Followers of the East Post Road bridge flap: Here’s how bridge might look

Here are images — http://gazetteonline.com/assets/pdf/bridgerenderings.pdf —  

 that the City Council looked at this week as it pushed the project ahead to replace the East Post Road bridge over Indian Creek.

 

The council broke 5-4 on keeping a sidewalk on the downstream side of the new bridge. It also will include a 14-foot trail on the upstream side.

 

There are formal council votes yet to come, so nothing is set in stone.

 

The images show the bridge now and renderings of what it might look like.

 

Both the trail and sidewalk are elevated six inches above the roadway to calm fears from citizens that the bridge one day will be converted to a four-lane structure.

Proposal for new dog park gets council member Podzimek howling

The city’s Parks and Recreation Department is proposing to spend $125,000 to create a new dog park on city property near the Gardner Golf Course at Highway 100 and Highway 13.

At a Thursday evening budget session, council member Tom Podzimek said the spot was far removed from most of Cedar Rapids and seemed, instead, a great place for the taxpayers of Cedar Rapids to pay to provide a dog park for the use of residents of Marion and Linn County. Council member Justin Shields agreed.

Julie Sina, the city’s parks and recreation director, noted that the dog community liked the site, and she pointed out that users pay a fee to use it.

That prompted Podzimek to suggest that non-residents should pay double what city residents pay for the use of such a facility. Taxpayers in Cedar Rapids pay for all kinds of services non-residents use with little or no cost, he lectured.

Sina noted that some of the city’s recreation programs do give discounts for Cedar Rapids residents.

For his part, Shields wasn’t sure about charging high extra fees to non-residents. He said it was unclear where such a practice would stop. Should nonresidents pay double to golf or to listen to the opera? he asked.

Council member Chuck Wieneke said the answer was a local employment tax, which he said would make people who work in Cedar Rapids but live elsewhere help pay for city services and amenities.

The council said it will make big decisions in the next week or two about its budget for the fiscal year beginning July 1. Property taxes are expected to jump because of the loss of revenue from properties damaged in the June flood and because of increased costs to the city associated with flood recovery.

City Hall doesn’t help itself on the consultant-bashing front

City Hall might have done a little better job on the timing of amendments to its contract with one of the city’s principal consultants, Sasaki Associates Inc., Watertown, Mass.

The contract includes at least 10 other professional firms that are working alongside Sasaki in the development of the city’s flood protection system and, now, on a neighborhood planning process.

The Boston-area firm has been a presence in Cedar Rapids since the June flood.

These things cost money.

That was clear in mid-December when the City Council amended Sasaki’s earlier contract with the city, adding $2.487 million to it and bringing the total to $3.943 million.

There was a news item about that.

Well, again this week, the council amended the contract, adding another $300,000 to it. The new amendment brings the total to $4,243,736.

The council agenda noted that total contract price in December. This week, the council agenda just noted the $300,000 figure.

Life was much different in the spring of 2008 when the City Council held a competition among riverfront design teams and selected Sasaki to create a downtown riverfront improvement plan for the city. Sasaki had done such work in Indianapolis, Cincinnati and many other places, and as council member Pat Shey pointed out at the time, Sasaki had just won a first-place design award for its work at the upcoming Beijing Summer Olympics.

The cost of the Sasaki contract at that time was $150,000. Then the June flood arrived.