At midafternoon, the city’s emergency response team was holding a news conference.

By last night, more than 100 people turned out at Westdale Mall for a city-sponsored flood forum to hear first hand from the Army Corps of Engineers about just what the long-term future might bring the city in flood protection.

All the while, the river was on the rise.

“After you go through a massive flood like we did in 2008, whenever the river starts to rise, it kind of puts people on pins and needles a little bit,” Mayor Ron Corbett said at last night’s forum.

Harder to see at last night’s event was the tug of war that is going on between the Army Corps and the city over just what kind of flood protection system to build for the city.

Col. Shawn McGinley, head of the Corps’ Rock Island District office, explained last night that the Corps cannot recommend a flood-protection project that doesn’t protect a value of property equal to the cost of the flood protection put in place.

McGinley noted that the city’s “preferred” protection system, which would protect against the historic flood of 2008, does not meet the Corps’ crucial benefit-cost ratio, a fact reported by the Corps in recent weeks.

Chris Haring, the Corps’ study manager in Cedar Rapids, told the audience that the Corps is looking at alternatives to the city’s preferred plan: One would protect the Quaker plant and the area around it and the Cargill plant below downtown and the area around it. Another option would protect the entire east side of the river from the Quaker plant to the Cargill plant. No protection on the east side of the river would be allowed to exacerbate flooding on the west side of the river, Haring said.

In most of its options, Haring said the Corps is looking at permanent flood walls where the city’s plan envisioned more-expensive, removable flood walls in the downtown.

Mayor Corbett and Greg Eyerly, the city’s flood-recovery director, both made it clear in interviews last night that the city continues to push the Corps to reassess the models it is using to assess benefits and costs.

The city’s Congressional delegation, Corbett pointed out, is very “tuned in” to the city’s concerns about flood protection, and a political solution might be the one that is required, he said.

“We are the second largest city in Iowa, and we can’t have a situation where businesses or residents can’t feel comfortable about reinvesting in this town,” the mayor said. “A levee and wall system is critical to our future. And we believe we can make a case for the economics of it.”

Cedar Rapids Citizens for the Legalization of Urban Chickens — CLUC — had appeared in front of the City Council back in November.

Mayor Ron Corbett this week credited the CLUC group with waiting a couple of months before making their case again to the new City Council, a move that he said allowed the council to address top priorities like flood victims and the city budget.

Corbett said a request for a trial that would allow chickens in, say, 40 backyards for a year didn’t seem like an “unreasonable” idea, but at the same time he wasn’t sure a majority of the City Council favored the idea.

Council member Monica Vernon this week said she didn’t see why the CLUC plan couldn’t get council approval in the near future.

“I don’t think it needs that much study if the neighbors are all in agreement to allow a test,” she said.

Corbett said at least a few on the council are opposed to the idea, though he thought council member Tom Podzimek was one in favor of it.

However, Podzimek this week called the issue of allowing chickens in backyards a “complex” one. He said the density of a neighborhood and the size of a backyard all would need to be factored into any experiment.

He noted that the city of Iowa City set the issue aside.

Sure, Podzimek said, the council has heard from the 50 or so people who want chickens, but “wait until you hear from the thousands who don’t,” he said.

“I moved into an urban area for a reason. I didn’t expect to live on a farm,” he said the sentiment from some will be.

For now, Podzimek thought the City Council had more important matters to address and might not have the “hours” needed to draft “a good policy.”

Council member Don Karr said this week that the city long has had its hands full trying to handle dogs and cats that have irresponsible owners.

“Do we need another animal in the city that people aren’t going to take care of and are going to cause problems for neighbors?” Karr asked.

He also wondered if chickens would bring more raccoons and other wild animals into backyards.

CLUC’s mission statement is this: “We feel that it is everyone’s right to have access to healthy and wholesome food. Keeping a few hens is a healthful way of gardening food for our families in our own backyards.”

In a handout at this week’s council meeting, CLUC stated that 58 families are part of the group.
Rebecca Mumaw, co-founder of the Cedar Rapids group, suggested to the City Council a one-year trial for 50 to 75 households. The trial would include hens, not roosters, she noted.

Of that total, the city estimates it will need about $6 million to buy out owners of about 100 flood-damaged homes who had been selling the properties on contract at the time of the June 2008 flood. Rules attached to federal buyout funds do not permit contract sellers to receive pre-flood value for their properties, so the council will use the local revenue.

The council also is expected to use an estimated $550,000 in local-option sales tax revenue to pay about 110 owners on average about $5,000 for flood-insurance premiums they paid for five years before the flood.

Another $130,000 is being set aside to provide up to $500 for owners who want a new appraisal of their property before a buyout, while $200,000 will be used to buy out and pay demolition costs for two properties that were demolished after the flood but before the buyout program was put in place.

Earlier, the council set aside local-option sales tax revenue for three other needs: $3 million for home rehabilitation being done by local neighborhood programs; $1.25 million for rehabilitation reimbursement; and $20,625 for loan mediation services.

The city began collecting a 1-percent local-option sales tax since April 1, and it will continue to do so through June 30, 2014.

The tax is expected to raise about $90 million for the period, 90 percent of which must go for flood-recovery needs.

What rubbed Shey the wrong way was the pending council decision to spend $171,550 of city funds to help pay for an Army Corps of Engineers’ flood-protection feasibility study of the Indian Creek and Dry Creek watersheds.

The Corps’ requires a 50-percent local match for such a study, to total cost of which is $$343,100.

Shey, though, pointed out that only about 10 percent of the creek watersheds are inside the city of Cedar Rapids, with most of it in Linn County. The creek system also runs through Marion, Shey noted, and Hiawatha and Robins as well.

The study has been long in coming, and the initial impetus for it came from Langston’s own Sun Valley Neighborhood in southeast Cedar Rapids, which was significantly damaged by Indian Creek flooding on June 4, 2002.

In a story about the coming study in The Gazette this week, Langston said her neighborhood was glad a study now was being done, adding that her neighbors and she had begun to feel a little like “forgotten citizens.”

Shey said he read Langston’s comment and instantly wondered, why isn’t the Linn County Board of Supervisors ponying up to help pay part of the local match for the Corps feasibility study? Most of the creek watersheds are in Linn County, he noted.

“We’re the tail being wagged by the dog,” Shey said.

Council member Monica Vernon suggested that the city seek 10 percent of the local matching funds from Linn County and Marion.

Aftet a bit, the dust did settle, though.

City Manager Jim Prosser said the Army Corps of Engineers kind of surprised him in recent days with a call to say the Corps could get the creek study into its work plan now if the city could make a quick decision about local matching funds.

Prosser said as importantly is for the city to work closely with Linn County and others in the planning and implementation phases once the study is complete in a year.

Shey said he’d hate to see the city pay for a study only to learn in a year that Linn County, Marion and others weren’t interested in its recommendations.

Mayor Ron Corbett suggested that the issue was something elected officials ought to talk directly to elected officials about rather than having staff members do it, and Shey said he would call Linn County’s Langston and talk to her about his concern.

Langston on Wednesday said she was “certainly” willing to bring the funding issue up with her supervisor colleagues.

Her preference is for more frequent discussions between the City Council and supervisors on issues of mutual interest so the supervisors know what’s on the City Hall plate and vice versa.

“It makes more sense to me for us to know what it is we’re doing and what actions we’re taking and how we need to cooperate than lobbing sort of fireballs at one another about ‘Well, why are you doing this and why aren’t you doing this,’” she said.

“Instead, why not set up occasional regular meetings so you can say, ‘Hey we got this watershed issue and we really want to move forward on it,’” she said.

Langston said she’d be “more than willing to take Pat’s call” and put the matter on the agenda for the Linn supervisors to discuss. She said she will be a supervisor advocate for the study and for acting on its recommendations, and she suggested Supervisor Brent Oleson of Marion, a city which wrestles with Indian Creek flooding, would be an advocate, too.

At a special luncheon meeting Tuesday to discuss downtown parking, the City Council also signaled that it likely would follow the recommendation of a national parking consultant and turn over the management of the city’s downtown parking operation to downtown property owners.

Dennis Burns, regional vice president of Kimley-Horn Associates Inc. of Phoenix, told the City Council that cities with dozens of priorities never make downtown parking a priority like downtown property owners can.

Burns said downtown property owners were best positioned to know how to use the downtown parking system as an economic development tool to attract businesses and customers to the downtown.

He predicted that property owners would bring a new system of on-street parking meters to the downtown, which would replace eight or nine meters with one and allow motorists to use credit cards to plug a meter. The new meters, better signage, more customer-friendly tactics and brighter entrances to parking ramps all will give the city’s downtown a “progressive” feel, Burns said.

After the Tuesday meeting, Doug Neumann, president and CEO of the Downtown District, said many of the details of a city-downtown agreement on parking have yet to be worked out. But he said downtown property owners have wanted to have their chance to improve the downtown parking operation for years. He added, “We’re well positioned to take on more responsibility.”

Burns said the city’s downtown system of parking does not carry much debt, but at the same time, he imagined that the system has maintenance needs that have been put off.

Council member Chuck Wieneke said taxpayers aren’t going to be happy if the City Council turns management of the parking system over to the downtown property owners while citywide taxpayers foot the bill for the system.

The downtown “stakeholders” need to have some money in the mix, too, Wieneke said.

Mayor Ron Corbett, who in recent weeks floated the idea of free downtown parking for a decade, said Tuesday that raising the current monthly ramp rate from $30 to $60, which had been planned when the $30 post-flood rate was put in place, did not make any sense. The downtown remains in flood recovery, he said.

Burns suggested that the city consider incremental increases, first raising the rate to $40 a month at some point, and so on. He also said rates at the most coveted ramps should be higher than in ramps that require a longer walk.

Council member Monica Vernon said the downtown property owners were best equipped to understand the nuances needed to make the parking operation a benefit to the downtown’s revitalization. At the same time, too, she said the City Council needed to know the ramifications for taxpayers of shifting the parking responsibility to downtown property owners.

The Downtown District’s Neumann said economic development was the “key” word. “Parking needs to be a partner to economic development, not a barrier,” he said.

As for the city’s new experiment with back-in angle parking, consultant Burns said residents here don’t understand it, and he suggested that the city get rid of some of it.

Neumann said the Downtown District still wants a new downtown parking ramp with a preferred location on Second Street SE between Sixth and Seventh avenues SE. He put the price of the ramp at $15 million, and he said the best chance to fund it would come from federal and state funds.

It was something of a change of heart from a month ago when a consensus of the council expressed support for including 54,000 of Kim Brokaw’s anti-tip CartGuards in the budget.

But council member Justin Shields told Brokaw last night he had fielded a bevy of phone calls and e-mails about the council proposal to buy the anti-tip guards, and not one person favored the city spending money on the device, he said.

Mayor Ron Corbett and council member Pat Shey voted to buy Brokaw’s invention. Council member Monica Vernon, whose research firm helped Brokaw make his claim that Yardys injure people, recused herself from the discussion and the vote.

In the end, council member Chuck Swore said he couldn’t justify spending $540,000 for Brokaw’s product when the council cut $580,000 out of the budget for a new fire truck.

It was something of a change of heart from a month ago when a consensus of the council expressed support for including Kim Brokaw’s anti-tip CartGuard in the budget.

But council member Justin Shields pointed out last night that he had fielded a bevy of phone calls and e-mails about the council proposal to buy the anti-tip guards, and not one person favored the city spending money on the device, he said.

Council member Kris Gulick noted that Brokaw had agreed to give the city 1 percent of any future sales revenue, but in the end, Gulick said the product needed to be tested in the marketplace first.

Mayor Ron Corbett and council member Pat Shey voted to buy Brokaw’s invention, which the city would have installed on each of 54,000 Yardy carts in the city.

Shey and Corbett said they wanted the city to ask vendors about safety when they buy more yard carts in the future.

In the end, council member Chuck Swore said he couldn’t justify spending $540,000 for Brokaw’s product when the council cut $580,000 out of the budget for a new fire truck

Council member Kris Gulick said, as he did during a budget meeting last month, that he couldn’t support the council’s $95-million general-operating budget because to balance it required taking $1.8 million from the city’s cash reserves.

“That’s deficit spending,” Gulick said. He feared such a practice would jeopardize the city’s long-held, top Aaa-bond rating, which if lost, could cost the city some $3 million more in interest payments, he said.
Corbett would have none of it.

Corbett asked Gulick and three others who voted against the new budget — Tom Podzimek, Chuck Wieneke and Pat Shey — if they had called it “overtaxing” in the years in which city councils were taking in tax dollars and building up cash reserves. He has noted that the city continues to have 31 percent in its general-operating budget cash reserve even though city policy only suggests a 25-percent reserve.

“If ever in the history of our community it was time to dip into the ‘rainy-day fund,’ this would be it,” the mayor said.

Podzimek, Wieneke and Shey argued the reverse, that this time of flood recovery was a time in which residents would understand that city government needed to ask a little more in taxes to move the city ahead.

Podzimek said borrowing from reserves when so much needed to be done was like him spending his savings while the roof of his house was collapsing around him.

“We don’t really know where we’re going to go, but we’re going to be cheap about it,” Podzimek said.

Corbett asked for a little perspective, and he pointed to cities across the nation that are laying off police officers, closing fire stations and turning out every other streetlight. He pointed, too, to a small local business — it will see the city portion of its property taxes frozen at the current rates in the new budget — that just cut off its employees’ health benefits.

By comparison, the new Cedar Rapids city budget was “a walk in the park,” the mayor said.

The budget includes a 5-increase in costs for employee wages and benefits, Gulick noted, and the addition of about five new employees in the Finance Department and no layoffs or furloughs, Corbett added.

Those voting with Corbett — council members Monica Vernon, Don Karr, Chuck Swore and Justin Shields — all talked about making sure in the next year the city attracted more businesses so the city could increase its tax base.

Shields, a local labor leader, though, made it clear just how shaky the Corbett budget majority is.

“All you fiscal conservatives, God bless you,” Shields told Corbett, a former Republican state legislator, and the others. Shields said he would try the Corbett way for one year, and if it doesn’t work, he’s back on the side of spending to improve the city.

The new budget freezes property taxes for commercial and industrial property owners and raises taxes 2.89 percent for residential owners. The increase for the latter comes because of a state formula that requires a larger percentage of the value of residential property to be taxed in the new budget year than in the current year.

On a separate vote, Podzimek and Wieneke also voted against the city’s new capital improvement budget. It calls for the city to sell $26.5 million in bond debt, and Podzimek and Wieneke said the amount should be $40 million to keep up with city repairs.

Cedar Rapids Mayor Ron Corbett (center), with a few opening words of thanks to Hiawatha for allowing the Council to meet on Tuesday March 9th at the Hiawatha City Hall Council Chambers (John Beyer, The Gazette)

Mayor Ron Corbett secured a City Council majority of five votes a month ago for a hold-the-line-on-taxes budget, but the four council members in the minority minced no words before tonight’s formal budget vote in telling the mayor he had it wrong.

Council member Kris Gulick said, as he did during a budget meeting last month, that he couldn’t support the council’s $95-million general-operating budget because to balance it required taking $1.8 million from the city’s cash reserves.

“That’s deficit spending,” Gulick said. He feared such a practice would jeopardize the city’s long-held, top Aaa-bond rating, which if lost, could cost the city some $3 million more in interest payments, he said.

Corbett would have none of it.

Corbett asked Gulick and three others who voted against the new budget — Tom Podzimek, Chuck Wieneke and Pat Shey — if they had called it “overtaxing” in the years in which city councils were taking in tax dollars and building up cash reserves. He has noted that the city continues to have 31 percent in its general-operating budget cash reserve even though city policy only suggests a 25-percent reserve.

“If ever in the history of our community it was time to dip into the ‘rainy-day fund,’ this would be it,” the mayor said.

Podzimek, Wieneke and Shey argued the reverse, that this time of flood recovery was a time in which residents would understand that city government needed to ask a little more in taxes to move the city ahead.

Podzimek said borrowing from reserves when so much needed to be done was like him spending his savings while the roof of his house was collapsing around him.

“We don’t really know where we’re going to go, but we’re going to be cheap about it,” Podzimek said.

Corbett asked for a little perspective, and he pointed to cities across the nation that are laying off police officers, closing fire stations and turning out every other streetlight. By comparison, the new Cedar Rapids city budget was “a walk in the park,” the mayor said.

The budget includes a 5-increase in costs for employee wages and benefits, Gulick noted, and the addition of about five new employees in the Finance Department and no layoffs or furloughs, Corbett added.

Those voting with Corbett – council members Monica Vernon, Don Karr, Chuck Swore and Justin Shields – all talked about making sure in the next year the city attracted more businesses so the city could increase its tax base.

Shields, a local labor leader, though, made it clear just how shaky the Corbett budget majority is.

“All you fiscal conservatives, God bless you,” Shields told Corbett, a former Republican state legislator, and the others. Shields said he would try the Corbett way for one year, and if it doesn’t work, he’s back on the side of spending to improve the city.

The new budget freezes property taxes for commercial and industrial property owners and raises taxes 2.89 percent for residential owners.

At a special luncheon meeting Tuesday to discuss downtown parking, the City Council also signaled that it likely would follow the recommendation of a national parking consultant and turn over the management of the city’s downtown parking operation to downtown property owners.

Dennis Burns, regional vice president of Kimley-Horn Associates Inc. of Phoenix, told the City Council that cities with dozens of priorities never make downtown parking a priority like downtown property owners can.

Burns said downtown property owners were best positioned to know how to use the downtown parking system as an economic development tool to attract businesses and customers to the downtown.

He predicted that property owners would bring a new system of on-street parking meters to the downtown, which would replace eight or nine meters with one and allow motorists to use credit cards to plug a meter. The new meters, better signage, more customer-friendly tactics and brighter entrances to parking ramps all will give the city’s downtown a “progressive” feel, Burns said.

After the Tuesday meeting, Doug Neumann, president and CEO of the Downtown District, said many of the details of a city-downtown agreement on parking have yet to be worked out. But he said downtown property owners have wanted to have their chance to improve the downtown parking operation for years. He added, “We’re well positioned to take on more responsibility.”

Burns said the city’s downtown system of parking does not carry much debt, but at the same time, he imagined that the system has maintenance needs that have been put off.

Council member Chuck Wieneke said taxpayers aren’t going to be happy if the City Council turns management of the parking system over to the downtown property owners while citywide taxpayers foot the bill for the system.

The downtown “stakeholders” need to have some money in the mix, too, Wieneke said.

Mayor Ron Corbett, who in recent weeks floated the idea of free downtown parking for a decade, said Tuesday that raising the current monthly ramp rate from $30 to $60, which had been planned when the $30 post-flood rate was put in place, did not make any sense. The downtown remains in flood recovery, he said.

Burns suggested that the city consider incremental increases, first raising the rate to $40 a month at some point, and so on. He also said rates at the most coveted ramps should be higher than in ramps that require a longer walk.

Council member Monica Vernon said the downtown property owners were best equipped to understand the nuances needed to make the parking operation a benefit to the downtown’s revitalization. At the same time, too, she said the City Council needed to know the ramifications for taxpayers of shifting the parking responsibility to downtown property owners.

The Downtown District’s Neumann said economic development was the “key” word. “Parking needs to be a partner to economic development, not a barrier,” he said.

As for the city’s new experiment with back-in angle parking, consultant Burns said residents here don’t understand it, and he suggested that the city get rid of some of it.

Neumann said the Downtown District still wants a new downtown parking ramp with a preferred location on Second Street SE between Sixth and Seventh avenues SE. He put the price of the ramp at $15 million, and he said the best chance to fund it would come from federal and state funds.

At a special luncheon meeting Tuesday to discuss downtown parking, the City Council also signaled that it likely would follow the recommendation of a national parking consultant and turn over the management of the city’s downtown parking operation to downtown property owners.

Dennis Burns, regional vice president of Kimley-Horn Associates Inc. of Phoenix, told the City Council that cities with dozens of priorities never make downtown parking a priority like downtown property owners can.

Burns said downtown property owners were best positioned to know how to use the downtown parking system as an economic development tool to attract businesses and customers to the downtown.

He predicted that property owners would bring a new system of on-street parking meters to the downtown, which would replace eight or nine meters with one and allow motorists to use credit cards to plug a meter. The new meters, better signage, more customer-friendly tactics and brighter entrances to parking ramps all will give the city’s downtown a “progressive” feel, Burns said.

After the Tuesday meeting, Doug Neumann, president and CEO of the Downtown District, said many of the details of a city-downtown agreement on parking have yet to be worked out. But he said downtown property owners have wanted to have their chance to improve the downtown parking operation for years. He added, “We’re well positioned to take on more responsibility.”

Burns said the city’s downtown system of parking does not carry much debt, but at the same time, he imagined that the system has maintenance needs that have been put off.
Council member Chuck Wieneke said taxpayers aren’t going to be happy if the City Council turns management of the parking system over to the downtown property owners while citywide taxpayers foot the bill for the system.

The downtown “stakeholders” need to have some money in the mix, too, Wieneke said.

Mayor Ron Corbett, who in recent weeks floated the idea of free downtown parking for a decade, said Tuesday that raising the current monthly ramp rate from $30 to $60, which had been planned when the $30 post-flood rate was put in place, did not make any sense. The downtown remains in flood recovery, he said.

Burns suggested that the city consider incremental increases, first raising the rate to $40 a month at some point, and so on. He also said rates at the most coveted ramps should be higher than in ramps that require a longer walk.

Council member Monica Vernon said the downtown property owners were best equipped to understand the nuances needed to make the parking operation a benefit to the downtown’s revitalization. At the same time, too, she said the City Council needed to know the ramifications for taxpayers of shifting the parking responsibility to downtown property owners.

The Downtown District’s Neumann said economic development was the “key” word. “Parking needs to be a partner to economic development, not a barrier,” he said.

As for the city’s new experiment with back-in angle parking, consultant Burns said residents here don’t understand it, and he suggested that the city get rid of some of it.

Neumann said the Downtown District still wants a new downtown parking ramp with a preferred location on Second Street SE between Sixth and Seventh avenues SE. He put the price of the ramp at $15 million, and he said the best chance to fund it would come from federal and state funds.

Of that total, the city estimates it will need about $6 million to buy out owners of about 100 flood-damaged homes who had been selling the properties on contract at the time of the June 2008 flood. Rules attached to federal buyout funds do not permit contract sellers to receive pre-flood value for their properties, so the council will use the local sales-tax revenue to pay that amount.

The council also is expected to use an estimated $550,000 in local-option sales tax revenue to pay about 110 owners on average about $5,000 for flood-insurance premiums they paid for five years prior to the flood.
Another $130,000 is being set aside to provide up to $500 for owners who want a new appraisal of their property prior to a buyout, while $200,000 will be used to buy out and pay demolition costs on two properties that were demolished after the flood but before the buyout program was put in place.

Earlier, the council set aside local-option sales tax revenue for three other needs: $3 million for home rehabilitation being done by local neighborhood programs; $1.25 million for rehabilitation reimbursement; and $20,625 for loan mediation services.

The city began collecting a 1-percent local-option sales tax since April 1, and it will continue to do so through June 30, 2014.

The tax is expected to raise about $90 million, 90 percent of which must go for flood-recovery needs.

“It’s one more tool to allow us to continue to improve our service to our residents and to show our accountability,” explains Craig Hanson, the city’s public works maintenance manager.

The tool is something called AVL — an automatic vehicle location system. The system allows the city to remotely track where its vehicles are during the workday and how they are operating.

Hanson said the monitoring equipment also will allow the Public Works Department to pinpoint which streets, for instance, have had salt or sand put on them in winter and how much of the material has been spread where. It’s not uncommon for citizens to report damage caused by city equipment, and the monitoring equipment also will help the city know just where its vehicles were and weren’t and when, Hanson said.

Similar equipment has been in place since November 2008 with the city’s fleet of garbage and recycling trucks, and Hanson said city buses also use tracking equipment.

The city now will purchase 22 more AVL units along with mapping software for $32,629 for the city’s streets operation.

Hanson said the new equipment, in fact, does let the city track its employees and equipment, but he said it is equipment being put in place in jurisdictions across the nation.

“It is a wave that has been going throughout public services,” he said. “And we are public servants and we have to prove the quality of our service.”

This evening, the council will formally approve the budget for the fiscal year beginning July 1, the council’s first budget under new mayor, Ron Corbett. Another first: The vote will come in a new temporary home for the council, the council chambers at Hiawatha City Hall.

One piece of the vote on the new budget will be anything but a formality when the council decides if it will spend $540,000 from its solid-waste operation to buy an anti-tip guard, which a local inventor says residents need so they don’t get hurt by city-issued Yardy carts.

Inventor Kim Brokaw says hundreds of residents will be hurt by the carts this year without the guard while the city staff says it has received only a few complaints about the carts in the last several years.

The Hiawatha council venue, which Corbett has said is more conducive to council meetings, will serve as the Cedar Rapids council’s temporary home until the council decides on its permanent home. The council had been meeting in the auditorium on the campus of AEGON USA since the flood of June 2008.

The council’s decision in the new budget to hold the line on property taxes for commercial and industrial property owners came after a series of budget meetings. The first meetings saw department heads present their requests for additional spending while the last two meetings saw Corbett lead the council through a tedious review of the city’s $96-million, property-tax-supported, general-operating budget.

In the end, the council majority balanced the new budget by making some cuts and with the help of $1.8-million in reserve funds, a move that council member Kris Gulick said was a bad business practice.

Corbett argued that the city will still have reserves equal to 31 percent of the general operating budget, which he said he is above the 25-percent level suggested in city policy.

The new budget will add about eight new employees to the city’s 1,400-employee work force, with five of those additions going to the city’s Finance Department.

The overall size of the city’s annual budget normally would be in the range of $350 million when large user-fee-based departments like water and wastewater are factored in. With the city in the midst of a recovery from the June 2008 flood, the size of the budget will be an estimated $635 million for the new fiscal year.
Much of the growth represents federal and state flood-recovery dollars coming into the city.

In the proposed new budget, the owner of a $150,000 home will see property taxes from the city portion of the bill go up $30 a year from a current $1,041 to $1,071. The city’s portion of the local property-tax bill is less than half of the total with the school district, Linn County and a few other smaller entities also levying property taxes.

The Cedar Rapids City Council this week is slated to approve the Corps’ study, which will cost $343,100. The study, half of cost of which the city of Cedar Rapids will pay, is expected to take a year.

The feasibility study was first called for in 2004 after the Corps conducted an initial assessment of the creek watersheds.

Since Cedar Rapids’ historic June 2008 flood, the call for a creek feasibility study had taken a back seat to the significantly larger study now under way in Cedar Rapids of the Cedar River, into which Indian Creek flows.

“We’ve been the forgotten citizens on this,” Linda Langston, a Linn County supervisor, said on Monday. She also is a resident of the Sun Valley Neighborhood in southeast Cedar Rapids, which sustained significant damage in a flood along Indian Creek on June 4, 2002.

Langston said the proposed Corps study will take a wide look at the 77 square miles of watershed to see what kinds of strategic steps across several jurisdictions might be taken to lessen the flood risk along Indian and Dry creeks.

At the same time, she said the city of Cedar Rapids is taking some small steps right in the Sun Valley neighborhood related to flood water backing up from sewers, she said.

At the time that the 2002 flood hit the Sun Valley neighborhood, concerns about flooding in Cedar Rapids were on City Hall’s side burner. The city attributed the 2002 flood along Indian Creek to a lot of rain in the wrong spot at the wrong time.

However, neighbors in Sun Valley said bad development practices in the watershed and poor management along the creeks also contributed to problems. The neighbors hired their own University of Iowa expert, whose report prompted the city officials to clean up areas along the creek to reduce the number of downed trees and other impediments that could hold back water.

The latest development: The city now has to pay the Federal Transit Administration back a total of $570,000, which is the part of the FTA’s $9-million grant that the city used in late 2005 to buy a half block of property on Second Street SE between Sixth and Seventh avenues SE.

However, the Intermodal facility, which back then featured a 500-space parking ramp with it, never got built on the Second Street SE site. Instead, in late 2007, a new City Council concluded it didn’t make sense to build a new transit facility within shouting distance of the existing Ground Transportation Center bus depot.

Then there was the June 2008 flood, a proposed new site for the Intermodal on property owned by a Pepsi warehouse and maintenance operation between Fifth and Sixth avenues SE, and now nothing but questions about the Pepsi site as well.

These days, the Downtown District continues to agitate for a new parking ramp on the Second Street SE site where a ramp and Intermodal facility had been slated to go back in 2005. At the same time, Mayor Ron Corbett has talked about moving back into the flood-damaged Ground Transportation bus depot on First Street SE, at least temporarily.

In paying the federal transit agency back the $570,000, the City Council actually will be allowed to open an interest-bearing account and deposit the money in that account for safekeeping. The city can then use the money to buy some other site for the Intermodal, if that’s what the City Council decides to do.

By parking the money in a special account, the city also will be allowed to use or sell the Second Street SE site.

At the top of the list of prospects for the site is a parking ramp, according to a city staff memorandum to the City Council.

By the way, City Hall has given federal and state money back before. Actually, the city gave the state Vision Iowa program back money twice in the 2000s: $10.5-million for the RiverRun redevelopment project and $5 million for an offshoot of RiverRun called Cedar Bend.

The Cedar Rapids City Council this week is slated to approve the Corps’ study, which will cost $343,100. The study, half of cost of which the city of Cedar Rapids will pay, is expected to take a year.

The feasibility study was first called for in 2004 after the Corps conducted an initial assessment of the creek watersheds.

Since Cedar Rapids’ historic June 2008 flood, the call for a creek feasibility study had taken a back seat to the significantly larger study now under way in Cedar Rapids of the Cedar River, into which Indian Creek flows.

“We’ve been the forgotten citizens on this,” Linda Langston, a Linn County supervisor, said on Monday. She also is a resident of the Sun Valley Neighborhood in southeast Cedar Rapids, which sustained significant damage in a flood along Indian Creek on June 4, 2002.

Langston said the proposed Corps study will take a wide look at the 77 square miles of watershed to see what kinds of strategic steps across several jurisdictions might be taken to lessen the flood risk along Indian and Dry creeks.

At the same time, she said the city of Cedar Rapids is taking some small steps right in the Sun Valley neighborhood related to flood water backing up from sewers, she said.

At the time that the 2002 flood hit the Sun Valley neighborhood, concerns about flooding in Cedar Rapids were on City Hall’s side burner. The city attributed the 2002 flood along Indian Creek to a lot of rain in the wrong spot at the wrong time.

However, neighbors in Sun Valley said bad development practices in the watershed and poor management along the creeks also contributed to problems. The neighbors hired their own University of Iowa expert, whose report prompted the city officials to clean up areas along the creek to reduce the number of downed trees and other impediments that could hold back water.

On Tuesday evening, the council will formally approve the budget for the fiscal year beginning July 1, the council’s first budget under new mayor, Ron Corbett.

Another first: The vote will come in a new temporary home for the council, the council chambers at Hiawatha City Hall, during a meeting that begins at 5:30 p.m.

The Hiawatha council venue, which Corbett has said is more conducive to council meetings, will serve as the council’s temporary home until it decides on its permanent home. The council had been meeting in the auditorium of AEGON USA since the flood of June 2008.

One piece of the vote on the new budget will be whether to spend $540,000 to buy an anti-tip guard for the city-issued Yardy carts, which a local inventor says residents need so they don’t get hurt,

The council’s decision to hold the line on property taxes in the new budget for commercial and industrial property owners came after a series of budget meetings. The first meetings saw department heads present their requests while the last two meetings saw Corbett lead the council through a tedious review of the city’s $96 million, property-tax-supported, general-operating budget.

In the end, the council majority balanced the new budget by making some cuts and with the help of $1.8-million in reserve funds, a move that council member Kris Gulick said was a bad business practice.

Corbett argued that the city will still have reserves equal to 31 percent of the general operating budget, which he said he is above the 25-percent level suggested in city policy.

The new budget will add about eight new employees to the city’s 1,400-employee work force, with five of the additions going to the city’s Finance Department.

The overall size of the city’s annual budget normally would be in the range of $350 million when large user-fee-based departments like water and wastewater are factored in. With the city in the midst of a recovery from the June 2008 flood, the size of the budget will be an estimated $635 million for the new fiscal year. Much of the growth represents federal and state flood-recovery dollars coming into the city.

In the proposed new budget, the owner of a $150,000 home will see property taxes from the city portion of the bill go up $30 a year from a current $1,041 to $1,071. The city’s portion of the local property-tax bill is less than half of the total, with the school district, Linn County and a few other smaller entities also levying property taxes.

Six different building proposals were on the commission’s plate, proposals that called for the construction of 135 units of housing, some traditional single-family homes and some duplexes. Also in the mix was the development of a 75-acre parcel north of 74th Street NE that has room for a few hundred residential units.

Recession: What recession?

In fact, what is happening is the result, not of a down economy leaping to its feet, but of a federal and state government disaster-recovery plan to help replace some of the 1,300 or so homes lost in Cedar Rapids to the June 2008 flood.

The Single-Family New Construction Program, which provided $8 million in funds in 2009 in Cedar Rapids for the construction of 184 units of new housing, is about to launch a second round of building with $13.35 million in federal help — help for both for builders and buyers — that is expected to add 235 more units of housing to the city.

There is little question that program is helping with residential building that otherwise would not be occurring in Cedar Rapids.

“This is allowing people to go ahead and move forward with plans that have been on the shelf,” says Allen Witt, business development manager for Hall & Hall Engineers Inc.

Drew Retz, vice president of Jerry’s Homes in Cedar Rapids, says 25 percent of his crews and the crews of his subcontractors would have been out of work in 2009 but for the jolt the replacement housing program gave to the local construction economy.

The city’s building-permit numbers seem to make the case: In 2007, the city issued 350 permits for new residential construction of all types. In 2008, the number was 338. But in 2009, with the help of the subsidies from the replacement housing program, that number jumped to 398, according to city figures.

Builders now are up against a March 12 deadline to submit new proposals to City Hall.

The flurry of activity, however, comes with something of a clash of interests:

-The City Council wants as many of the housing units as possible built closer to the urban core in what the council calls “infill” development.

-Developers, however, say there is a dearth of buildable lots in the urban core, at least until flood-wrecked homes are demolished and a new flood-protection system is in place. Developers say the definition of “infill” means different things to different people: Isn’t building on available lots in new neighborhoods “infill” development, too? they say.

-Existing homeowners, meanwhile, are faced with fast-track construction plans, some of which propose to more densely place homes and duplexes next to existing single-family homes that enjoy larger lots.

Neighbors last week turned out to object to three of the proposed developments: a proposal to build up to 34 duplexes in the already heavily developed area at Boyson Road NE and at Creekside Drive NE on a spot one neighbor had hoped to see low-traffic dentist-type offices; a proposal to build eight single-family homes, two duplexes and a triplex at 2340 C St. SW, next to long-established single-family homes; and an undefined proposal to build more densely than current zoning allows on 75 acres north of 74th Avenue NE.

“The neighbors are getting a little restless,” Witt said to the planning commission last week as he heard neighbors in the audience at the ready to take to the microphone to voice objections to the request to change the zoning on the 75-acre parcel to allow more homes per acre on it.

The planning commission tabled the matter for now, but gave the go-ahead on the other projects.

The housing proposals in front of last week’s planning meeting were only some of those in competition to get into the Single-Family Housing Construction Program.

“The housing program is a crapshoot,” Jerry’s Homes’ Retz said. “We don’t know if we’re going to get accepted or not.”

But getting development proposals past the City Planning Commission, even if they don’t end up in the program, will position developers to build when the real economy finally comes around, he said.

At least half of the 235 units in the program cannot have a sale price of more than $150,000 with no unit having sale price of more than $180,000.

Among the attractions for builders is an extra payment of up to $12,000 per lot to offset the cost for streets, sidewalks, water lines and sewers and the almost-certain prospect of a buyer. Buyers can receive a subsidy of up to 25 percent of the cost of the units, which should mean more buyers than units to buy.

Prospective buyers who meet income guidelines can begin to apply for the program in April. Call 286-5872 for more information.

Six different building proposals were on the commission’s plate, proposals that called for the construction of 135 units of housing, some traditional single-family homes and some duplexes. Also in the mix was the development of a 75-acre parcel north of 74th Street NE that has room for a few hundred residential units.

Recession: What recession?

In fact, what is happening is the result, not of a down economy leaping to its feet, but of a federal and state government disaster-recovery plan to help replace some of the 1,300 or so homes lost in Cedar Rapids to the June 2008 flood.

The Single-Family New Construction Program, which provided $8 million in funds in 2009 in Cedar Rapids for the construction of 184 units of new housing, is about to launch a second round of building with $13.35 million in federal help — help for both for builders and buyers — that is expected to add 235 more units of housing to the city.

There is little question that program is helping with residential building that otherwise would not be occurring in Cedar Rapids.

“This is allowing people to go ahead and move forward with plans that have been on the shelf,” says Allen Witt, business development manager for Hall & Hall Engineers Inc.

Drew Retz, vice president of Jerry’s Homes in Cedar Rapids, says 25 percent of his crews and the crews of his subcontractors would have been out of work in 2009 but for the jolt the replacement housing program gave to the local construction economy.

The city’s building-permit numbers seem to make the case: In 2007, the city issued 350 permits for new residential construction of all types. In 2008, the number was 338. But in 2009, with the help of the subsidies from the replacement housing program, that number jumped to 398, according to city figures.

Builders now are up against a March 12 deadline to submit new proposals to City Hall.

The flurry of activity, however, comes with something of a clash of interests:

– The City Council wants as many of the housing units as possible built closer to the urban core in what the council calls “infill” development.

– However, developers say there is a dearth of buildable lots in the urban core, at least until flood-wrecked homes are demolished and a new flood-protection system is in place. Developers say the definition of “infill” means different things to different people: Isn’t building on available lots in new neighborhoods “infill” development, too? they say.

– Meanwhile, existing homeowners now are faced with fast-track construction plans, some of which propose to more densely place homes and duplexes next to existing single-family homes that enjoy larger lots.

Neighbors last week turned out to object to three of the proposed developments: a proposal to build up to 34 duplexes in the already heavily developed area at Boyson Road NE and at Creekside Drive NE on a spot one neighbor had hoped to see low-traffic dentist-type offices; a proposal to build eight single-family homes, two duplexes and a triplex at 2340 C St. SW, next to long-established single-family homes; and an undefined proposal to build more densely than current zoning allows on 75 acres north of 74th Avenue NE.

“The neighbors are getting a little restless,” Witt said to the planning commission last week as he heard neighbors in the audience at the ready to take to the microphone to voice objections to the request to change the zoning on the 75-acre parcel to allow more homes per acre on it.

The planning commission tabled the matter for now, but gave the go-ahead on the other projects.
The housing proposals in front of last week’s planning meeting were only some of those in competition to get into the Single-Family Housing Construction Program.

“The housing program is a crapshoot,” Jerry’s Homes’ Retz said. “We don’t know if we’re going to get accepted or not.”

But getting development proposals past the City Planning Commission, even if they don’t end up in the program, will position developers to build when the real economy finally comes around, he said.

At least half of the 235 units in the program cannot have a sale price of more than $150,000 with no unit having sale price of more than $180,000.

Among the attractions for builders is an extra payment of up to $12,000 per lot to offset the cost for streets, sidewalks, water lines and sewers and the almost-certain prospect of a buyer. Buyers can receive a subsidy of up to 25 percent of the cost of the units, which should mean more buyers than units to buy.
Prospective buyers who meet income guidelines can begin to apply for the program in April. Call 286-5872 for more information.

This has prompted a nice debate at Cedar Rapids City Hall, a debate that continued last week.

In the end, a consensus of the City Council favors working to see if it can negotiate an agreement with Palo to provide it with water.

Council members, though, noted that the downside of providing quality Cedar Rapids’ treated water to Palo is that it might serve as an inducement for people to move to Palo who might otherwise choose to live in Cedar Rapids. It might even convince some light industries, in pursuit of lower property taxes and yet good water, to up and move to Palo, council member Don Karr said.

At the same time, building a water main to Palo also would invite new housing developments and perhaps other kinds of development along the alignment of the water main.

And this is the rub: The City Council and City Manager Jim Prosser have talked at great length for three years now against urban sprawl. In fact, the council has developed policies such as a “smart-growth” scorecard, which gives developers better scores for factors like “infill” development, access to public transit, walkability and access to trails, and lower scores for what the city calls “greenfield” development — development that sprawls out into corn and bean fields.

On the other hand, council members say that there may be a benefit for the city to sell itself as a regional water provider if such a role would allow the city to spread its fixed costs over more customers. The city now has ample water-treatment capacity to expand, particularly at a time when Pat Ball, the city’s utilities director, has noted that a couple of large-use local industries have dug their own wells and are now using their own water for part of their needs.

There is a sense, too, that Cedar Rapids’ two water treatment plants, which have just undergone a $40-million upgrade, will be better able to play the role of regional provider than anyone else in the region in an era when the federal government increasingly is raising water quality standards.

Cedar Rapids’ water plants already provide water to Robins, some small sections of Marion, some rural Linn County subdivisions and to the Poweshiek Rural Water Association.

The council’s arrangements with outside customers differ: some pay 150 percent of the cost of Cedar Rapids users while Robins, for instance, pays 125 percent of the cost and the Poweshiek association pays the same cost as Cedar Rapidians.

Council member Kris Gulick said last week that the city ought to dig into its current rate structure for outside customers and try to come up with a solid business plan that might more accurately tell what rates the city should charge outside customers.

As for Palo, the city of Cedar Rapids only recently signed an agreement with Palo now provides Palo with sanitary sewer service. In other words, the city already has put in a pipe that arguably invites development between the two cities and in Palo.

Bruce Jacobs, the city of Cedar Rapids’ utilities engineering manager, also noted last week that Cedar Rapids’ stance on urban sprawl when it comes to water would be beside the point in this case if Hiawatha provides Palo with water instead of Cedar Rapids.

Council member Monica Vernon said she “generally favors” cooperation with neighboring communities. At the same time, she said she wanted to see the alignment of any water line between Cedar Rapids and Palo to make sure it benefits Cedar Rapids’ growth.

Jacobs said one of city of Cedar Rapids’ objectives would be to put the water main on a line “to maximize” use for current and future Cedar Rapids residents and other future Cedar Rapids taxpayers.

Jacobs said the 350 homes in Palo likely would generate about $92,000 of revenue for the city of Cedar Rapids’ water-treatment operation. Meanwhile, to build the water main to Palo would cost about $1.25 million, $500,000 of the cost of which would be paid by a new state grant secured by Palo.

Jacobs thought the city of Cedar Rapids would recoup its investment in the water main in about 21 years or in less time if development along the line and in Palo brought in more customers. Palo envisions 860 households in the future, he noted.

In any event, 21 years in Water-Department time isn’t very long, Jacobs said.

Council member Tom Podzimek suggested a rate structure in which the city would charge higher rates to larger users in Palo, an arrangement he said could deter light industries from relocating from Cedar Rapids to Palo.

The temporary closure, no doubt, will cause a “significant headache” for some of the 7,500 vehicles that cross the bridge every day, says Loren Snell, the city’s public works construction engineering manager.

But even so, the coming of the new bridge for many is a moment of triumph, a testament to the fact that neighbors can fight City Hall and win.

In the larger picture, says Roger Stone, the new bridge in all its narrowness is the nail in the coffin for the planning idea that the scenic, twisting, two-lane East Post Road SE one day would be a thoroughfare running south across the Cedar River to Highway 30.

Stone, an attorney with Simmons Perrine Moyer Bergman and a resident of the East Post Road area, led a citizen charge, beginning a decade ago, which first convinced the City Council to give up a plan to run East Post Road SE as some kind of highway south of Mount Vernon Road SE and south to the Cedar River.

In the last few years, the focus of Stone and hundreds of other City Hall skeptics has been to persuade city officials to replace the two-lane East Post Road bridge over Indian Creek with a two-lane bridge, not a wider one.

The city had planned to put in a three-lane bridge with a center lane that would allow for left turns onto streets on either side of the bridge. However, Stone and others feared the wider bridge was part of a long-term City Hall plan to widen all of East Post Road to four lanes.

In the end, the City Council and the neighbors settled on a plan to go with a new, two-lane bridge, which also will feature a 14-foot-wide trail/sidewalk on the upstream side and a regular-sized sidewalk on the downstream side.

“We’re just pleased that the size of the bridge will preserve the character of the neighborhood,” Stone said. “They tell us that the walkways can’t be used for roadways.”

Stone was pleased to note, too, that most of the talk these days out of City Hall about a new Cedar River bridge centers on a bridge closer to the downtown, which makes a lot more sense, he said.

The city’s Snell reported that Peterson Contractors Inc., of Reinbeck, Iowa, will build the new East Post Road bridge. The firm can get up to $50,000 in incentives if it finishes the work in 105 working days instead of the 130 working days called for in the contract. A month typically has 17 working days with weekends and rain days, Snell said.

The posted detour route will take traffic off East Post Road north of the bridge via Cottage Grove Avenue SE and 34th Street SE to Mount Vernon Road SE.

Snell said some people have called his office to ask about trees that have been taken down to make way for the new bridge. He noted that grading for the bridge, in part to allow for a new storm sewer, has required cutting down some trees. He added, though, that construction plans call for planting about 100 new trees.

“Honestly, once done, I think it will be pretty nice,” Snell said.

The temporary closure, no doubt, will cause a “significant headache” for some of the 7,500 vehicles that cross the bridge every day, says Loren Snell, the city’s public works construction engineering manager.

The city has had the May’s Island lawn — which stretches a block between the still-closed Veterans Memorial Building, long home to City Hall, and the reopened Linn County Courthouse — closed off since the July 2008 flood because of a concern about the structural integrity of the underground ramp.

Eyerly forwarded a short report this week from a Howard R. Green Co. engineer, who in May 2009 advised that “events resulting in large crowds” not be held on the May’s Island lawn until additional assessments and repairs are completed to the parking ramp under it.

Two new council members, Don Karr and Mayor Ron Corbett, are pretty skeptical about the concern that has been expressed from city officials about allowing people to stand on the May’s Island lawn.

Karr and Corbett this week both noted that the underground parking ramp, which has serviced both the Veterans Memorial Building at one end of the ramp and the Linn County Courthouse on the other end of it, extends under Third Avenue and partially under Second Avenue.

Why, Karr asked, has the city allowed thousands of cars, trucks, city buses and what not to drive over the bridges atop the parking ramp every day, endangering them?

Karr notes that some at City Hall and on the previous City Council have wanted to build a new city hall, the price tag of which has been put at anywhere from $38 million to $50 million. Raising questions about the underground ramp, which serves the Veterans Memorial Building, has been a way to help make the case for a new city hall, Karr suspects.

This week, Corbett told The Gazette editorial board that he believes the majority of the council wants to move city government back to the Veterans Memorial Building and to the old federal courthouse, which the city will own, nearby.

The council is slated to vote up or down on a new city hall on March 16.

The Riverside Roundhouse and the National Czech & Slovak Museum & Library in Czech Village both flooded in June 2008.

It’s possible that federal money — to compensate the city for the flood-damaged Riverside Roundhouse — could be used as seed money for a proposed City Market.

Mayor Ron Corbett suggested that the $160,000 coming from the Federal Emergency Management Agency for the Roundhouse would be better directed to the new year-round farmers market rather than being spent on the Roundhouse.

Greg Eyerly, the city’s flood-recovery director, said it’s possible for FEMA disaster funds to be used for “alternative projects” if the city can’t or chooses not to repair what was damaged in a disaster.

One possible complication — though Eyerly did not consider it likely — is related to the council agreeing Wednesday evening to convey the city-owned property on which the Roundhouse sits to the National Czech & Slovak Museum & Library at little or no cost. The property is valued at $775,000.

Sarah Ordover, board president of Cedar Rapids City Market Inc., was surprised at the prospect of FEMA funds for the proposed market, which the market’s board has talked of putting in New Bohemia across the river from Czech Village.

“Oh, that will be useful. We appreciate it, and it would make sense,” she said, a reference to the use of the Roundhouse for farmers markets in the past.

Saving the Roundhouse, which sits in Czech Village, has become the goal of a Czech Village Association committee, which has proposed dismantling the building, storing it on a nearby lot and then re-erecting it as an events venue at 17th Avenue and B Street SW, a spot now occupied by flood-wrecked homes slated for demolition.

Council member Chuck Swore said he believed that volunteers and members of the local building trades would help move the Roundhouse, which was built in 1962.

Council members did not oppose the idea but said the Roundhouse had to be moved by May 11 so the museum can proceed with elevating the site and moving its flood-damaged museum there.

Corbett saluted the enthusiasm of those wanting to save the Roundhouse but wondered if it would be possible, given the deadline.

Alex Andersen, owner of Ernie’s Avenue Tavern and the leader of the Czech Village Association’s Save the Roundhouse Committee, and an associate were beginning to take the building apart Thursday. He thought his committee could meet the May deadline and said it didn’t matter if FEMA money attached to the building goes to a new City Market.

“Our main goal is to save the Roundhouse so, hopefully, our children will be able to enjoy it for another 100 years,” Andersen said.

That became apparent this week as a council consensus agreed with Mayor Ron Corbett’s suggestion that any federal disaster funds coming to the city for the city-owned, flood-damaged Riverside Roundhouse be used as seed money for a proposed new City Market, not for the Roundhouse.

Greg Eyerly, the city’s flood-recovery director, told the council that the city has the ability to use Federal Emergency Management Agency disaster funds for “alternative projects” if the city can’t or chooses not to repair what has been damaged in a disaster.

Eyerly said FEMA typically pays 81 percent of the damage claim for an alternative project, a percentage which would pay the city at most $160,000 for use on an alternative project related to the Roundhouse property, he estimated on Thursday.

Don’t take that money to the bank quite yet, though, Eyerly cautioned.

One possible complication – though he did not consider it likely – is related to the fact that the council agreed Wednesday evening to convey the city-owned property on which the Roundhouse sits to the National Czech & Slovak Museum and Library for little or no cost, Eyerly said.

Even so, Sarah Ordover, board president of Cedar Rapids City Market Inc. , was caught by surprise on Thursday at the prospect of some FEMA funds for the proposed market, which the market’s board has talked about putting in New Bohemia across the river from Czech Village.

“Oh, that will be useful,” Ordover said. “We appreciate it, and it would make sense.”

Corbett said as much when he said using any FEMA money from the Roundhouse property on a new City Market would steer the funds to what the Roundhouse is best known for, as a farmers market.

“We could team up those who want to save the Roundhouse with the year-round market and have something better than we had,” the mayor said.

Saving the Roundhouse, which sits in Czech Village, has become the goal of a Czech Village Association committee, which has proposed dismantling the building, storing it on a nearby lot and then re-erecting it at 17th Avenue and B Street SW as an events venue on a site now occupied by flood-wrecked homes slated for demolition.

Council member Chuck Swore said he believed that volunteers and members of the local building trades were lining up and would get the Roundhouse, built in 1962, moved.

Council members did not oppose the idea, but they said they expected the building to be moved by May 11 so the museum and library can take over the site and get on with the plan to elevate the site so it can move its flood-damaged building there and enlarge it.

Swore suggested that the museum take responsibility to manage the volunteer effort to save the Roundhouse, though Gayle Naughton, the museum’s president, told the council that the museum did not want to take over that job.

Corbett saluted the enthusiasm of citizens who wanted to save the Roundhouse, but at the same time, he wondered if the complications of the task might make it impossible given the deadline.

He and council member Pat Shey both noted that the council in recent weeks agreed to let the city’s Historic Preservation Committee have a couple-month window of time to figure out if the smokestack at the flood-and-fire-damaged Sinclair site, the demolition of which is pending, could be saved and if they could raise funds to do so.

The Roundhouse is no different from the smokestack, Shey said. Those who want to do the saving need to “put their money where their mouth is,” Shey said.

Alex Andersen on Thursday was doing just that.

Andersen, owner of Ernie’s Avenue Tavern in Czech Village and the leader of the village association’s Save the Roundhouse Committee, and an associate were at the Roundhouse on Thursday beginning the job of taking the building apart. He thought his committee could meet a May deadline and, he added, it didn’t matter that any FEMA money attached to the building would go to a new City Market.

“Our main goal is to save the Roundhouse so, hopefully, our children will be able to enjoy it for another 100 years,” Andersen said.

The council seemed to signal that it would be the museum’s task to demolish the Roundhouse should the citizen committee not get it dismantled and moved. The city is giving $775,000 worth of city property to the museum, the museum can pay for any demolition, council member Tom Podzimek said.

Council members made it clear last night that it was important to have the fireworks in the downtown this Fourth of July. And they directed the city staff to use some of the $25,000 set aside for special-event security to pay some of the cost the city intended to charge the Freedom Festival to have police officers and firefighters on duty at the fireworks event.

The Freedom Festival has said that the city’s proposed charges for security had become the chief stumbling block for the festival to return its fireworks show to the downtown after a two-summer hiatus caused by the June 2008 flood and the ongoing flood recovery in the downtown.

City Manager Jim Prosser and Police Lt. Chuck Mincks last night put the city’s cost of providing security for the fireworks event at between $24,000 and $38,000. Mincks said the city currently is training a new group of reserve police officers who can help staff the event so the low end of the cost range is probably closer to reality, he said.

After last night’s council discussion, Janet Wilhelm, executive director of the festival, said it remained a little puzzling exactly how much the city would charge the festival for security and how much the city would use from its own budget for security.

“We’re keeping our fingers crossed,” she said. The non-profit festival has $15,000 of its own money budgeted for event security for the entire run of the festival, most of which is for use on the Fourth of July. Wilhelm said she would like to limit the festival’s security costs to what is in the festival’s budget.

Council member Justin Shields called on City Manager Jim Prosser to “make it happen,” and said the city should simply find a way to cover the security expenses.

Prosser and Mincks noted that the city in some past years simply did what Shields was suggesting. The city “absorbed” the costs, they said.

At the same time, Mincks noted that the city once had 43 reserve police officers who worked the Fourth of July event for free. Today the city has fewer than 10 reserve officers, he said.

Mayor Ron Corbett said the Freedom Festival was not looking for a “free ride,” and he said the festival was willing to pay part of the cost for security.

Council member Tom Podzimek said he was not in favor of giving the Freedom Festival the entire $25,000 in the city’s budget for special-event security, and he noted, too, that the city provides the Freedom Festival with $90,000 in hotel/motel tax revenue a year.

Council member Kris Gulick said he checked with the city of Des Moines, which he said provides a small level of security for free but expects events to build most of the cost into their budgets.

Council member Don Karr said the Freedom Festival provides a “huge” economic development jolt to the city, and it was important to recognize that.

Council member Chuck Swore said not supporting the festival’s downtown fireworks event would send an awful message to those the city has asked to return to and invest in the downtown.

John Levy, Consultant

Disaster consultant John Levy — whose initial $475-an-hour cost gained some notice soon after the June 2008 flood — and the City Council apparently will part ways at the end of the month.

Levy on Wednesday characterized his leave-taking as a resignation, though it was something a majority of the council had wanted.

Levy said he notified the city in writing that he can finish up work on his latest contract with the city by month’s end.

“You know what, there’s a new (mayoral) administration, they might want to go a different way, and I’m OK with that,” Levy said. “I understand how those things go.”

He said he would stay on through the end of his contract at the end of June if the council wanted him to do so, but he would be surprised if that was the case.

Three new members on the nine-member City Council — Mayor Ron Corbett, Don Karr and Chuck Swore — have particularly expressed an interest in ending Levy’s contract. They have suggested that he has not moved on flood recovery at a fast enough pace.

Corbett has said as much as Levy said on Monday: That a new administration can see things differently from the one before it. Corbett also has said that some of what Levy has been doing for the city most recently has been taken over by city staff.

At last week’s meeting, the council, in fact, had been slated to discuss ending Levy’s contract. Instead, the council tabled the matter, and the council’s four-member Procurement Committee took up the issue at a meeting on Monday.

At that meeting, City Manager Jim Prosser and other top city staff said Levy had delivered on his contract. Swore, the committee chairman, said he would defer to Prosser’s wishes. But that was Monday.

Greg Eyerly, the city’s flood-recovery director, did note that Levy had come to “rub” the Federal Emergency Management Agency in the wrong way — so much so that city staff would “scrub” Levy’s input and present it to FEMA themselves. Eyerly also said Levy’s cost for construction management services, for now, was coming in at a higher rate than that set out by FEMA standards.

Levy arrived in Cedar Rapids with disaster experience from Hurricane Katrina even as floodwaters were receding here in June 2008.

The city quickly hired him and awarded him new contracts in October 2008 and July 2009. A Michigan resident, he initially worked for a firm called Globe Midwest, but in October 2008, he created his own company, Base Tactical Disaster Recovery.

The city can’t routinely end his current contract without a 30-day notice.

The City Council is slated to approve the management contract with Ryan – which is now overseeing the construction of the new federal courthouse — in an amount of up to $8.35 million. Of that amount, up to $3.26 million will be paid for management of the Paramount project, Greg Eyerly, the city’s flood-recovery director, said Wednesday.

Eyerly estimated that Ryan will be overseeing more than $100 million worth of city work, which also will include, among other smaller projects, a new Animal Care and Control facility plus work on the city’s bus garage, public works building and the May’s Island parkade.

In addition, the council last night was expecrted to follow a recommendation of the Veterans Memorial Commission and hire Neumann Brothers of Des Moines and Alt Architecture + Research Associates of  Chicago  to manage the reconstruction of the Veterans Memorial Building on May’s Island. The dollar amount of the contract will be determined when the scope of the work is finalized.

In recent weeks, the council concluded that hiring different contract managers for the biggest of the city’s flood-recovery construction projects would help get the work done on time and without cost overruns.

A construction manager for the new library has not yet been selected, Eyerly noted.

“I don’t think it’s very hazy at this point,” Corbett told members of the The Gazette editorial board at City Hall on Wednesday morning. “There is a growing consensus among council members that we use existing buildings.”

He said a council majority is behind building a new library – the council approved the site last week – and a new Central Fire Station. But a new city hall isn’t needed, he said.

The council will vote March 16 on building a new city hall or returning to existing buildings, he said.

At its meeting this evening, the council is slated to approve the hiring of Neumann Brothers Inc. of Des Moines to work as the construction manager to oversee the renovation of the flood-damaged Veterans Memorial Building.

Corbett said the council will need to decide how much it wants to put back in the Veterans Memorial Building and how much space that the Veterans Memorial Commission might want in the building. The commission earlier picked Neumann Brothers Inc. to recommend for the construction management role.

Corbett called the old federal courthouse – which the city is getting in a trade for land it provided for the new federal courthouse – a “solid building” that could use some new carpet in some places and a little paint.

He noted that some council members even like the idea of using the large federal courtroom on the building’s top floor as a council chambers.

Levy on Wednesday said he has submitted a letter to City Manager Jim Prosser notifying him that he can finish up work on his latest contract with the city by month’s end.

“You know what, there’s a new (mayoral) administration, they might want to go a different way, and I’m OK with that,” Levy said. “I understand how those things go.”

He said he would stay on through the end of his contract at the end of June if the council wanted him to do so. But he added he would be surprised if that was the case.

Three new members on the nine-member City Council, Mayor Ron Corbett, Don Karr and Chuck Swore, have particularly expressed an interest in ending Levy’s contract. They have suggested that he has not moved on flood recovery at a fast enough pace.

Corbett has said as much as Levy said on Monday: That a new administration can see things differently from the one before it. Corbett also has said that some of what Levy has been doing for the city most recently has been taken over by city staff.

At last Wednesday’s council meeting, the council, in fact, had been slated to discuss ending Levy’s contract. Instead, the council tabled the matter, and the council’s four-member Procurement Committee took up the issue at a meeting on Monday.

At the Monday meeting, Prosser and other top city staff said Levy had delivered on his contract with the city. Swore, the committee chairman, said he would defer to Prosser’s wishes. But that was Monday.

Greg Eyerly, the city’s flood-recovery director, did note that Levy had come to “rub” the Federal Emergency Management Agency in the wrong way, so much so that the city staff would “scrub” Levy’s input and present it to FEMA themselves. Eyerly also said that Levy’s cost for construction management services, for now, was coming in at a higher rate than the rate set out by FEMA standards.

Levy arrived Cedar Rapids with disaster experience from Hurricane Katrina even as floodwaters were receding here in June 2008.

The city quickly hired him and has awarded him new contracts in October 2008 and July 2009. A Michigan resident, he initially worked for a firm called Globe Midwest, but in October 2008, he created his own company, Base Tactical Disaster Recovery.

The city can’t routinely end his current contract without a 30-day notice.

Mayor Ron Corbett ran the morning news conference at which he introduced a series of union leaders, two other council members and two contractor representatives, who, in turn, talked about high jobless rates among local building-trades workers, the loss of work to sometimes questionable low-pay, out-of-town companies and the need to get moving on rebuilding flood-damaged city buildings.

Corbett said the City Council was taking two specific steps:

The council would require contractors on upcoming city projects to follow federal Davis-Bacon Act standards, which require that the local “prevailing wage” be paid to workers. Prevailing wage is typically union-wage rates, Ray Dochterman, business agent for Plumbers and Pipefitters Local 125, noted before Wednesday’s event at his union hall.

The council also will pre-qualify contractors who bid on projects to make sure, council member Chuck Swore explained, that contractors have good safety records, good training programs, financial wherewithal and a willingness to work under guidelines established by the City Council.

Corbett, a Republican and former state Republican lawmaker who secured strong labor support in his run for mayor in 2009, noted that some local communities work hard to see how they can “exempt” themselves from the requirements of the federal Davis-Bacon Act.

“We’re going to embrace it,” Corbett said.

He said the use of federal dollars on local projects requires following the Davis-Bacon standard on prevailing wage, but at the same time he noted that projects that use funds from the Federal Emergency Management Agency don’t come under Davis-Bacon Act rules. Much of the federal money going into the city’s flood-damaged buildings, in fact, is FEMA money.

But Corbett said the city is expecting federal dollars from other sources to be used on the city’s big projects like the library, Central Fire Station, Paramount Theatre, U.S. Cellular Center, Event Center convention center, Veterans Memorial Building and the old federal courthouse. By way of example, he pointed to $10 million in federal energy efficiency funds now in state hands for which the city intends to apply, the mayor said.

The city also is hoping to secure a $35-million grant from the U.S. Department of Commerce to help build a new convention center.

Among those who came to the microphone was Russ Gunderson, who said more than 50 percent of his workers are now out of worked. He blamed some of it on out-of-town and out-of-state workers.

Scott Smith, president of the Cedar Rapids/Iowa City Building Trades Council, estimated that 25 percent to 50 percent or more in many of the building trades were out of work, and he, too, pointed to out-of-town contractors underbidding local contractors for local work.

Council member Justin Shields, a local labor leader himself, thanked the crowd of perhaps 100 people for attending the Wednesday morning event. “But you should be out there working today,” Shields said.

Since the June 2008 flood, Shields said the city has seen too many contractors and workers with license plates from the Carolinas, Florida, Georgia and Texas, and he said the city’s rebuilding needed quality local workers and contractors to do the job.

Dave Hogan of the local carpenters union said the city’s plan to pre-qualify contractors will “weed out disreputable contractors.” He pointed to what he said were state of Iowa figures that had identified $12 million in unreported income and $750,000 in unpaid unemployment taxes from irresponsible contractors working on disaster projects.

The cost that the city has proposed to charge the festival for event security is the biggest impediment for the non-profit festival to stage the fireworks downtown, where the event traditionally had been held until the flood of 2008.

The festival’s Russ Oviatt, operations and marketing director, on Tuesday said the “overwhelming” number of calls coming to the festival office have been in support of returning fireworks to the downtown.

“It’s tradition. It’s Americana. It’s Cedar Rapids,” Oviatt said in a letter Tuesday to the City Council.

A week ago, Oviatt said the city had proposed charging the festival $30,000 to provide police and firefighters for the event.

Three years ago, the festival paid the city $1,300 for security, Oviatt has pointed out.

In his letter to the council, he suggested ways for the city to cut its security charges, including lessening the number of hours officers need to work the event. The city also apparently is poised on July 1 to institute a new $5-an-hour surcharge for officers used for “special duty,” a new fee that Oviatt asks to be waived for the Fourth of July event.

Mayor Ron Corbett has said repeatedly that he wants the fireworks back downtown.

The first floor of the Cedar Rapids Public Library was stripped to the metal studs and concrete floor during flood-damage cleanup. (Jim Slosiarek/The Gazette)

Fresh off a spellbinding deliberation and hairsplitting vote last week to build a new $45-million library across Fourth Avenue SE from Greene Square Park, the City Council now faces another question: What to do with the empty, flood-wrecked library on First Street SE?

Both the Federal Emergency Management Agency and Greg Eyerly, the city’s flood-recovery director, reported this week that FEMA no longer will pay to control the temperature and humidity in the old library now that the council has picked a site on which to build a new library, construction on which will occur with FEMA’s financial help.

In fact, FEMA spokeswoman Bettina Hutchings this week was clear about FEMA’s position on the old library. The city assumed responsibility for climate control on the building on Feb. 24, the night the council picked a site for the new library, she said.

Eyerly said the monthly cost for climate control, which is powered by generators at this point, will cost what it has been costing FEMA since the flood of June 2008: about $50,000 a month.

“It will force us to make some timely decisions regarding climate control and the old site,” Eyerly said.

Mayor Ron Corbett on Tuesday said he was “dismayed” at what he said has been a lack of “advance planning” since City Hall has known for many months that the library would not be returning to the old library site.

Corbett said his current preference is to try to find a private-sector firm that would be willing to assume ownership of the property. It’s no secret, he noted, that the city has proposed to insurance and financial services firm TrueNorth — which now occupies the site of the new library — that it trade the old library site for TrueNorth’s current site.

Corbett said he would not stand in the way of demolishing the current library if that would be the choice of a private-sector entity taking ownership of the property.

As for any near-term climate-control costs in the old library, the mayor said the city can’t afford to pay $50,000 a month for those costs.

Flood-recovery director Eyerly said the big expenses are generator rental and fuel to run the generators. One way to lower the monthly costs would be to buy a new transformer and put the library back on the Alliant Energy power grid, which the city has done, for instance, at the Veterans Memorial Building. In any event, the climate must be controlled to prevent freezing now and mold growth once temperatures begin to rise, Eyerly said.

“So we will either need to sell it, trade it or make the decision to demolish it,” he said.

He added that a decision to demolish the building would mean the city could pull the plug on “life support immediately.”

“The meter is running and we need to move on this as soon as possible,” Eyerly said.

Ron Corbett

Mayor Ron Corbett made mention of it during his mayoral campaign last fall — that he would push to make sure a “prevailing wage” was paid to those working on the city’s large, flood-recovery construction projects.

Corbett now has scheduled a news conference for 9 a.m. Wednesday at the Plumbers & Steamfitters Training Center, 5101 J Street SW, to provide some details about what the city will require of contractors bidding on the city’s upcoming big projects, such as the library, Central Fire Station, Paramount Theatre, Veterans Memorial Building, the old federal courthouse and an Animal Care and Control facility.

Corbett, a Republican, a former Republican state legislator and former president/CEO of the Cedar Rapids Area Chamber of Commerce, secured strong backing from labor in last fall’s election.

At Wednesday’s news conference, he said he also will address the growing unemployment rate in the local construction industry.

As for the issue of prevailing wage, the city could be required to pay prevailing wage on all of the large city projects as set out in the federal Davis-Bacon Act because some of the construction cost is apt to be paid, at least in some part, by federal dollars other than those provided by the Federal Emergency Management Agency, Corbett said Tuesday afternoon. The use of FEMA dollars, which will pay significant parts of the construction, do not require Davis-Bacon Act standards, the mayor added.

By way of example, he noted that the city is expecting to see a grant of as much as $35 million from the U.S. Department of Commerce to help pay for a new convention center. Commerce Department money requires the use of Davis-Bacon standards, Corbett said.

Corbett now has scheduled a news conference for 9 a.m. Wednesday at the Plumbers & Steamfitters Training Center, 5101 J Street SW, to provide some details about what the city will require of contractors bidding on the city’s upcoming big projects, such as the library, Central Fire Station, Paramount Theatre, Veterans Memorial Building, the old federal courthouse and an Animal Care and Control facility.

Corbett, a Republican, a former Republican state legislator and former president/CEO of the Cedar Rapids Area Chamber of Commerce, secured strong backing from labor in last fall’s election.

At his Wednesday news conference, he said he also will address the growing unemployment rate in the local construction industry.

As for the prevailing wage, all of the large city projects easily could require the city to pay a prevailing wage, as set out in the federal Davis-Bacon Act, because some of the construction cost might be paid, at least in some part, by federal dollars other than those provided by the Federal Emergency Management Agency, Corbett said Tuesday afternoon. The use of FEMA dollars, which will pay significant parts of the construction, do not require Davis-Bacon Act standards, the mayor added.

By way of example, he noted that the city is expecting to see a grant of as much as $35 million from the U.S. Department of Commerce to help pay for a new convention center. Commerce Department money requires the use of Davis-Bacon standards, Corbett said.

Both the Federal Emergency Management Agency and Greg Eyerly, the city’s flood-recovery director, reported this week that FEMA no longer will pay to control the temperature and humidity in the old library now that the council has picked a site on which to build a new library, construction on which will occur with FEMA’s financial help.

In fact, FEMA spokeswoman Bettina Hutchings this week was clear about FEMA’s position on the old library. The city assumed responsibility for climate control on the building on Feb. 24, the night the council picked a site for the new library, she said.

Eyerly said the monthly cost for climate control, which is powered by generators at this point, will cost what it has been costing FEMA since the flood of June 2008: about $50,000 a month.

“It will force us to make some timely decisions regarding climate control and the old site,” Eyerly said.

Mayor Ron Corbett on Tuesday said he was “dismayed” at what he said has been a lack “advanced planning” since City Hall has known for many months that the library would not be returning to the old library site.

Corbett said his current preference is to try to find a private-sector firm that would be willing to assume ownership of the property. It’s no secret, he noted, that the city has proposed to insurance and financial services firm TrueNorth — which now occupies the site of the new library — that it trade the old library site for TrueNorth’s current site.

At the same time, Corbett said he would not stand in the way of demolishing the current library if that would be the choice of a private-sector entity taking ownership of the property.

As for any near-term climate-control costs in the old library, the mayor said the city can’t afford to pay $50,000 a month for those costs.

Flood-recovery director Eyerly said the big expenses are generator rental and fuel to run the generators. One way to lower the monthly costs would be to buy a new transformer and put the library back on the Alliant Energy power grid, which the city has done, for instance, at the Veterans Memorial Building. In any event, the climate must be controlled to prevent freezing now and mold growth once temperatures begin to rise, Eyerly said.

“So we will either need to sell it, trade it or make the decision to demolish it,” he said.

He added that a decision to demolish the building would mean the city could pull the plug on “life support immediately.”

“The meter is running and we need to move on this as soon as possible,” Eyerly said.

The city’s latest contract with Levy — the first one began in the first days after the June 2008 flood and initially had Levy portrayed in headlines as “Mr. $475-an-hour” — will conclude at the end of June and won’t be extended, Prosser noted Monday.

Prosser, Dave Elgin, the city’s public works director, and Rob Davis, the city’s public works engineering manager, on Monday all told the City Council’s Procurement Committee that Levy and his firm, Base Tactical Disaster Recovery, had performed adequately in contracts with the city.

Greg Eyerly, the city’s flood-recovery director, also complimented Levy, but, at the same time, Eyerly noted that Levy’s charges on his most recent contract with the city are higher than the Federal Emergency Management Agency guideline.

Specifically, FEMA’s standards say the agency will pay between 3 and 6 of project cost for construction management services and, perhaps, 6 to 9 percent if some of that work involves architectural work. To date, the Levy firm’s charges stand at 15 percent of the project cost. However, that percentage may drop if the construction costs that his firm is overseeing climb, Eyerly noted.

Levy’s role at City Hall long has been portrayed as the consultant with Hurricane Katrina experience who would push FEMA to make sure that the city got all that it deserved in disaster funding.

Levy apparently did push — so much so, that Eyerly noted that Levy had come to sometimes “rub” FEMA representatives the wrong way.

“I can be pretty collaborative (when working with FEMA),” Eyerly said of himself. “John, less so.”

He said the city now “scrubs” Levy’s input and then presents it to FEMA.

City Council member Chuck Swore, chairman of the council’s Procurement Committee, questioned Prosser, Elgin and Davis about why a local company hadn’t been hired last July to oversee some of the smaller reconstruction projects of the city rather than giving Levy a new contract to do that work. Davis noted that the contract called for someone with flood and FEMA experience so the city could be sure that all the damage would be fixed in accordance with FEMA requirements.

Levy’s first year of work with the city centered on his experience in filing claims with FEMA to pay for damages to the city’s public buildings and infrastructure. Since July 2009, his contract has centered on construction management.

Swore was satisfied to learn that Levy will play no role in large construction projects yet to come, including the library, Paramount Theatre, the Veterans Memorial Building and Central Fire Station.

Council member Don Karr, one of four council members on the Procurement Committee, wasn’t at all satisfied with what he heard Monday, though Swore said the committee will accede to Prosser’s recommendation and keep Levy’s contract in place.

Karr checked off the hourly rates that Levy’s firm charges the city: $235 an hour for Levy and per-hour charges of $200, $195, $150, $125, $93 and $55 for other staff. Most of the costs will be reimbursed by FEMA, city staff said.

Karr noted that Levy’s contract calls for periodic flights back home for Levy and his staff as well as car rental charges. Levy is renting a Dodge Charger, Karr said.

“This is obnoxious,” Karr said of the costs.

The city has paid firms associated with Levy an estimated $2.3 million since the July 2008 flood, according to past and new figures provided to date by the city.

The city’s latest contract with Levy — the first one began in the first days after the June 2008 flood and initially had Levy portrayed in headlines as “Mr. $475-an-hour” — will conclude at the end of June and won’t be extended, Prosser noted Monday.

Prosser, Dave Elgin, the city’s public works director, and Rob Davis, the city’s public works engineering manager, on Monday all told the City Council’s Procurement Committee that Levy and his firm, Base Tactical Disaster Recovery, had performed adequately in contracts with the city.

Greg Eyerly, the city’s flood-recovery director, also complimented Levy, but, at the same time, Eyerly noted that Levy’s charges on his most recent contract with the city are higher than the Federal Emergency Management Agency guideline.

Specifically, FEMA’s standards say the agency will pay between 3 and 6 of project cost for construction management services and, perhaps, 6 to 9 percent if some of that work involves architectural work. To date, the Levy firm’s charges stand at 15 percent of the project cost. However, that percentage may drop if the construction costs that his firm is overseeing climb, Eyerly noted.

Levy’s role at City Hall long has been portrayed as the consultant with Hurricane Katrina experience who would push FEMA to make sure that the city got all that it deserved in disaster funding.

Levy apparently did push — so much so, that Eyerly noted that Levy had come to sometimes “rub” FEMA representatives the wrong way.

“I can be pretty collaborative (when working with FEMA),” Eyerly said of himself. “John, less so.”

He said the city now “scrubs” Levy’s input and then presents it to FEMA.

City Council member Chuck Swore, chairman of the council’s Procurement Committee, questioned Prosser, Elgin and Davis about why a local company hadn’t been hired last July to oversee some of the smaller reconstruction projects of the city rather than giving Levy a new contract to do that work. Davis noted that the contract called for someone with flood and FEMA experience so the city could be sure that all the damage would be fixed in accordance with FEMA requirements.

Levy’s first year of work with the city centered on his experience in filing claims with FEMA to pay for damages to the city’s public buildings and infrastructure. Since July 2009, his contract has centered on construction management.

Swore was satisfied to learn that Levy will play no role in large construction projects yet to come, including the library, Paramount Theatre, the Veterans Memorial Building and Central Fire Station.

Council member Don Karr, one of four council members on the Procurement Committee, wasn’t at all satisfied with what he heard Monday, though Swore said the committee will accede to Prosser’s recommendation and keep Levy’s contract in place.

Karr checked off the hourly rates that Levy’s firm charges the city: $235 an hour for Levy and per-hour charges of $200, $195, $150, $125, $93 and $55 for other staff. Most of the costs will be reimbursed by FEMA, city staff said.

Karr noted that Levy’s contract calls for periodic flights back home for Levy and his staff as well as car rental charges. Levy is renting a Dodge Charger, Karr said.

“This is obnoxious,” Karr said of the costs.

Back in June 2008, Levy showed up at City Hall with disaster experience from Hurricane Katrina even as flood water in Cedar Rapids was receding. Levy’s message was the same as what other disaster cities had told Prosser: Work hard to document the damage to make sure you get what you deserve in federal flood-disaster relief.

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.

In September 2008, 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 May 2009, the city reported that Levy’s contract from Oct. 1, 2008, through June 30, 2009, would pay his firm $786,400.

Figures released on Monday by Eyerly put the Levy firm’s charges at $804,894 for its work for the city of Cedar Rapids since July 1, 2009.

Prosser pointed at the example of the city’s flood-damaged library, in which FEMA’s early conclusion was that it had not been damaged nearly as much as the city believed it had been. Levy’s ability to help the city build its case will end up bringing millions of more dollars to the city that it otherwise would have gotten on the library alone, suggested Prosser.

There is no ifs, ands or buts about it: Swore’s change of vote last week was the crucial, deciding factor in the City Council’s decision to build the city’s new $45-million public library across Fourth Avenue SE from Greene Square Park. The site is now occupied by TrueNorth, an insurance and financial services firm.

The initial council vote was 4-4-1 for three proposed sites, with Swore being the odd man out. After some discussion among council members about second-choice sites, Mayor Ron Corbett turned to Swore and asked him to make a motion for a particular site. Swore moved to put the library on the TrueNorth site, and the four advocates for the site quickly backed him.

However, Swore as easily could have picked the Emerald Knights block, and that’s where the library would have been built. He might have even managed to get it built on the Gazette Communications block, his first choice, because some council members had reluctantly said the Gazette Communications block was their second choice.

But Swore picked the TrueNorth site. The final vote of 7-2 included votes by Corbett and council member Kris Gulick, both who wanted the Emerald Knights site, as ‘votes of unity,” the mayor said.

Because of Swore, too, the city now has what had been a driveway of sorts next to Kingston Stadium named native-son and NFL star Kurt Warner. It’s called Kurt Warner Way SW.

Swore also was responsible three years ago for the city naming Zach Johnson Drive NE after native-son and Masters Golf Tournament champion Zach Johnson.

Once the new library is up, Swore surely will have his name on the commemorative plaque as a member of the City Council when the library was built. The plaque, though, isn’t like to note what singular role he played in it all.

If you want to see what the 67-year-old Swore’s name might look like on a plaque, just stop over at the lobby of the U.S. Cellular Center. The commemorative plaque there, put in place in 1979, has Swore’s name front and center for his role as chairman at the time of the city’s Facilities Commission.