to get the local economy going again.

“Those devastated and displaced by the flood are at the top of our list,” he said in a conversation last week. “But now we face increasing job losses. Sadly, in some cases, people have lost both (a house and a job).”