One step forward

CEDAR RAPIDS - Mayor Ron Corbett and a City Hall delegation won an initial victory at the Iowa Statehouse on Wednesday in their effort to find state funds to help Cedar Rapids build a flood protection system able to protect against a repeat of the Floods of 2008.

A key caveat with the legislative proposal - which would create a $30-million-a-year, multiyear fund to help communities statewide with flood protection - is that it requires recipients to match state funds with local ones.

The proposal, which has to make its way through the Senate and then House and be approved by the governor, puts the city in the same spot it was in a year ago: Asking state lawmakers for flood-protection funds on the eve of an election to extend the local-option sales tax. The extension of the 1 percent tax for 10 years is needed to generate the local matching funds required to secure state and federal money for flood protection, city officials say.

“What I'm thinking is that I'm hopeful that voters will be supportive of a sales-tax extension when it comes up next month,” Corbett said. “So we have our local match so we can draw down on these state resources.”

Cities also can use property-tax dollars rather than sales-tax dollars as a local match, but Corbett said raising property taxes wasn't practical.

A year ago, Corbett often spoke about Cedar Rapids flood protection as a “three-legged stool,” with federal, state and city funds needed to build it and keep it in place. Nothing has changed with the metaphor, the mayor said.

“You have to have local skin in the game,” he said. “That's the only way these things get built.”

The current 1 percent sales tax for flood recovery doesn't end until June 30, 2014, so a 10-year extension for flood protection would not begin to be collected until July 1, 2014. Corbett said that gives the city two more legislative sessions to secure state funds if the initiative fails this year.

However, Corbett was optimistic that the Legislature and the governor both would approve some kind of mechanism to help communities throughout the state repair or bolster their flood protection systems. Disastrous flooding in 2011 in western Iowa hopefully will help build a strong enough coalition to get the measure passed, he said.

Subcommittee members Sens. Bob Dvorsky, D-Coralville, Rob Hogg, D-Cedar Rapids, and Bill Dix, R-Shell Rock, voted 3-0 to send the measure to the full Senate Appropriations Committee, which Dvorsky heads.

Cedar Rapids' preferred flood protection program has a price tag of $375 million - $200 million for east-side protection, $175 million for west-side protection - with a system of levees, flood walls, removable flood walls, gates and pumping stations.

To date, the Army Corps of Engineers has approved a partial flood protection project for most of the east side of the city at an estimated cost of $104 million, 35 percent of which must come from local or state funds.

Hogg said the Senate bill provides a mechanism for the state to become a partner to invest in “fairly intensive” infrastructure improvements that provide an essential public purpose.

Dix said it recognizes that the state has a role to play in restoring economic vitality and preserving jobs in communities hard hit by natural disasters that have a ripple effect on surrounding areas.